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. 3 months ago we submitted the proposal to build Lido for Solana. The proposal received support from an overwhelming majority of LDO holders.
Over the last 3 months, we have made rapid progress behind the scenes. This is the story of our journey in building the liquid staking solution for the fastest blockchain in the world
‘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 their 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
On the 30th of April, 2021, Chorus One submitted a development proposal to the Lido DAO as a snapshot vote. The proposal was to build a Lido-operated liquid staking protocol for the Solana blockchain
The proposal was put to vote on the 6th of May and every LDO holder was invited to participate. The proposal received overwhelming support. 79 LDO holders holding 96.85m LDO voted exclusively in favor of the proposal.
The proposed design is centered around a liquid staking token, called stSOL, that will accrue staking rewards and represent staking positions with Lido validators on Solana.
medium.com
The stake deposited to the Lido contract on Solana will be distributed to these validators following a logic similar to the Lido Ethereum liquid staking solution. Lido on Solana will have a fee mechanism similar to that on Ethereum which allows splitting of fees between node operators and the Lido treasury (e.g. to be used for the insurance fund). Lido node operators, as well as parameters such as the fee, will be controlled via the governance of LDO holders on Ethereum. Additionally, in the initial version, governance decisions will be carried out via a Multisig controlled by Lido stakeholders on Solana.
We started building Lido for Solana in April 2021. Towards the end of June, we made the codebase audit-ready and we got it audited by Bramah Systems. We have now made the source code public for the whole world to review. In line with the design, we are performing a Multisig ceremony with 7 participants on the Solana testnet. Soon we will be announcing a bug bounty on Lido for Solana.
Lido’s first design was inspired by the Stake Pool program in the Solana Program Library (SPL). In fact, our first version wrapped over the SPL stake pool. However, over time we swapped out the Stake Pool program for a different approach. The end result is a Lido program — similar to the Stake Pool program — but with key differences.
#2 — By doing so all validators get the same fee percentage, which may be lower than that of the node they operate publicly, and by making it 100% commission, we encourage delegations to Lido.
After extensive in-house testing, we commissioned an audit from Bramah Systems. We addressed all issues identified during the audit and re-enforced the security of the Solana program. However, in order to hold Lido to the highest security standards, we are looking for an additional audit.
In a nutshell, the audit covered the following aspects
In order to trust any program with your funds, two things need to be true:
A prerequisite for these is having access to the source code. Therefore, we have made our codebase public for everyone to view. Anyone can visit the Lido for Solana repository, where we have published the source code under the GPL V3 license — https://github.com/ChorusOne/solido
github.com
The documentation for the project can be found here.
To make our project even more robust, we are going to announce a bug bounty for developers to test the project for exploits.
We will be announcing the exact scope, prioritized vulnerabilities, and rewards categorized by threat level on our web page and on Twitter in the coming weeks.
We decided on using multisig governance for the Lido program. Before we get to the details of our Multisig program, let us see why we need it in the first place.
Programs on Solana can be upgraded unless upgrades are explicitly disabled, and this gives the upgrade authority (the address that can sign upgrades) a lot of power. After all, it could upload a new version of the Lido program that withdraws all Lido funds into some address and runs away with the funds. On the other hand, if we don’t allow the program to be upgraded at all, and then if it turns out to contain a critical bug, we can’t fix it. A multisig is a good middle ground, where no single entity can take control over the programs and their funds, but we can still enable upgrades.
Multisig Programs/addresses require multiple signatures to approve a transaction. These are smart contracts that enable multiple signers to review an action on the blockchain before it is executed. This allows for decentralized governance. Chorus One used the Serum Multisig program to introduce decentralization in Lido for Solana. This multisig has N=7 participants and requires at least M=4 of them to sign for a transaction to be approved.
The complete multisig ceremony will be covered in a later post dedicated to just that.
It is important to note that the role of the multisig is not to make independent decisions regarding Lido for Solana, but only to execute decisions made by the Lido DAO. The 7 parties that comprise the multisig are
Node operators are crucial to the success of this project. Evaluating and onboarding a responsible node operator is an important step. Shortly after the Lido DAO was initiated, the Lido Node Operator Subgovernance Group (LNOSG) was formed. This group was tasked to onboard and represent node operators in the DAO structure.
With the announcement of a proposal for Lido for Solana, we also announced the onboarding of operators for it. Any node operator that wants to apply could do so by filling up a form.
