On March 1st 2021, we announced that we would be acquiring and operating Cryptium’s Tezos baker and their validator nodes on NEAR, Polkadot, and Kusama. This deal enabled the former Cryptium Labs team to focus on their new project Anoma, a private, asset-agnostic bartering network, while allowing their delegators to keep earning staking rewards with a reputable staking provider. Shortly after, we also agreed to take over Figment’s baker to help them focus on their DataHub and Learn projects on Tezos and to allow Figment’s former delegators to continue earning XTZ staking rewards. The acquisition of the Cryptium and Figment bakers mark our first entry into the Tezos ecosystem.
Tezos needs no introduction, it is a self-amending blockchain that launched as one of the world’s first Proof-of-Stake networks in 2018, establishing one of the first ecosystems of node operators. Tezos differentiates itself from other chains through a sophisticated on-chain governance mechanism and formal verification of smart contracts.
Amongst other things, Tezos was the first blockchain that introduced ‘Liquid Staking’. Somewhat ahead of its time, before Decentralised Finance (DeFi) had garnered adoption, delegators on Tezos were and are still now able to earn rewards whilst having the option to undelegate at any time and transfer their assets elsewhere (in comparison to most networks where an ‘unbonding’ period is necessary to undelegate assets). This also allows tokens in smart contracts (e.g. collateral in Kolibri, a Maker-esque stablecoin system on Tezos) to be delegated and earn staking rewards simultaneously! Tezos is no foreigner to introducing blockchain concepts ahead of its time, on-chain governance and an automated upgrade schedule were also foreign concepts until Tezos introduced these. Tezos has established itself time and time again as a secure network with the potential to be one of the most resilient and adaptable Proof-of-Stake networks. Given its reliability, it is no wonder that Tezos is chosen continuously by financial institutions for it’s fork-averseness, staking economics and finance-friendly smart contracts. We see great potential for the future of Tezos and we are glad to finally have the opportunity to run a validating node on this vibrant network.
There are 1,419,320 accounts using Tezos. The 1D transaction average over the past 30D is ~100,000 transactions per day (which is ~365,000,000 transactions per year annualised) and contract calls on Tezos are growing ~120% MoM (since May 2020).
Network activity on Tezos is impressive to say the least. We are glad to be supporting a thriving network that has seen sustained growth since its inception. We are looking forward to actively participating in Tezos governance to foster ecosystem development in the future.
Tezos has had two upgrades in the past three months, namingly Edo 2.0 and Florence. Edo 2.0 targeted the application layer of Tezos by introducing privacy-preserving smart contracts, more composable smart contracts using ‘tickets’ that represent values in relation to addresses (similar to derivatives) and an ‘adoption’ period to create a longer time-buffer between when voting ends for an upgrade and when it is executed on-chain. The Florence upgrade doubled the maximum operation size of smart contracts), optimised gas and changed intra-contract calling to a depth first execution model, all of which enable developers to develop more complex smart contracts with higher certainty the smart contracts will behave as expected.
Tezos Staking FAQ: https://chorus.one/networks/tezos
Staking Guide: Tezos Staking Guide for Beginners by Baking Bad, Ledger Guide to Staking Tezos (Ledger Only)
Wallets: Kukai, Ledger Live
Block Explorers: TzStats, TzKt
Staking Reward Calculator: Staking Rewards
Lido, the largest liquid staking project on Eth2 and Terra, is looking to expand its offering to the high-performance blockchain Solana. Chorus One is building this service for Lido.
‘Lido for Solana’ is a Lido-DAO governed liquid staking protocol for the Solana blockchain. Anyone who stakes their SOL tokens with Lido will be issued an on-chain representation of SOL staking position with Lido validators, called stSOL. This will allow Solana token holders to get liquidity on their staked assets which can then be traded, or further utilized as collateral in DeFi products. We will work to integrate stSOL widely into the Solana DeFi ecosystem to enable stSOL users to make use of their staked assets in a variety of applications.
Lido for Solana gives you:
The Lido DAO is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization which governs and enables the development of liquid staking solutions for different blockchains.
The first liquid staking protocol solution was built for Ethereum — and now Lido is expanding to different blockchain networks. Chorus One recently proposed a plan to build “a liquid staking token that will accrue staking rewards and represent staking positions with Lido validators on Solana”. The stake deposited to the Lido contract on Solana will be distributed to these validators following a logic similar to the Lido (stETH) on Ethereum. Lido on Solana will have a fee mechanism similar to that on Ethereum which allows splitting fees between node operators and the Lido treasury (e.g. to be used for the insurance fund).
Lido’s decentralized organization brings together the industry’s top staking providers, decentralized finance projects, and investors. The Lido DAO eliminates dependence on a centralized authority, thereby removing the risk of a single point of failure. Distributed governance also fosters a stronger community!
