Tezos governance has been very active lately. In June 2024, the Paris upgrade introduced important changes, including a new locked staking model and adaptive issuance that ties rewards to the ratio of staked XTZ. Now, just a few months later, another significant governance milestone was reached with the approval of the Quebec proposal during Proposal Period 135 on November 24, 2024.
Two proposals were up for consideration:
Both proposals built upon the Paris changes but had no differences in approach besides in the adaptive issuance schedule. Ultimately, Quebec won with 187 million votes to 104 million, with a 33% participation rate among bakers.
Lower Block Times
The reduction of block times from 10 seconds to 8 seconds will enhance performance and improve UX by offering faster finality.
Increased Delegation Limit
Bakers can now accept delegations up to 9x their own stake, up from 5x. This benefits bakers, allowing them to earn higher rewards by accommodating more delegated stake.
Reduction in Voting Power for Delegators
Paris introduced locked staking, incentivizing users to stake rather than delegate their XTZ, reducing delegated voting power by 50%. Quebec takes this further, reducing the voting weight of delegated XTZ to 33% of staked XTZ.
This adjustment encourages delegators to transition to staking for full voting power and rewards.
If you're currently delegating your XTZ to a Chorus One baker, visit this website to learn how to start staking and maximize your rewards!
Adaptive Issuance
Quebec implements a more aggressive reduction in baking rewards to address sell pressure on XTZ. Under Quebec, if 50% of XTZ is staked, the yield is reduced to 1%, compared to 3% in the Q3NA proposal as depicted on the graph below.
Some validators and community members raised valid concerns:
While these concerns are noteworthy, the focus remains on the network's long-term health and the community has clearly showed their preferred choice.
Despite some reservations about the steep reduction in issuance, Chorus One and other supporters voted for Quebec. This decision reflects confidence in the Tezos Foundation’s long-term vision and its alignment with the ecosystem's core contributors.
Chorus One Validator: tnam1qxsx2ezu89gx252kwwluqp7hadyp285tkczhaqg0or search for Chorus One on the Namada Staking page.
Recommended Wallet: Namada Keychain (Chrome or Firefox only)
Block Explorer: https://namada.info/
Unstaking Period: 14 days
Namada (NAM) is a proof of stake (PoS) layer-1 blockchain from the Anoma foundation designed to prioritize privacy in multi-asset transactions using zero-knowledge proof technology and focusing on interchain asset-agnostic data protection.
Built on the Tendermint consensus engine, it uses a mechanism called Zcash Sapling Protocol to enable shielded transfers, allowing users to transact privately while supporting interoperability with other blockchains.
Namada stands out for its native multi-asset support, meaning any asset from connected chains or created within Namada can benefit from its privacy features without needing custom contracts.
The platform also introduces an innovative feature called Privacy as a Public Good. It rewards users for using private transactions by allocating a portion of transaction fees and staking rewards to fund privacy-centric initiatives.
Namada aims to enhance privacy across the blockchain ecosystem, offering a solution that seamlessly integrates privacy with usability, making it accessible for both developers and end-users.
1. Install the Namada Keychain browser extension
To begin, you will need to Namada Keychain, which can be downloaded here:
Please note that currently the Namada Keychain is only supported on Chrome and Firefox.
If you already have the Namada Keychain installed, skip ahead to: How to stake
Example of the Namada Keychain webpage.
Next, set up your wallet by either creating a new wallet via a 12 or 24-word phrase from the Namada Keychain, or connect via Ledger which will require having already installed the Namada app from Ledger Live.
If you are creating a new wallet from the Namada Keychain directly, please be sure to store your 12 or 24-word phrase securely.
You will be prompted to enter some random words from your seed phrase to ensure you wrote it down correctly. Next, you will be prompted to set a password for your Namada Keychain.
Your seed phrase cannot be recovered if lost. Please be sure to write this down somewhere secure and never share it with anyone.
Anyone with access to your seed phrase will have access to your funds.