The frontend for interacting with Lido for Solana (currently pointing to Devnet) is here. We have integrated 5 Solana wallets with the frontend — Phantom, Solflare, Ledger, Solong, and Sollet.
Apart from that, we are exploring integrations with the following DeFi applications to utilize stSOL’s liquidity.
Any projects that want to reach out for integration can do so by sending us an email at support@chorus.one
Going ahead we are looking for another audit of our code. That coupled with the results of bug bounty will put us on the path to the mainnet launch. Stay tuned for the latest announcements at https://twitter.com/ChorusOne
Our content is intended to be used and must be used for educational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, financial or investment advice and should not be construed or relied on as such. The information is general in nature and has not taken into account your personal financial position or objectives. Before making any commitment of financial nature you should seek advice from a qualified and registered financial or investment adviser. Chorus One does not recommend that any cryptocurrency should be bought, sold, or held by you. Any reference to past or potential performance is not, and should not be construed as, a recommendation or as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit. Always remember to do your own research.
Chorus One is offering staking services and building protocols and tools to advance the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Newsletter: https://substack.chorusone.com
Helium network, coined ‘The People’s Network’’ is taking real-world adoption of cryptocurrencies to new heights. Helium’s native cryptocurrency (HNT) is used to incentivise individuals around the world to provide coverage on a global peer-to-peer wireless network. This is done using a Helium compatible hotspot, which to date provides coverage for low-power IoT devices.
Traditional networks such as WiFi do not suit IoT devices well because of their lower range compared to other types of networks such as LoRaWaN. To solve this problem, Helium pioneered LongFi, which represents a mixture of LoRaWaN and blockchain technology. In the past, there were not enough incentives for participants to operate LoRaWaN hotspots resulting in higher costs for companies using IoT devices. With the introduction of LongFi and using HNT to reward participants to grow the decentralised network, IoT companies now have a cheaper alternative to use. Helium has already secured multiple partnerships with IoT companies, such as Salesforce, Lime, Airly, Nobel Systems, and more.
Previously on Helium, hotspots used to not only transmit data to IoT devices, but also play a role in the consensus of valid transactions. In recent times, Helium has experienced immense growth, which has impacted network performance whilst hotspots were involved in consensus. As 86,540 Helium-compatible hotspots have been set-up around the world (at 39% MoM growth), it has been harder for hotspots to secure the network. This is because Helium-compatible hotspots had built-in hardware specifications that limited the number of hotspots that could take part in consensus per epoch and the addresses of hotspots were not static, making it harder to reconnect if a block producer (hotspot) crashed during consensus. Low powered hardware (hotspots) using consumer-grade (personal) internet was a risk to Helium network and exposed to attacks such as DoS. Not only was network security at risk but incentives to secure the network in consensus also decreased as more hotspots joined the network (because new hotspots diluted consensus rewards from other hotspots).
For these reasons, Helium governance proposed in HIP-25 to introduce validators that use high-end servers and enterprise-grade internet with specialised experience in securing networks to help improve block performance and alleviate the consensus pressure from hotspots. The governance proposal passed and validators are now live on Helium network as of July 8th. There are now 1802 validators online on Helium network as of time of writing, translating to 19.96% of the whole network (HNT) being staked (18.02m).
We recently released research into the updated staking economics of Helium and how it improves the utility of HNT. Introducing validators into Helium network importantly assists network performance and block propagation and results in reliable returns for stakers.
We are excited that Helium governance has voted on introducing validators into the Helium network ecosystem and we have every intention to contribute to the network’s long-term success by ensuring the security of it.
Helium’s network is unique in that delegations are not currently possible. For this reason, we support Helium network with our NaaS offering. For information on pricing, please contact whitelabel@chorus.one. To read about the benefits of our NaaS service for those interested in staking HNT, please visit: https://chorus.one/products/whitelabel-staking/
Epoch: An epoch in Helium is 30 blocks. A block occurs roughly every 60 seconds. Thus, each epoch is lasting around 30 minutes. Staking rewards are distributed at the end of each epoch.
Minimum Bond: 10,000 HNT
Helium APR (as of 14/07/2021): ~11%
Chorus Commission: Contact whitelabel@chorus.one for pricing of HNT NaaS offering
Withdrawal Delay: After withdrawing, your staked funds will only become accessible after a 5-month cooldown period has passed.
Slashing: Slashing is not currently possible on Helium.
