Today, we are excited to announce that Chorus One will join the Band Protocol ecosystem as a block validator and data provider.
Band Protocol is a data layer for Web 3.0 applications providing decentralized off-chain data to smart contracts through community-curated oracles. Band Protocol is backed by a strong network of stakeholders including Sequoia Capital, one of the top venture capital firms in the world, and the leading cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.
Band Protocol 2.0 introduces BandChain, a blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK to accommodate user-defined data requests and support data oracles across multiple blockchains. Dapps can use BandChain to query data from traditional APIs and send it to the smart contracts in a verifiable and secure manner.
We have seen how price oracles have the potential to cause chaos in crypto. Synthetix had a close call when their price oracle failed last year. Recent flash loan arbitrage trades have shown that automated market makers like Uniswap can be fragile when low liquidity is paired with leverage. Similarly Terra, where Chorus One also runs a validator, saw their stablecoin swap mechanism subjected to arbitrage attacks leading to an effort to continuously improve the robustness of their oracle implementation.
We believe Band Protocol has the capacity to help mitigate oracle risks through their novel incentivized model on BandChain that incorporates flexibility, customizability, and speed while also ensuring the security and integrity of the data.
“As a validator and data provider on Band Protocol we hope to bring additional decentralization and security to all blockchain applications that seek to safeguard against critical failures arising from dependency on any sole oracle solution”
- Brian Fabian Crain, CEO & Co-Founder of Chorus One
Here are some of the reasons why we chose to support Band Protocol:
As Chorus One, we strongly believe in the Internet of Blockchains vision, as espoused by Cosmos and others. We believe that there will be many blockchain networks that all interact with each other and that, over time, these chains will become increasingly specialized. These chains will use inter-blockchain communication, via protocols like the Inter-blockchain Protocol (IBC), to securely transact with each other.
One key problem for the Internet of Blockchains is that blockchains are unable to verify data that is created outside of their network. This is known as the “oracle” problem and technologies designed to solve this problem are called oracles. Financial contracts need market data, insurance contracts need IoT data, and gaming applications need provable randomness. The oracle problem is such a fundamental one, we believe there will be many competing solutions, all providing unique benefits and making various data feeds available.
So while we recently partnered with Chainlink, the current market leaders in this space, we also see Band Protocol playing a key role in the evolution of oracles in the Internet of Blockchains. In an IBC context, oracles can bridge the Internet of Blockchains to real world data. As the Band Protocol network is built using the Cosmos SDK, it can operate as a Cosmos “zone”. This means it will naturally fit into the world of chains communicating over the IBC protocol, bringing high-quality data feeds to other application-specific chains built using the Cosmos SDK.
We expect to see many applications choosing to partner with multiple oracle solutions to improve resilience, as per the recent bZx announcement, where bZx have decided to partner with both Chainlink and Band Protocol to improve their price feed oracles.
We will be available to answer any questions you might have on the Chorus One Telegram group at https://t.me/chorusone, where we will host an AMA with the Band team on the 16th of April at 5PM CET.
About Chorus One
Chorus One is operating validation infrastructure and staking services for Proof-of-Stake networks.
We will offer staking on BandChain when the network goes live in April. You will be able to support our work and earn staking rewards by delegating BAND to our node.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
About Band Protocol
Band Protocol is a decentralized oracle framework for Web3.0 applications. Band Protocol connects smart contracts with trusted off-chain information, provided through community-curated oracle data providers. Blockchains are enabled to connect to any web API with assured data integrity through dPoS economic incentives through one simple function call. Developers using Band Protocol will be able to easily build and manage off-chain oracles, reputation scores, identity management systems and much more.
To learn more about Band Protocol, please check out their website here: https://bandprotocol.com/
Telegram: https://t.me/bandprotocol
Medium: https://medium.com/bandprotocol
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BandProtocol
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on April 2, 2020.
We’re excited to unveil Anthem: a web application to track and manage your portfolio of Proof-of-Stake assets. Anthem supports staking on Celo, Cosmos, Oasis, Kava, and Terra.
Go to https://anthem.chorus.one now, connect your Ledger or any address on the supported networks and see your personal staking dashboard! 📈
The core motivation to build Anthem arose from our own needs as a staking provider:
Currently, most accounting and tax regimes require you to recognize revenues at the time received. When staking on Cosmos, this means that revenues occur every single block, or around 400,000 times a month! So far, there has been no public tool allowing you to see your historical staking rewards. Anthem changes that.
Anthem provides stakers with a consistent, personalized dashboard that allows them to track, manage, and optimize how their staking assets are utilized across many different networks.