2. How to stake
Next, navigate to https://interface.namada.tududes.com/ to view the overview interface for Namada.
Example of the Namada overview interface.
You can search for Chorus One in the search bar or enter the Chorus One validator address to find the correct validator from the Staking interface.
tnam1qxsx2ezu89gx252kwwluqp7hadyp285tkczhaqg0Simply click on 'Stake' and you will be brought to the staking page.
Example of the Namada staking interface.
You may need to search for Chorus One again to find it from the list of available validators.
Example of staking 50 NAM to Chorus One.
Simply enter how much NAM you wish to stake with Chorus One and then complete the transaction in your Namada Keychain and sign the transaction.
You will be prompted to enter the password you set for your Namada Keychain wallet to finalize the transaction.
Once you have approved the transaction, you have successfully staked your NAM!
3. Increasing and managing your NAM stake
If you'd like to increase or manage your NAM stake, you can do so from the Namada Overview page or the Namada Staking page.
Enter the amount of NAM you would like to increase your stake by.
Follow the same steps as before to approve and finalize your staking transaction.
4. Unstaking your NAM
If you wish to unstake your NAM, this can be done from the Namada Staking page which will provide an overview of your staked balances and which validators you have delegated to.
Below is an example of how it may look for you.
Example of the Namada Staking interface.
To unstake, simply click on the 'Unstake' button and follow the prompts to approve and finalize the transaction, similar to the steps taken to stake your NAM originally.
When unstaking your NAM, please note that it will take 14 days to complete during which time your staked balance will not be earning staking rewards.
After this period has passed, your NAM will become liquid again and you can transact with it.
If you are an institutional investor looking to stake Namada (NAM) with Chorus One, please reach out to us via our staking request form.
About Chorus One
Chorus One is one of the largest institutional staking providers globally, operating infrastructure for over 60 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, including Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, Avalanche, Near, and others. Since 2018, we have been at the forefront of the PoS industry, offering easy-to-use, enterprise-grade staking solutions, conducting industry-leading research, and investing in innovative protocols through Chorus One Ventures. As an ISO 27001 certified provider, Chorus One also offers slashing and double-signing insurance to its institutional clients. For more information, visit chorus.one or follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Telegram.
The TON blockchain has emerged as a promising platform, but for institutions (wallets, exchanges, custodians etc.) looking to offer Toncoin staking to their customers, current options come with serious limitations. From high staking minimums to complex pool management, existing solutions fall short of meeting the needs of large-scale, flexible staking.
Recognizing this gap, we have launched TON Pool – a staking solution designed to meet the unique requirements of institutional players while making Toncoin staking simpler, more efficient, and scalable.
The TON ecosystem currently offers the Nominator Pool and Single Nominator contracts as staking options. However, both models restrict the number of delegators and impose high minimum stake requirements, which limits accessibility for larger institutions that manage staking services for numerous clients. These limitations force institutions to distribute stakes manually across multiple pools, adding operational complexity and increasing transaction fees, while impacting the final yield. (We covered the current TON staking mechanisms in detail here.)
With these pain points in mind, we saw an opportunity to create a tailored solution that eliminates these barriers and optimizes staking for our customers needs.
TON Pool addresses the shortcomings of current models by providing a flexible, high-efficiency staking solution that scales for larger institutions and various service providers. TON Pool aggregates Toncoin from an unlimited number of users into a single pool, offering seamless in-protocol distribution across multiple validators and removing the need for complex management. The result? A more streamlined, cost-effective, and yield-optimized staking experience for institutions and their customers.
TON Pool is designed for:
One of the most significant advantages of TON Pool is its streamlined staking flow. Here’s a comparison of how staking works with traditional models versus TON Pool:
With TON Pool, customers no longer need to juggle multiple addresses or pay per transaction. Instead, they delegate once, paying a single fee, while all technical complexities are managed seamlessly within the protocol.
