Chorus One launches OPUS: A multi-chain staking solution

“Sometimes a bull market, sometimes a bear market, always a builder’s market” — Sahil Lavingia

Chorus One was incorporated in 2018 when Proof-of-Stake was still in its nascency. But as all of us have seen, it’s now proven to be more secure, decentralized, and energy-efficient than Proof-of-Work. The maturity and adoption of PoS brought in increasing institutional interest as the low-risk profile of staking acted as a conducive entry point for many institutions who were testing the crypto waters. We covered more on this topic in an article some weeks back. Chorus One has been helping institutions get PoS exposure through our white-label and research services and today we’re extremely excited to announce the launch of OPUS — a multi-chain staking solution that will significantly speed up and scale an institution’s staking operations. The needs of any institution vary quite a bit and there aren’t many enterprise-ready staking solutions catering to them all. OPUS was designed after months of research and conversations with our existing clients and other crypto-friendly companies, keeping their needs at the center.

Why we launched OPUS -

• The institutional needs have evolved from just wanting to stake their assets to having complete operations over their nodes. Fund managers today want to take up an active role in deploying more assets and/or having provisions of partial or full withdrawals at any point. In these situations, a flexible tool like OPUS is helpful as there’s no practical need for human intervention from the staking provider.
• Staking shouldn’t be a complicated exercise hence OPUS allows institutions to get started just within a few clicks. The assets are backed by Chorus One’s secure infrastructure with 24*7 supervision from our team.
• Institutions have to take a lot more into consideration than just the network/token of their interest. Right from their compliances, geography-specific needs, security standards, reward mechanisms to network insights — every element requires careful deliberation. OPUS is meant to be a singular solution for these points as it is compliant, secure, and scalable.
• A multi-chain world shouldn’t need multiple tools which is why OPUS is designed to be chain-agnostic. Users can use one interface to interact with all compatible chains.

“Cryptoassets are becoming an integral part of the world’s financial system. They open the possibility for a more efficient and innovative economy. Staking cryptoassets allows participating in this revolution and earning strong returns with minimal risks. At Chorus One, we are grateful to be able to support institutions of all kinds to safely and effectively participate in the Proof-of-Stake economy.” — Brian Crain, Co-Founder and CEO, Chorus One

OPUS also follows industry-leading security standards and access to MEV rewards, the latter now being an important factor post the Merge. Here’s a quick overview of OPUS’ primary features -

SECURITY & RISK MANAGEMENT

Security is of paramount importance and one that’s non-negotiable. Hence, OPUS follows a range of security practices like authorizations/authentications using Open ID Connect (OIDC), double signing protection to prevent losses, and all private keys being stored in FIPS 140–2 compliant vaults. OPUS is also non-custodial meaning customers remain the sole possessors of withdrawal keys.

SETUP & INFRASTRUCTURE

Every client would have a dedicated infrastructure with multi-region redundancy that would also allow them to increase or decrease validators as and when required, depending on the protocol. This is also supervised round-the-clock by our DevOps team for issues and real-time updates can be enabled on Telegram or Slack.

UNIVERSAL APPLICABILITY

OPUS is designed to be chain-agnostic. Starting first with Ethereum, this will soon expand to other networks so you can use the same interface to interact with multiple networks.

MEV REWARDS

MEV-Boost queries and outsources block-building to a network of block builders. The validators that run MEV-Boost on their nodes will earn maximum rewards that then increase the rewards of all OPUS users too. Since the rewards generated by the non-MEV-Boost validators would be substantially lower, it would be prudent for institutions to partner with solutions that already enable MEV rewards.

That’s not all. We have many exciting features in the pipeline that will be rolled out in the next few weeks. If you’re interested in exploring OPUS and knowing more, drop an email to staking@chorus.one