Solana is an extremely fast, and censorship-resistant blockchain that has witnessed tremendous growth and adoption in the last year. Solana serves transactions at an order of magnitude higher rate when compared to base layer Ethereum. Additionally, there is a flourishing ecosystem emerging around Serum and other DeFi protocols such as Raydium, Oxygen, Pyth Network, and others that are being built on Solana. With over $14bn staked, Solana is now also in the Top 5 of Proof-of-Stake networks by staked value.
Liquid staking takes the utility of Solana a step further by:
Lido for Solana not only makes it very easy to stake but also provides further utility through stSOL. Let’s look at the process in slight detail. A SOL token holder connects their wallet to an interface that supports Lido (one will e.g. be hosted at https://stake.lido.fi) and deposits their tokens into the Lido program. They immediately receive stSOL tokens that represent a share of the total pool. Every user’s tokens are held in a pool controlled by the Lido program.
The Lido program collects the deposited SOL and releases the newly minted stSOL to the user. Beneath the layer, the Lido Program distributes this SOL uniformly across validators participating in the Lido Program. When these delegations accrue rewards on the allotted stake, the total SOL under pool management increases and this increases the value of stSOL tokens. The Lido DAO governs the Lido Program — and also controls the list of validators that are part of this program.
Let’s compare this to traditional Solana staking, where a user has to perform a number of steps:
Furthermore, in traditional staking, if the user wants to diversify her stake across validators she would have to create and manage stake accounts for each validator.
Staking SOL through Lido will come with a variety of benefits:
Interestingly, there is no waiting time for receiving stSOL tokens. When a user delegates their SOL tokens they do not need to perform or wait for the completion of any delegation or activation steps, as is the norm in traditional staking. The user can instantly exchange stSOL for SOL at any time in the open market.
In Lido for ETH, withdrawals from the Lido program are blocked until the ETH2 chain is live. In Lido for Solana, staggered withdrawals will be enabled. These direct withdrawals will take a couple of epochs to process, and will be beneficial for large withdrawals (e.g. because there will be no slippage from trading on the open market). However, for small withdrawals exchanging stSOL on a DEX (e.g. to SOL) will likely prove to be the go-to solution in order to exit a staking position with Lido for most of the users.
Reward distribution in ‘Lido for Solana’ is an interesting deviation from how rewards are distributed in Lido for Ethereum, which pegs ETH2 to stETH in a 1:1 ratio.
To understand how rewards work for ‘Lido for Solana’ let’s look at a hypothetical scenario. Let’s assume that the pool contains 2000 SOL and while we are at it let us also assume that a total of 1800 stSOL are held by the token holders. This puts an exchange rate of 0.9 stSOL per SOL.
If Alice deposits 1 SOL now she will get 0.9 stSOL in return. As rewards accrue SOL balance goes up, let’s say from 2000 to 2100. The new exchange rate becomes
Now if Alice goes and enquires about the value of her 0.9 stSOL, she finds it to be
Effectively, her SOL balance potentially went up by 5% from 1 SOL to 1.05 SOL. This approach is called the share-pool approach. Even though the numbers here are hypothetical they represent the concept of rewards accurately.
Note
The accrued rewards here are after a fee cut for Lido maintainers. To incentivize sustainable management of the Lido ecosystem, a portion of the rewards is split between the node operators and DAO treasury. The remaining larger chunk (on Ethereum, these amount to 90%) of rewards accrue to Lido users and get reflected in the increased value of stSOL as explained above.
Lido for Solana doesn’t follow the pegging approach, followed by ETH and stETH, as of now. However, this might be considered for revision when Solana launches native support for rebasing in SPL tokens.
The stSOLs that one gets can be used to reap secondary rewards through DeFi protocols. There will also be liquidity pools on AMM protocols and other DEXes where one will be able to immediately exchange stSOL for SOL. For the ETH<>stETH pair a popular AMM in terms of liquidity and volume is the Curve pool.
Withdrawals of SOL from the Lido program will be rolled out after the initial MVP that is expected later this summer. As mentioned above, instant withdrawals will be available in the open market. Once activated, withdrawal from the Lido pool will take a couple of epochs. This process is intentionally staggered to avoid bank-run scenarios.
As discussed in the rewards section a portion of the rewards goes to the Lido DAO treasury. The amount that goes to the Lido DAO treasury can be potentially used for different purposes
The Lido DAO is the deciding authority on the various parameters of the ecosystem. Things like fees, upgrade approvals, validator set, voting mechanisms, etc. are decided by the DAO. It is in the DAO’s charter to make the system run smoothly and it does so through the process of voting. To be a voter one must possess the governance token, LDO. The amount of LDO determines the weight of your vote.