“TON Pool is our answer to the challenges institutions face when staking on the TON blockchain. We built this solution to remove unnecessary steps, lower costs, and provide a scalable option for institutions that require a higher degree of flexibility. TON Pool makes staking more accessible and profitable, which we believe is essential to driving the TON ecosystem forward,” - Brian Fabian Crain, CEO, Chorus One.
For more details about TON Pool and to get exclusive discounted commission rates, reach out at staking@chorus.one, and sign up now to be among the first to experience streamlined, scalable Toncoin staking.
Chorus One is one of the largest institutional staking providers globally, operating infrastructure for over 60 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, including Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, Avalanche, Near, and others. Since 2018, we have been at the forefront of the PoS industry, offering easy-to-use, enterprise-grade staking solutions, conducting industry-leading research, and investing in innovative protocols through Chorus One Ventures. As an ISO 27001 certified provider, Chorus One also offers slashing and double-signing insurance to its institutional clients. For more information, visit chorus.one or follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Telegram.
Ethereum’s continuous drive for innovation has brought us through various transformative upgrades over the years. From the transition to Proof of Stake with The Merge to the improved fee structures of the London hard fork, Ethereum has proven time and again that it can adapt, scale, and evolve. Now, the Ethereum community is on the cusp of something even more significant: the Pectra upgrade—Ethereum’s most ambitious overhaul yet.
The Pectra upgrade, poised to begin its roll out in early 2025, promises to push the boundaries of Ethereum's scalability, security, and efficiency, each focusing on different aspects of Ethereum’s architecture. These enhancements will ensure Ethereum is equipped to handle the next phase of decentralized applications and economic activity.
This introductory article will give you a comprehensive overview of Pectra, explain the rationale behind splitting the upgrade into two phases, and provide a sneak peek into the key staking oriented Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that will shape the network’s future. In subsequent articles, we will dive deeper into each major EIP, exploring their implications for both developers and users.
The decision to split Pectra into two phases—Pectra A and Pectra B—was driven by the growing complexity of the planned upgrades. To manage this scope without introducing bugs or security risks, Ethereum developers opted for a phased approach, with Pectra A launching in early 2025 and Pectra B following later in the year. This approach allows for a smoother, more controlled rollout, giving developers the time to test and refine each change thoroughly.
Pectra A focuses on critical improvements such as reducing node data storage through Verkle Trees, which will lessen the load on validators, as well as introducing "smart account" features and other staking changes, like MAX-EB.
Pectra B, while not yet finalized, is expected to include PeerDAS, a feature aimed at enhancing Layer 2 scalability, along with changes to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Each phase of Pectra comes with its own set of EIPs, aimed at enhancing Ethereum’s performance, security, and developer experience. Some key staking-related EIPs confirmed for the first phase include:
For the full list of Pectra-related EIPs, visit this link.
The Pectra upgrade is more than just a technical enhancement—it represents the future of Ethereum. By addressing critical issues such as scalability, transaction costs, and decentralization, Pectra prepares the network to handle the demands of tomorrow’s decentralized applications.
In the following articles, we'll explore these EIPs in greater detail. From streamlining staking operations to the benefits of "MAX-EB," we’ll examine how these changes will impact the ecosystem, particularly in the realm of staking, and why they’re crucial to Ethereum's continued growth.
Stay tuned as we unpack each EIP and see how Pectra will redefine Ethereum for the years to come.
About Chorus One
Chorus One is one of the largest institutional staking providers globally, operating infrastructure for over 60 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, including Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, Avalanche, Near, and others. Since 2018, we have been at the forefront of the PoS industry, offering easy-to-use, enterprise-grade staking solutions, conducting industry-leading research, and investing in innovative protocols through Chorus One Ventures. As an ISO 27001 certified provider, Chorus One also offers slashing and double-signing insurance to its institutional clients. For more information, visit chorus.one or follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Telegram.
Follow this step-by-step guide to stake your Bitcoin (BTC) to the Babylon protocol via Chorus One’s Finality Provider. [using Staking Rewards]
Important to note:
It is recommended that you have Step 1 prepared ahead of time, to be ready for when BTC staking goes live.