Partial Staking: Partial staking of HNT is not possible with Chorus One as we are operating a non-custodial staking service.
Overstaking: Overstaking on Helium does not earn additional rewards (i.e. a node with 15,000 HNT staked and a node with 10,000 HNT staked earns the same rewards). To earn more rewards, HNT holders need to launch multiple nodes with 10,000 HNT each.
Injective is a decentralised exchange (DEX) that facilitates permissionless cross-chain derivative trading.
Since DeFi summer in 2020, there has been an explosion of innovation in the decentralised exchange space. Automated market makers (AMMs) that use mathematical formulas and liquidity pools to calculate token prices instead of order books, have become the standard for swapping tokens on decentralised exchanges. AMMs are practical and accessible, no KYC is required of users and anyone can create pools of assets to be traded against. However, AMMs have been a victim of their own success. As popularity of AMMs has risen, so too have issues that users experience when interacting with them (such as high gas fees and front-running). AMMs are also limited when it comes to interoperability and only spot trading can be done using AMMs. Injective solves the problems suffered by AMMs by creating an interoperable order-book based decentralised exchange that acts as a layer-2 sidechain built using Tendermint-based consensus.
Injective has EVM-compatibility built on top of it’s Cosmos-SDK chain, meaning users experience a fast finality and interoperable network with the benefits of Ethereum tooling. Injective is using Tendermint consensus, which allows trades to be made cheaply and with 1 second finality. Injective is also IBC-compatible, meaning it is able to connect with hundreds of other networks that have been built with IBC compatibility to facilitate cross-chain interoperable trading. On top of this, Injective has its own Ethereum <> Injective bridge for users wanting to bridge their Ethereum ERC-20 tokens into and out of Injective. What is interesting here is that Injective is not limited to interoperability within Cosmos and Ethereum. Injective will also be interoperable with Polkadot in the near future via Moonbeam. It is not hard to envision a future where assets from multiple networks will be bridged onto Injective and be available to be traded with cheap fees and 1 second finality. Injective could potentially be the most interoperable decentralised order-book exchange seen-to-date.
The possibilities for a fast and interoperable order-book decentralised exchange are limitless. Anyone in Injective can also propose an arbitrary derivative market for INJ token holders to vote on. A scalable, interoperable, innovative and community-driven DEX that gives users permissionless access to any derivatives market in the world and is exactly the type of use case that crypto is made for. We are excited to announce our support for Injective and look forward to facilitating the network’s long-term success.
Injective uses the standard DPoS staking mechanism found in the Cosmos-SDK. Users can delegate their INJ tokens to Chorus One to receive a share of rewards generated by the network.
Validating Rights: The weight of validators such as Chorus One is determined by the amount of staking tokens (INJ) bonded as collateral.
INJ Inflation: 7%
Staking Reward Rate: Rewards from staking INJ will vary depending on the inflation and total amount of tokens that are staked at a given time. Learn more about the details of staking reward rates for chains built using Cosmos SDK here.
Chorus Commission: 7.5%
Withdrawal Delay: After withdrawing, your staked funds will only become accessible after the unbonding period (1 day) has passed. It takes a further 7 days withdraw INJ back to Ethereum.
Slashing: You can get slashed (loss funds) in case the validator you are delegated to commits an offense. Make sure to do due diligence to minimize this risk. Offences include double-signing (5% slashing penalty for delegators) and downtime (no slashing penalty, validator is ‘jailed’ and delegators miss out on staking rewards for minimum 2 hours).
Re-Staking: You need to withdraw rewards and re-stake them with some frequency if you want to make use of compounding returns.
Minimum delegation: There is no minimum delegation.
Stake your INJ: https://staking.injective.network/validators
Learn to delegate: Equinox Staking Guide
Wallets: Metamask
Block Explorer: https://explorer.injective.network/
Chorus One Validator Address: injvaloper14yeq3lkajldaggj28hmq8xng9xux7x5g46hezv
Today, we are excited to announce our staking partnership with Zero Knowledge Validator (ZKV), a collective of blockchain entrepreneurs, researchers, and developers focused on advancing the adoption of privacy and zero-knowledge technologies across multiple blockchain ecosystems.
Chorus One will provide node infrastructure to enable the Zero Knowledge Validator team to focus on privacy-focused initiatives and to participate in network governance representing their community and mandate. We will initially operate the Zero Knowledge Validators on Cosmos and Osmosis, with other networks to follow in the future. By delegating to the Zero Knowledge Validator nodes, ATOM and OSMO holders can support ZKV’s mission while ensuring their tokens are staked with the industry-leading reliable, secure, and diversified node infrastructures that Chorus One has built over the past three years.