The rest of this post will walk you through the current functionality of Anthem:
When visiting Anthem for the first time, you will be presented with the landing page. Press get started or scroll to the login options. Here you have two options:
Sign in with Ledger: Use this option to automatically see information for your Ledger account. When connecting your Ledger device you can also transfer and stake assets, as well as (on Celo) participate in governance.
Sign in with Address: Use this option to track balance and staking data for addresses on any supported network.
This is the core piece of Anthem. Here you can see your portfolio development, past transactions, as well as your current balance.
Anthem visualizes historical data on your total portfolio including the ability to filter staked and available tokens, as well as the rewards that you accrued while staking. Anthem also allows you to export a CSV file that you can use for tax reporting or analytics.
There’s a variety of ways to customize settings in Anthem. You can choose different fiat currencies to use as a base currency, and you can change the language in which Anthem is displayed. We currently support Chinese, English, German, Korean, and Spanish. There’s even an evil dark mode! 🌙
We’re always looking for feedback, so please don’t hesitate to contact us through our website or hit us up on Telegram.
We are excited to announce that Chorus One is joining Chainlink as a node operator. Starting today, our Chainlink node will assist in providing highly available and reliable data feeds to the crypto ecosystem.
The Chainlink team is providing a core piece of infrastructure for blockchain applications by allowing them to handle off-chain data. On their own, blockchains are unable to verify “real world” data that is created outside their native network. This creates a conundrum, as many blockchain use cases need to stay informed about external events to trigger the execution of smart contracts. For example, financial contracts need market data, insurance contracts need IoT data, and gaming applications need provable randomness.
Not only do smart contracts need off-chain connection, but they need that connection to be as secure as the underlying blockchain. Hence, there needs to be a way for external data to be fed into blockchains in a secure and reliable manner. This is widely referred to as the oracle problem, and Chainlink is leading the effort in making integrating off-chain data, such as price feeds, simple, yet secure for decentralized applications.
Chainlink relies on node operators providing streams of data to the network from external sources. These Chainlink-powered decentralized oracle networks are live on the Ethereum mainnet with additional plans to become blockchain agnostic over time. At the moment node operators are vetted by the Chainlink team to maintain Sybil resistance in the early stages of the network. A staking incentive model is in the works that will allow LINK holders to stake their tokens with trustworthy node operators. This will help create a permissionless, decentralized network focused on reliably providing accurate data to be consumed by blockchain applications.
We have valuable experience in working with networks that rely on price oracles. The Terra stablecoin protocol allows anyone to exchange their stablecoins with the network’s native staking token Luna through an automated market maker. The Terra community has implemented an incentivized, stake-based oracle protocol in which validators provide price data on-chain in frequent time intervals. While this approach may be suitable for some large applications and networks; it appears that a general, customizable solution that works across blockchains and applications will be more scalable, reliable, and ultimately trustworthy, if designed with the proper incentives.
Following Chainlink’s progress over the last couple of months, it is our belief that the protocol has a good chance of becoming the standard for providing off-chain data to blockchain applications. Our thesis is further supported by the transition of several major decentralized finance projects on Ethereum to the Chainlink network instead of running their own oracle implementations. Examples include Aave and Synthetix, which made this decision after their early price reference feed was exploited by a trader.
We are excited to join the Chainlink community to help make blockchain adoption for real-world applications a reality. We will be supporting the network with our infrastructure and knowledge of staking systems and look forward to publishing further content around Chainlink and the planned staking implementation in the future.
Chorus One is building validation and staking infrastructure for Proof-of-Stake networks.
We will offer staking for Chainlink when it goes live. You will be able to support our work and earn staking rewards by delegating LINK to our node.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that enables smart contracts to securely access off-chain data feeds, web APIs, and traditional bank payments. Chainlink is consistently selected as one of the top blockchain technologies by leading independent research firms such as Gartner. It is well known for providing highly secure and reliable oracles to great companies like Google, Oracle, SWIFT, and many other large enterprises, as well as many of the world’s best smart contract projects/teams such as Web3/Polkadot, Synthetix, Loopring, Kaleido, OpenLaw, Reserve, and many more.
Learn more by visiting the Chainlink website, Twitter or Reddit. If you’re a developer, visit the developer documentation or join the technical discussion on Discord.
We’re in the midst of a cambrian explosion of decentralized protocols. From peer-to-peer payments to non-state forms of money to decentralized organizational structures, blockchains are redefining human collaboration in the 21st century. But those new networks can’t rely on the enforcement of rules in the old, slow, fuzzy and nation-bound court system. Instead, they are embracing economic incentives and particularly the usage of cryptoassets as collateral.
At the forefront of this is Proof-of-Stake, which replaces the expensive mining process by using cryptoassets as collateral for enforcing consensus rules. In the last year, networks like Cosmos and Tezos have pushed Proof-of-Stake into the crypto mainstream. Today, we have ahead of us a wave of blockchain networks all launching based on the same design insight. To operate this infrastructure, a new industry of node operators has emerged. We went from theoretical protocols and academic papers to live networks with billions of dollars at stake. And even large exchanges like Coinbase and Binance are entering the fray and have begun offering staking to their customers.