Bitcoin (BTC) staking on Babylon will be activated once the BTC block height passes 857909. At this exact point, the “Stake Now” button will be activated in the Stake App and BTC staking transactions can be submitted.
For the Babylon’s Phase 1 mainnet, the Stake App will only support BTC staking via OKX Wallet. Install the OKX wallet browser extension and deposit your BTC before proceeding to the next step.
Note: When setting up and funding your wallet, it is important to:
(1) not use a hardware a wallet (such as Ledger), aside from Keystone QR code either directly or through other software wallets and
(2) not use a wallet that holds any Bitcoin Inscriptions.
(3) choose either Native Segwit or Taproot format
Navigate to the Chorus One’s BTC Staking Interface.
The direct link will be: https://www.stakingrewards.com/stake-app?input=bitcoin&type=babylon-staking&provider=chorus-one&locked=true
Connect your wallet. If you’re visiting the website for the first time, you will need to sign the signature request to get your wallet connected.
Input the amount of BTC you want to stake. During Babylon Phase 1, you have the option to stake between 0.005 and 0.05 BTC per transaction.
Select or switch the address format in your wallet.
Next you can choose to keep the current network fee or prioritize your delegation by increasing the transaction fee.
Reminder: The cap for phase 1 will fill very quickly (around 20 - 40 mins). The higher you set your fee, the higher the likelihood your BTC will be staked to the next block, before the cap is filled.
If your stake arrives after the cap is filled, then it will be in the “overflow” status and you will need to unbond and withdraw your BTC.
Finalize the staking process by clicking “Stake” and confirm the transaction in your wallet.
Congratulations you have successfully staked your BTC to Babylon via Chorus One’s Finality Provider. You can now track your staked position via the Staking Terminal.
You can unstake your BTC and withdraw it via the Staking Terminal. There are two steps required to withdraw your BTC,
Note: Stake will automatically unbond after 65 weeks.
To begin the process of unstaking your BTC follow the the steps below:
Visit the Staking Terminal to view your staking positions.
Connect the wallet you staked with previously.
Navigate to the “My Holdings” tab to view your staked positions.
Click on position details and select “Unbond”. Confirm the transaction in your wallet.
You can monitor your unbonded BTC via the “Unbonding” as shown below. Once your unbonding period of 7 days ends, you will be able to withdraw your BTC.
About Chorus One
Chorus One is a leading institutional staking provider, securing over $3 billion in assets across 60+ Proof-of-Stake networks. Since 2018, Chorus One has been a trusted partner for institutions, offering enterprise-grade solutions, industry-leading research, and investments in cutting-edge protocols.
Blockchain technology, particularly EVM-compatible blockchains, has radically transformed how we think about trust, value transfer, and decentralized applications (dApps). Ethereum, the frontrunner in this space, has been the playground for developers and innovators to build decentralized finance (DeFi), digital art (NFTs), and beyond. However, despite its revolutionary potential, Ethereum faces a fundamental challenge: transaction inefficiency.
Ethereum processes roughly 15-30 transactions per second (TPS). In contrast, payment networks like Visa handle over 1,700 TPS on average. This gap is not because Ethereum lacks innovation but because the very architecture that enables decentralization also imposes bottlenecks. As the world looks to blockchain for global-scale solutions, Ethereum’s single-threaded execution model, coupled consensus and execution, and storage inefficiencies mean that it struggles to meet the needs of millions of users. This inefficiency creates high fees, slow finality, and a system that often feels impractical for mainstream adoption.
So how do we build a blockchain that scales to millions while still retaining the core ethos of decentralization and trustlessness?
Enter Monad—a Layer 1 blockchain designed not to replace Ethereum but to optimize the very way EVM-compatible blockchains process transactions. Monad offers a paradigm shift, introducing radical but well-reasoned changes that solve the very inefficiencies that have stifled blockchain scalability.
Monad isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. It embraces the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and maintains compatibility with Ethereum’s rich ecosystem. But it takes a surgical approach to fixing Ethereum’s inefficiencies by optimizing the processes that slow it down.