The ZKV team, led by Anna Rose and Will Harborne, is active on the forefront of privacy research and development in the Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, NEAR, and Mina blockchain ecosystems. Anna, who is hosting one of the most esteemed crypto podcasts (Zero Knowledge Podcast), is a pillar in the community and has provided a platform for privacy-focused researchers and builders to come together through a series of high-quality events such as the Zero Knowledge Summit, hackathons, online webinars, and more. Will, co-founder of the zk-STARK-based decentralized exchange Deversifi, has a vast network and experience in building scalable, privacy-preserving applications. Together with their collaborators and team of researchers and developers, ZKV provides invaluable help to projects and entrepreneurs to develop and grow their privacy-focused applications.
We are thrilled to be able to provide our services and work closely with ZKV. We expect this collaboration to increase our own knowledge and involvement in the promising field of privacy-preserving technologies and are looking forward to helping the ecosystems we are a part of tap into the resources and support provided by the ZKV team.
If you are interested in learning more, join the upcoming ZKV online event this Wednesday (June 30) focusing on privacy in the Cosmos ecosystem, which will also feature our CCO Felix Lutsch during the panel discussion. Register here: https://hopin.com/events/privacy-in-cosmos
Our mission is to help stakeholders participate and shape the decentralized networks they are a part of. Aside from accepting delegations on our own public nodes and building protocols to advance the staking ecosystem, we are also providing infrastructure services to stakeholders seeking to participate in staking and network governance themselves. To learn more about how we assist our partners that include institutions and companies like Zero Knowledge Validator in their exploration and participation in the staking ecosystem, visit our whitelabel node product offering at: https://chorus.one/products/whitelabel-staking
Chorus One is offering staking services and building tools that advance the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Newsletter: https://substack.chorusone.com
Zero Knowledge Validator champions privacy and zero-knowledge technology across the blockchain ecosystem through various initiatives such as research, content, and events.
Website: https://zkvalidator.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZKValidator
We are pleased to announce that we have onboarded Osmosis, a heterogeneous, interoperable automated market maker protocol built on the Cosmos SDK that gives users and LPs flexibility and customisation never before seen in existing AMMs.
Osmosis is governance-first, it places emphasis on governance having a maximum level of customisation on protocol parameters so it can keep the protocol competitive in the long-run.
Osmosis is likely to introduce a new wave of innovation and creativity for AMMs as participants have the accessibility and flexibility to customise all aspects of an AMM. LPs can select their time horizons for providing liquidity, third-parties can incentivise pools ad-hoc, governance can distribute OSMO rewards where they deem fit, pool creators can play with mathematical expressions (curves) for lower-slippage swapping and users can swap assets cross-chain using the Interblockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, whose usage in the Cosmos ecosystem has been kickstarted following the chain’s launch this weekend:
Osmosis is airdropping a portion of OSMO to those who were holding ATOM when the screenshot was taken for the quadratic fairdrop. You can see if you are eligible here. Without doing anything, holders of $ATOM taken on the day of the blockchain screenshot receive 20% of their allocated OSMO rewards. To achieve the other 80% of allocated rewards, 4 steps are required by $ATOM holders within the first two weeks, outlined below:
Further information about who can claim the airdrop and how to claim it can be found here and here
Osmosis uses the standard DPoS staking mechanism found in the Cosmos SDK. Users can delegate their OSMO tokens to Chorus One to receive a share of rewards generated by the network.
Epochs: Osmosis uses epochs to account for reward distribution. There is 1 epoch per day. Therefore 1 epoch is ~14440 blocks. Staking rewards are distributed at the end of each epoch.
Validating Rights: The weight of validators such as Chorus One is determined by the amount of staking tokens (OSMO) bonded as collateral.
OSMO Inflation: 300m OSMO in year one. 200m in year two. 166m in year 3. More here.
Staking Reward Rate: Rewards from staking OSMO will vary depending on newly minted and distributed to stakers and the total amount of tokens that are staked at a given time. Another unique aspect of Osmosis is that only 25% of inflation rewards go to stakers (as of genesis). As OSMO is highly inflationary, the expected APR for staking OSMO can be expected to range somewhere between 300–1,000% for the first year (this depends a lot on how OSMO holders are engaging with their tokens). At the time of writing, with around 5.6% of the supply staking (6m of 102m available OSMO tokens), OSMO stakers are receiving a ~3.5% rewards on their OSMO tokens a day!