Lido DAO’s governance is a key aspect of the ecosystem and holds the key to the success of Lido for Solana.
Chorus One proposed to build the liquid staking solution described here with support from the Lido DAO and the vote past with over 96m LDO in favor and 0 LDO against. Follow our Twitter handle and website to keep in touch with the latest updates.
The Cosmos vision is one of many application-specific blockchains interoperating with each other. It is the belief that creating domain-specific, sovereign ecosystems will often prove more suitable than building on a shared, general purpose blockchain substrate like Ethereum. But how does value accrual work in such a system? What domains could provide enough value to justify the cost of needing to operate their own blockchain?
Regen Network is building a network focused on ecological regeneration. The goal is to provide tools to actors in the climate finance industry and turn them into stakeholders of the Regen ecosystem.
Regen is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK with a staking token $REGEN that recently (on April 15, 2021) launched its mainnet supported by 50 independent validators. This token could accrue value from levying fees on ecological assets originated and secured on-chain, and from transaction fees paid by users paying for services on the network. Data from the recent explosion of decentralized finance protocols and associated governance tokens allow us to get insight into how the market is valuing such tokens.
But first, one might wonder what kind of assets would be secured on the Regen Network and what kind of transactions may take place. This post will take a look at the initial use case of a registry for carbon credits and then discuss two hypothetical valuation methods: one based on discounted cash flows from transaction fees and one based on comparable DeFi protocols, and their respective market capitalization in relation to the assets locked in their smart contracts (TVL).
The Regen Ledger ultimately is designed to become a platform focused on use cases around the topic of ecological finance, but for this analysis we will focus on the first application built by the Regen team, which is a registry for carbon credits.
Carbon credit markets are opaque and private; there are lots of problems that a shared, public market could solve. If you are interested in learning about the how and why, the Regen whitepaper goes into these problems in-depth in section 4.2.1.
Even though there is a lack of transparency and many scattered markets, it is clear that carbon markets, in their totality, are huge. Corporations, governments, NGOs, and public blockchains are all adapting to a new standard of carbon sensitivity. Analysts looking into the topic provide wide ranges of estimates, which can be used as a basis for valuation attempts. In particular, one can assume global trading of carbon credits to amount to $278bn in 2021, an amount that is based on data and growth rates observed in recent Refinitiv studies that also aligns with earlier research conducted by the Regen team. The carbon market has experienced high growth in recent years due to a heightened awareness of climate change and the increasing importance of needing to find a solution.
To understand how capturing this market might translate to value appreciation in REGEN tokens, one needs to first understand the dynamics in a Proof-of-Stake network. While initially, most Proof-of-Stake networks bootstrap their security through token issuance (mostly referred to as inflation), the long-term assumption is often that transaction fees levied within the network should compensate stakers for putting their capital to work. Following this, the price of a staking token could be derived using discounted cash flow valuation. Many analysts in the crypto space have attempted these kinds of valuations, an example from 2018 by John Torado on the REN token can be found here. Using this approach, the Regen Network could accrue significant value depending on the market share of the $278bn carbon credit market that it can capture and its ability to levy a fee on originations and trading of those credits.
As mentioned in the introduction, a plethora of DeFi protocols and associated tokens allow us to get a sense of how the market values governance tokens based on the total value locked within the associated protocol. CoinGecko e.g. is tracking the Market Cap to TVL Ratio for different protocol tokens. Using this comparable approach, one might also consider valuing the REGEN token based on the total value locked in tokenized carbon credits and other natural capital assets that are originated and locked in smart contracts on the Regen Network.
So far, we’ve only talked about the single use case of a public registry for carbon credits. We assumed that the Regen Network will become a place in which ecosystem players originate, buy, and sell such credits. Once such agreements are digitized and exist on Regen Network as NFTs, which is how this will technically work, there are many ways in which these tokenized agreements could become used in the digital economy. As an example, tokenized agreements could serve as collateral in decentralized financial applications giving them additional utility, and increasing the potential market and value capture for Regen as the originating chain. An example would be using natural capital assets as lower volatility collateral to borrow stablecoins against. The DeFi ecosystem will benefit in using real-world collateral since they may bring stability to a space that is currently dominated by highly correlated crypto-assets — a topic that another one of our supported networks, Centrifuge, is also working on by bridging trade and decentralized finance.
The Regen Network and its ecosystem is equipped to have a huge impact on climate finance and defi — bridging worlds. We believe a public carbon credit registry that can ensure credits are actually serving their desired cause is a great start to foster permissionless innovation and will lay the foundation for many more use cases in the future. Regen Network mainnet is there and an liquidity and price discovery for REGEN tokens is coming soon! Make sure to follow the channels linked below to stay in the loop.
The time to coordinate to solve climate change, come join us and the Regen community in this endeavor!