At its core, Monad offers a solution by decoupling execution from consensus. Unlike Ethereum, where every validator must execute transactions in real-time to reach consensus, Monad rethinks the process. In Monad’s world, the network first agrees on the order of transactions and then proceeds to execute them independently. This seemingly simple separation is the key to unlocking a blockchain that can scale to 10,000 TPS with 1-second finality.
Monad prioritizes two things above all: decentralization and efficiency. Instead of sacrificing one for the other, Monad’s approach ensures that transaction throughput increases without compromising the trustless, decentralized nature of the network.
Now, let’s delve into the optimizations that make this vision a reality.
1. MonadBFT
Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism intertwines transaction validation and execution. But Monad takes inspiration from HotStuff to create MonadBFT, a consensus protocol that eliminates the need for execution during consensus.
By doing so, MonadBFT focuses solely on reaching agreement on transaction ordering. It achieves 1-second block times with single-slot finality, compared to Ethereum’s multi-minute finality, by reducing communication rounds and allowing consensus to happen faster. This streamlined approach lets validators come to agreement on a block’s content, even before they execute it.
2. Deferred Execution
In Ethereum, consensus and execution are linked in a way that forces validators to both agree on and execute transactions within the same block window, which can be inefficient. Deferred Execution in Monad separates the two, enabling the network to reach consensus first, and allowing transaction execution to take place afterward, in parallel.
What does this mean in practice? Instead of validators being forced to immediately execute transactions as they propose blocks, they can delay execution. The transactions are committed in the agreed order, but the execution happens alongside consensus for the next block. This approach vastly improves throughput by allowing the network to optimize execution time across multiple blocks.
3. Parallel execution and Superscalar pipelining
Monad implements optimistic parallel execution, where transactions are processed in parallel across multiple cores but committed in their original order, maintaining the same deterministic outcomes as Ethereum. While this boosts throughput, it can lead to state conflicts when transactions depend on each other. In such cases, Monad re-executes conflicting transactions to ensure correctness.
To further enhance efficiency, Monad introduces superscalar pipelining. This technique divides the transaction processing into multiple stages (e.g., signature verification, state access) and processes these stages in parallel, similar to how modern CPUs work. By overlapping different stages of transaction execution, Monad maximizes resource utilization, reducing delays and increasing throughput, all while preserving the linear ordering of transactions.
A simple diagram to illustrate superscalar pipelining:
4. MonadDb
State storage is a lesser-known bottleneck in Ethereum. The Merkle Patricia Trie (MPT) structure that Ethereum uses is embedded into key-value databases like LevelDB, which weren’t designed for blockchain workloads. Monad solves this inefficiency by designing MonadDb, a storage solution that natively implements the Patricia Trie in both on-disk and in-memory formats.
Additionally, MonadDb uses asynchronous I/O to avoid the blocking nature of traditional storage operations. This means that even if one transaction is waiting for state to be loaded from disk, the system can continue processing other transactions, thereby optimizing overall performance.
While Monad’s optimizations are powerful, they are not without challenges.
Despite these challenges, the benefits far outweigh the potential drawbacks. Let’s look at the results Monad’s innovations deliver.
Thanks to these four key optimizations, Monad aims to achieve what few blockchains can:
Monad is still in development, but its ambitious roadmap is clear. The project’s public testnet is expected in the near future, allowing developers to integrate it into their Ethereum-compatible wallets and applications. This will be a crucial step in proving Monad’s ability to scale without sacrificing the core values of decentralization and trustlessness.
Monad’s team is focused on ensuring that its network remains easy to use for developers familiar with Ethereum. They’ve built Monad as a drop-in replacement for Ethereum, meaning developers can port their dApps with little to no changes. As more users and developers flock to the testnet, Monad aims to further refine its consensus, execution, and storage systems, solving the scalability trilemma in a way that balances decentralization, performance, and security.