Learn more about the details of staking reward rates for chains built using Cosmos SDK here.
Chorus Commission: 7.5%
Withdrawal Delay: After withdrawing, your staked funds will only become accessible after the unbonding period (28 days) has passed.
Slashing: You can get slashed (loss funds) in case the validator you are delegated to commits an offense. Make sure to do due diligence to minimize this risk. Offences include double-signing (5% slashing penalty for delegators) and downtime (no slashing penalty, validator is ‘jailed’ and delegators miss out on staking rewards for minimum 2 hours).
Re-Staking: You need to withdraw rewards and re-stake them with some frequency if you want to make use of compounding returns.
Minimum delegation: There is no minimum delegation.
osmovaloper15urq2dtp9qce4fyc85m6upwm9xul3049wh9czc
Learn more: https://chorus.one/networks/osmosis
Wallets: Keplr
Block Explorers: Mintscan
Staking: Keplr — Once Keplr is installed, find ‘Chorus One’ on this page, click ‘manage’, put in the amount of $OSMO you would like to delegate to Chorus and then click ‘ delegate’.
Today we are pleased to announce our support for staking on Persistence, a network that is boldly attempting to create an interoperable marketplace for institutional asset transfer. Persistence is essentially re-creating accessibility for institutional liquidity and retail participation. The first product Persistence built was Comdex, a blockchain-based marketplace for trade finance and commodities. Using smart contracts, Persistence was able to standardise and bring immediate liquidity to the trading of commodities in Singapore. Since then, Persistence has built multiple products. One such product is a DeFi protocol known as pLend, where commodities companies can use their real-world assets (with terms in smart contracts) as collateral to borrow stablecoins supplied by crypto-native users. Other products Persistence has built include Audit.One, a validator that runs a node on multiple networks (including many that Chorus is also active on, e.g. Cosmos, Terra, NEAR, SKALE, and Celo) and pStake, a liquid staking protocol aiming to unlock liquidity of locked staking tokens in the Cosmos ecosystem.
Overall, Chorus and Persistence have a deep understanding of the intricacies of many networks and will be able to share that knowledge with each other to improve upon the security of Persistence’s own network. Not only that, Chorus will also be able to share its own liquid staking experience with Persistence to assist them building out liquid staking protocols on networks we both support.
We are yet to see exactly how real-world finance, DeFi, and staking will coalesce in the future. Running a node on Persistence allows us to contribute to a network that actively works on experimenting with the possibilities of this rich intersection within the Cosmos ecosystem. We are pleased to have the opportunity to secure a network that is building in areas that greatly align with Chorus.
Felix Lutsch, CCO of Chorus One
Chorus One is one of the most distinguished validators in the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem and has been at the forefront of innovation within this domain.
Meher (Co-Founder of Chorus One) has been a guiding force in my Crypto journey and now we are honoured to have Chorus One as a Validator on Persistence.
Persistence and Chorus One have a lot of synergies including on the soon to be launched liquid staking app — pStake Finance — by Persistence.
Tushar Aggarwal, CEO and Co-Founder of Persistence
Persistence.one is built using Cosmos SDK. Users can delegate their XPRT to Chorus One using a wallet, such as Keplr.
Validating Rights: The weight of validators is determined by the amount of staking tokens (XPRT) bonded as collateral.
XPRT Inflation: 35%
Reward Rate: Rewards from staking XPRT will vary depending on the inflation and total amount of tokens that are staked at a given time. Learn more about the details of staking reward rates for chains built using Cosmos SDK here.
Chorus Commission: 8%
Withdrawal Delay: After withdrawing, your staked funds will only become accessible after the unbonding period (usually 21 days) has passed.
Slashing: You can get slashed (loss funds) in case the validator you are delegated to commits an offense. Make sure to do due diligence to minimize this risk.
Re-Staking: You need to withdraw rewards and re-stake them with some frequency if you want to make use of compounding returns.
Persistence Staking FAQ: https://chorus.one/networks/persistence
Persistence Staking Guide: Persistence XPRT Staking Guide
Persistence Wallet: Keplr
Persistence Block Explorers: Persistence Block Explorer
Persistence 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.
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