But while it is clear that the Proof-of-Stake paradigm is upon us, it’s still very unclear how it will play out. When Satoshi created Bitcoin, he didn’t seem to have anticipated ASICs nor mining pools. Similarly, in the infinitely richer design space of Proof-of-Stake, we don’t know what the end state will be and what preconditions will lead to resilient, decentralized networks capable of sustaining censorship-resistance at scale.
One clear demand that is emerging is the ability to re-use and transfer staked collateral. If a user can borrow a stablecoin like Maker’s DAI against their interest-earning staked ATOMs, clearly those gain in value and utility. Similarly, the ability to transfer and sell tokens without going through an unbonding period has substantial value.
The centralized exchanges that have entered staking will easily be able to provide that and much more in their walled gardens. But in Proof-of-Stake, control over private keys means control over the consensus process. So can these networks sustain healthy communities and robust decentralization if token holders are driven to surrender custody to unlock additional capabilities and returns?
In the past six months, many approaches have been explored to unlock innovation around staked assets directly on-chain. These efforts can be subsumed under the term “ liquid staking”. One example of these efforts was built by Chorus One together with Sikka, when we implemented Delegation Vouchers as part of the Cosmos-SDK hackathon in Berlin. Since then, various other teams have risen to the challenge and came up with their own designs. Some examples include Everett, Stafi Protocol, Stake Capital DAO, and Staker DAO.
Today, we are proud to announce that we received support from the Interchain Foundation to form a working group and to produce a research report focused on approaches to liquid staking. The goal is to take a holistic look at the design space, evaluate the different approaches with respect to clear criteria and understand their impact on network security and sustainability. We will focus on aspects such as:
We will map out different paths for the future of Proof-of-Stake and hope to create a shared vision for how to ensure open innovation, sustainability and decentralization for Proof-of-Stake networks.
We’re inviting protocol designers, validators, token holders, and anyone else interested in working on this topic to join the working group and contribute to this crucial research and discussion. The publication of the final report is planned to happen by the end of April.
A core feature of the working group will be our bi-weekly community calls. Our first community call, which will serve as an introduction to the project, will take place January 15th at 5pm CET. During this call, you will be able to find out more about our plans and learn how to contribute. Sign up here to for the calendar invite to this first working group call.
In the meantime, you can find the Liquid Staking Working Group on Telegram and Github ( https://github.com/ChorusOne/liquid-staking), where we already began to gather relevant material. We want to thank the Interchain Foundation for realizing the importance of this topic and hope that our research will help inform stakeholders and improve Proof-of-Stake protocol design.
Your Chorus One Team
About Chorus One
Chorus One is operating validation infrastructure and staking services for Proof-of-Stake networks.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
About Interchain Foundation
The ICF is a Swiss foundation funding and pushing the frontiers of blockchain-related infrastructure.
Website: https://interchain.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/interchain_io
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on January 9, 2020.
The performance and security of a blockchain is determined by the nodes operating it. A conventional blockchain is limited by the transactional processing power of a single node in the network. To circumvent this limitation, most protocol designers come up with complex schemes to distribute work across a subset of nodes in the system. This is what we refer to as sharding. Sharding is a complex problem statement that requires well-thought out mechanisms to ensure safety and usability, especially with respect to composability of applications.
There is one team that stands out by taking a different approach to scaling a layer-1 blockchain network: Solana. Instead of trying to scale by adding more nodes, subsetting them across different blockchains, and then trying to economically link them together into one system, Solana is radically optimizing the performance of a single node on one chain (#NoSharding).
The results of this approach are astonishing: in a cluster with nodes running high-performance GPU-based validation hardware, Solana can achieve a throughput of tens of thousands of transactions per second on a single, composable, blockchain!
Sustaining this type of performance in a production environment relies on more than low-level optimization and high-end hardware. Node operators need to be able to continuously operate- even in adversarial settings-both to ensure the network stays performant, and to maximize their rewards for maintaining the blockchain.
One way to achieve this is to rely on network engineers to troubleshoot nodes in case they go down for whatever reason. This solution comes with a host of problems and is putting pressure on individuals. This makes it not well-suited for an environment seeking to be the base layer of a new financial system. Imagine getting a call at night and having to manually fix a machine that is handling large amounts of value, knowing that a mistake can become extremely costly, even catastrophic.
Another approach is to institute an automated failover system consisting of multiple nodes communicating and deciding internally which of them gets to sign blocks. Such a design comes with its own challenges, especially around ensuring that no blocks are accidentally double-signed, which would lead to large slashing penalties. So far only a very small group of teams have explored this design space, e.g. Certus One and Chorus One.