Monad offers a bold new approach to solving blockchain’s biggest bottleneck: transaction inefficiency. By decoupling execution from consensus, enabling parallel execution, and optimizing storage with MonadDb, it delivers a blockchain that can handle 10,000 TPS with 1-second finality—all without sacrificing decentralization. As Monad continues to build and refine its technology, it stands as a potential blueprint for the future of blockchain scalability, offering a glimpse of what’s possible when we think beyond the limitations of today’s networks.
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Frequently asked Questions (source: docs.monad.xyz):
The Monad client is built with a modular software architecture, separating the tasks of consensus and execution between two software modules: the consensus client and execution client respectively. The consensus client is written in Rust which is a memory-safe language that allows for low-level optimizations. The execution client is written in C/C++, well-established and battle-tested languages for developing low-level system critical code.
The Monad network is a full stack solution for developers, allowing access to a highly composable ecosystem without compromising on real-time censorship resistance. While L2 solutions may offer one way to compress data stored on the base layer, the Monad blockchain is a scalable base layer for the EVM itself at its most fundamental layer. A highly-performant base layer gives application developers the best of both worlds, with a high degree of composability and real-time censorship resistance in the name of scalability.
Yes! The Monad blockchain is 100% EVM compatible at the bytecode level - meaning contracts from ETH mainnet, or other fully EVM compatible networks will work out-of-the-box without requiring any code changes.
Chorus One is one of the biggest institutional staking providers globally, operating infrastructure for 60+ Proof-of-Stake networks, including Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, Avalanche, and Near, amongst others. Since 2018, we have been at the forefront of the PoS industry and now offer easy enterprise-grade staking solutions, industry-leading research, and also invest in some of the most cutting-edge protocols through Chorus Ventures. We are a team of over 50 passionate individuals spread throughout the globe who believe in the transformative power of blockchain technology.
The rapid expansion of AI-driven applications and platforms in 2024 has revolutionized everything from email composition to the rise of virtual influencers. AI has permeated countless aspects of our daily lives, offering unprecedented convenience and capabilities. However, with this explosive growth comes an increasingly urgent question: How can we enjoy the benefits of AI without compromising our privacy? This concern extends beyond AI to other domains where sensitive data exchange is critical, such as healthcare, identity verification, and trading. While privacy is often viewed as an impediment to these use cases, Nillion posits that it can actually be an enabler. In this article, we'll delve into the current challenges surrounding private data exchange, how Nillion addresses these issues, and explore the potential it unlocks.
Privacy in blockchain technology is not a novel concept. Over the years, several protocols have emerged, offering solutions like private transactions and obfuscation of user identities. However, privacy extends far beyond financial transactions. It could be argued that privacy has the potential to unlock a multitude of non-financial use cases—if only we could compute on private data without compromising its confidentiality. Feeding private data into generative AI platforms or allowing them to train on user-generated content raises significant privacy concerns.
Every day, we unknowingly share fragments of our data through various channels. This data can be categorized into three broad types:
The publicly shared data has fueled the growth of social media and the internet, generating billions of dollars in economic value and creating jobs. Companies have capitalized on this data to improve algorithms and enhance targeted advertising, leading to a concentration of data within a few powerful entities, as evidenced by scandals like Cambridge Analytica. Users, often unaware of the implications, continue to feed these data monopolies, further entrenching their dominance. With the rise of AI wearables, the potential for privacy invasion only increases.
As awareness of the importance of privacy grows, it becomes clear that while people are generally comfortable with their data being used, they want its contents to remain confidential. This desire for privacy presents a significant challenge: how can we allow services to use data without revealing the underlying information? Traditional encryption methods require decryption before computation, which introduces security vulnerabilities and increases the risk of data misuse.
Another critical issue is the concentration of sensitive data. Ideally, high-value data should be decentralized to avoid central points of failure, but sharing data across multiple parties or nodes raises concerns about efficiency and consistent security standards.
This is where Nillion comes in. While blockchains have decentralized transactions, Nillion seeks to decentralize high-value data itself.