About Regen Network
Regen Network aligns economics with ecology to drive regenerative land management.
Website: https://www.regen.network/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/regen_network
Telegram: https://t.me/regennetworkpublic
About Chorus One
Chorus One is offering staking services and building tools and protocols to advance the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
We joined the Mina Protocol as a block producer coinciding with the protocol’s mainnet launch. MINA delegators stand to earn up to 24% APR on their tokens for helping to secure the network. In this post, we are detailing why we joined the Mina community and what you need to know about staking on Mina.
Mina is the first protocol to use recursive zero-knowledge proofs to track the entire state of a blockchain. Anyone in the world on any device can sync up and verify the chain at any point in time and act as a full computing node. Using zero-knowledge proofs to track states rather than a full ledger of transactions, Mina is able to keep their blockchain to a fixed size of ~22kb. As a result, Mina truly exemplifies a decentralised blockchain, as anyone in the world, even with limited access to resources, is able to participate and verify transactions. Not only is Mina well-decentralised, it is also privacy-oriented, as zero-knowledge proofs prove a statement to a verifier without revealing the exact specifics of that statement. The benefits of using zero-knowledge proofs are three-fold, ensuring scalability and decentralisation by keeping the blockchain small and accessible, as well as private, because those verifying transactions are unable to see specific details of a transaction.
The groundbreaking use of zero-knowledge proofs of zero-knowledge proofs (recursive) to track the entire state of a blockchain is a truly innovative approach that differs greatly from existing blockchains. We are particularly eager to see how Mina will integrate with web2 and believe that Mina can be the basis for interacting with websites that would traditionally require our personal data. In the future, we envision ourselves using Mina to prove information about ourselves to services that require it off-chain (such as banks) without giving away the specific details of what we are proving. An immediate use-case building on Mina is Teller, a protocol advancing unsecured lending in DeFi. In Teller, a user can prove their credit score is over a limit without revealing the exact number of their score over that limit thanks to zero-knowledge proof technology. We are eager to see how permissionless oracles in Mina will be incorporated by Snapps in the future too.
Mina is a lightweight, succinct blockchain. Each block contains state ‘proofs’, rather than the entire state. The size of Mina’s blockchain is always fixed ~22kb, allowing anyone on any device to quickly sync and verify the chain at any point in time. Mina is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain that uses Ouroboros Samasika for consensus, a provably secure consensus mechanism that chooses block producers ahead of time.
MINA token holders can delegate their tokens to validators such as Chorus One to earn staking rewards for helping to secure Mina and the snark powered decentralised apps (Snapps) it hosts. We are currently the sixth largest validator by assets staked on Mina with almost 15m MINA tokens staked. If you are interested in staking, you are able to stake with us through our custodian partner Finoa, or through non-custodial wallets listed further below. The following factors need to be taken into account when considering to stake on the Mina Protocol:
Epochs: Mina uses epochs to account for time. There are 7,140 slots per epoch and each slot is 3 minutes long (so an epoch lasts ~14–15 days).
Payout: Mina does not automatically payout rewards to delegators, Chorus will manually pay out rewards to delegators. Our payout schedule will initially be once per epoch shortly after epochs rolled over (i.e. every two weeks). We might update that to a more frequent schedule as we improve our payout mechanism. Payouts for the initial epoch already took place.
Validating rights: The stake distribution that is sampled when determining the VRF threshold is contained on another special ledger called the “staking ledger” (main ledger is called “staged ledger”). Using two separate ledgers means that validators are only able to see when they have the opportunity to publish a block 2 epochs into the future.
Reward rate: ~12% APR, for token holders with only liquid tokens this will be double (i.e. 24% APR at the moment).
Slashing: There is no slashing in Mina.
Latency period: There is a latency period of around a month before a new stake delegation comes into effect and starts to earn rewards (since the staking ledger is always decided 2 epochs in advance).
Minimum delegation: There is no minimum delegation.
Supercharged rewards: Mina token holders that do not have locked tokens receive higher rewards. At Chorus One, we take this into account for our reward payouts meaning delegators without vesting accounts will receive higher staking rewards!
Address: B62qmFf6UZn2sg3j8bYLGmMinzS2FHX6hDM71nFxAfMhvh4hnGBtkBD
Commission Rate:
10%
Payout Frequency:
Every epoch (i.e. every two weeks)
Learn more about staking Mina with us on our website.
Token Sale (April 13–16, 2021):
Coinlist
Staking Guides:
Delegating Mina using Clorio wallet
Delegating Mina using Finoa’s platform (Figment guide)
Delegating Mina using Clorio & Ledger
Delegating Mina using Ledger Nano S
Validator Dashboards:
Mina Validator Dashboard
Block Explorers:
Mina Explorer
Hubble
Mina Fees:
Mina Protocol Gas Station