Nillion is a secure computation network designed to decentralize trust for high-value data. It addresses privacy challenges by leveraging Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs), particularly Multi-Party Computation (MPC). These PETs enable users to securely store high-value data on Nillion's peer-to-peer network of nodes and allow computations to be executed on the masked data itself. This approach eliminates the need to decrypt data prior to computation, thereby enhancing the security of sensitive information.
The Nillion network enables computations on hidden data, unlocking new possibilities across various sectors. Early adopters in the Nillion community are already building tools for private predictive AI, secure storage and compute solutions for healthcare, password management, and trading data. Developers can create applications and services that utilize PETs like MPC to perform blind computations on private user data without revealing it to the network or other users.
The Nillion Network operates through two interdependent layers:
When decentralized applications (dApps) or other blockchain networks require privacy-enhanced data (e.g., blind computations), they must pay in $NIL, the network's native token. The Coordination Layer's nodes manage the payments between the dApp and the Petnet, while infrastructure providers on the Petnet are rewarded in $NIL for securely storing data and performing computations.
The Coordination Layer functions as a Cosmos chain, with infrastructure providers staking $NIL to secure the network, just like in other Cosmos-based chains. This dual-layer architecture ensures that Nillion can scale effectively while maintaining robust security and privacy standards.
At the heart of Nillion's architecture is the concept of clustering. Each cluster consists of a variable number of nodes tailored to meet specific security, cost, and performance requirements. Unlike traditional blockchains, Nillion's compute network does not rely on a global shared state, allowing it to scale both vertically and horizontally. As demand for storage or compute power increases, clusters can scale up their infrastructure or new clusters of nodes can be added.
Clusters can be specialized to handle different types of requests, such as provisioning large amounts of storage for secrets or utilizing specific hardware to accelerate particular computations. This flexibility enables the Nillion network to adapt to various use cases and workloads.
$NIL is the governance and staking token of the Nillion network, playing a crucial role in securing and managing the network. Its primary functions include:
Nillion's advanced data privacy capabilities open up a wide range of potential use cases, both within and beyond the crypto space:
Nillion is currently in the testnet phase, having recently completed its incentivized Genesis Sprint. The network is now running the Catalyst Convergence phase, which aims to seamlessly integrate the Petnet with the Coordination Layer. Nillion also recently announced its partnership with the leading Layer 2 Arbitrum. The tie-up will enable apps on Nillion to tap into Ethereum’s security for settlement and bring Nillion’s privacy-preserving data processing and storage to Arbitrum dapps.
Staking $NIL with Chorus One
Chorus One is actively collaborating with Nillion and will support $NIL staking when the network launches its mainnet. For those interested in learning more or participating in the network, reach out to us for further information.
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There are many aspects to validator performance on Solana, and different metrics are important to different people. For users of the Solana network, throughput (transactions per second) and latency (how quickly a transaction lands) are key metrics. In this article we’ll dive into two factors that affect those: skip rate and block size. We’ll explain how Chorus One is able to outperform both network average and the superminority on these metrics. If all validators performed as well as Chorus One on these metrics, Solana would be able to process 11.4% more transactions per second.
As a Solana user, when you submit a transaction, you want it to be included in the chain as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible. When the chain can process only a limited amount of transactions per second, that means that only users who are willing to pay high priority fees can get their transaction included. When the chain can process more transactions per second, transaction processing capacity becomes less scarce, and transaction fees go down. Solana’s throughput is determined by the validators that make up the network, so for good network performance, it is important to delegate to a validator that performs well.
For this article we look at the month of July 2024. All metrics are reported over the period from midnight July 1st until midnight August 1st in the UTC time zone. (Slot 274965076 until 280826904, for those who want to reproduce our findings.)
In this article we contrast Chorus One against two groups of validators: the entire network (including Chorus One), and the superminority. The superminority is the smallest set of validators that together control more than one third of the stake. We use the superminority from epoch 650, the final epoch in July. It consists of the top 19 validators by stake.
In the Solana network, validators periodically have a duty to produce blocks. Before the start of the epoch, the protocol sets the leader schedule, which determines when every validator has to produce a block. Validators with more stake get assigned more blocks to produce.
If all goes well, when a validator’s turn comes to be the leader, the validator produces a block. The chain grows by one block, and users’ transactions get included. When things don’t go well, the leader fails to produce a block, or the block may not be accepted by the other validators. When the leader fails to extend the chain, this is called a skip, and the fraction of blocks skipped out of blocks assigned in some period of time is called the skip rate. Skips are bad for users of the network, because during a skip, no transactions get processed. Skips lower the throughput of the chain, and delay when transactions get processed. A lower skip rate is therefore better.
A validator can skip for multiple reasons. Of course a validator that is offline will be unable to produce a block, but even when it is online and produces a block, that can still result in a skip. For example, the validator could have been slightly late, and the network has already moved on, assuming the validator skipped its duty. Many of the factors that affect skip rate are directly or indirectly under the validator’s control, but some amount of skipping is inevitable in a decentralized network. During times of high activity, skip rate is generally higher network-wide than during quiet periods. Therefore, the skip rate is not meaningful in isolation, but comparing skip rate between validators is one way to judge their performance.
Over July 2024, Chorus One achieved a skip rate of 2.03%, while the network-wide skip rate was 5.19%. This means that average Solana validators fail to produce their blocks more than 2.5 times as often as Chorus One.
Maybe network average is not a fair comparison though? It may be the case that a few bad validators are pulling up the average. So let’s look at the superminority, the top validators by stake. This relatively small set of validators has the responsibility to produce one third of the blocks, so its influence on the chain’s throughput is large. Over July 2024, the superminority together achieved a skip rate of 5.68%, which is even worse than network average. Superminority validators fail to produce their blocks almost 3× as often as Chorus One.
The Solana network is effectively leaving 3.3% of its blocks on the table by keeping stake delegated to validators with high skip rates.
Aside from skip rate, a major factor for throughput is the number of transactions that every block contains. When blocks can fit more transactions, the throughput of the chain goes up. When validators are able to build larger blocks, fewer user transactions have to be postponed to the next block, so latency goes down. Furthermore, more capacity means lower transaction costs.
Over July 2024, blocks produced by Chorus One contained on average 1696.2 transactions. (This includes vote transactions that contribute to Solana’s consensus mechanism.) The network-wide average over this period was a mere 1573.3 per block. This means that Chorus One includes 7.8% more transactions per block than average validators.
Again, let’s compare this to the validators with the greatest responsibility and disproportionate impact on chain-wide throughput: the superminority. Here we see that with 1640.6 transactions per block, the superminority does outperform the network average, but nonetheless Chorus One outperforms the superminority by 3.4%.
This means that the Solana network is effectively leaving a 7.8% throughput boost on the table, by keeping stake delegated to low-performing validators. This number is only for produced blocks, we don’t count skips as zero transactions per block. This means that the 7.8% boost would come on top of the 3.3% skip rate boost. Combined, this means that Chorus One achieves 11.4% more transactions per second than average validators.
Why is Chorus One able to process 11.4% more transactions per second than other validators? As is often the case with performance optimization, there is no single trick, but if you stack enough small optimizations, the combined result can be substantial. A few of the techniques we use:
In this article we highlighted two key Solana performance metrics that matter for users of the network: skip rate and block size. Lower skip rates and larger block sizes mean that users can get their transactions included faster and for a lower fee. These two metrics contribute to how many transactions per second Solana can process. Through multiple optimizations and operational practices, Chorus One achieves 11.4% more transactions per second than the network average. If all delegators would delegate to validators who perform as well as Chorus One, Solana would be able to process 11.4% more transactions per second.
About Chorus One
Chorus One is a leading institutional staking provider, securing over $3 billion in assets across 60+ Proof-of-Stake networks. Since 2018, Chorus One has been a trusted partner for institutions, offering enterprise-grade solutions, industry-leading research, and investments in cutting-edge protocols.