With support from the Solana team, Chorus One has dedicated resources to build and maintain software to provide high availability validation tailored to the Solana network: Solana StrongGate.
StrongGate allows validators on Solana to run redundant infrastructure with a focus on protecting against accidental double-signing. StrongGate works by using the Solana blockchain as a detection mechanism and a highly available, strongly consistent database as a resolution mechanism to determine which of the validator nodes gets to sign blocks.
Watch Chorus One’s Meher Roy present StrongGate at the first SolCon in Osaka, Japan for a detailed breakdown of the design and rationale:
We will soon share the repo and more information on how to use StrongGate for your Solana validator operation. We’d like to thank Solana for their support and we are looking forward to continuing to contribute our part to build and operate the web scale blockchain that the world deserves!
Chorus One is building validation and staking infrastructure for Proof-of-Stake networks.
We will offer staking on the Solana blockchain. You can support our work and earn staking rewards by delegating to our validator node.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Solana is a web-scale blockchain with speeds up to 50,000 tps powered by Proof of History.
Website: https://solana.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/solana
Telegram: https://t.me/solanaio
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on November 15, 2019.
When the Cosmos Network launched, we set our initial commission rate to 15%. At the time, that was around the median commission rate and we were able to attract many delegators.
Since then there has been significant downward pressure on commission rates. As a result, today our rate is no longer competitive.
To make sure we are giving our loyal delegators a great deal, we have decided to reduce the Chorus One fee on Cosmos.
Our new commission rate on the Cosmos Hub will be 7.5%!
We are convinced that with our reduced rates, we have one of the most compelling offerings on the Cosmos Hub:
We run a best in-class validator security architecture including automated failover, enterprise-grade key management utilizing HSMs, validation nodes distributed across continents, and external security audits. There are few who have invested as heavily in security and architecture as we have and none who give you as much insights to verify yourself. You can check out our validator architecture document here. If you are looking to minimize the risk for your ATOMs, staking with Chorus One is the way to go.
Sleep soundly knowing your ATOMs are protected.
We are the leading validator when it comes to producing high quality content and educational materials about Cosmos, Proof-of-Stake and the internet of blockchains. We help you learn about the network and are doing crucial work to help the Cosmos ecosystem grow and thrive.
Check out some examples of our work:
Stake with Chorus One and help grow the pie for everyone by building a vibrant and educated community.
We have partnered with Regen Network and estimated our carbon footprint. We are offsetting approximately 3x our estimation to ensure that Chorus One’s operations have a climate positive impact.
Our community voted to support the Rainforest Foundation. Learn more about how we are turning our validator climate positive. 🌴
With Proof-of-Stake we have a chance to build a new social and financial fabric leading to more abundance and opportunity for everyone.
By staking with the first climate-positive validator, you’re helping blockchains be a force for environmental sustainability and regeneration.
We are at the forefront of researching improvements to Proof-of-Stake and Cosmos. For example, we have been driving work around delegation vouchers and won the Berlin Cosmos Hackathon together with Sikka with our delegation voucher implementation. We think delegation vouchers could enable the Cosmos DeFi wave and unleash permissionless innovation for the internet of blockchains.
Help Cosmos evolve and innovate to become the foundation for the internet of blockchains.
We have been building a web application for the advanced crypto investor. It will allow you to perform all the basic actions such as staking, sending coins and voting in governance. But in addition, it will also have quality data and provide human-readable insights into the performance of your holdings. A first version is scheduled to launch this quarter! Stay tuned.
Stake with Chorus One and support better tools and user experiences for Proof-of-Stake and decentralized finance.
If interested, get in touch at hello@chorus.one, stop by our Telegram group, or join our recently formed Discord channel!
PS: We adjusted our commission rates today, but based on our maximum daily commission rate change of 2% it will take a bit under a week until we actually reach 7.5%.
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on August 7, 2019.
Today, we are proud to announce our joint effort with Regen Network to lay the groundwork for a sustainable Proof-of-Stake validation ecosystem. As the first step of this partnership, we estimated our carbon footprint and will offset it with support from the Regen Network team. To do this, will instantiate an agreement leveraging a pilot project with the Rainforest Foundation on the Regen Ledger (Regen’s public blockchain network).
Our focus on advancing Proof-of-Stake is largely driven by the desire to create a more sustainable, efficient, and scalable way of achieving consensus in a permissionless decentralized network. To illustrate the urgency: empirical analysis shows that the Bitcoin network’s range of yearly carbon emissions currently lies between those of nation-states Bolivia and Portugal ( MIT CEEPR 2018).
Proof-of-Work is the perfect example of an economic concept called negative externalities or external costs. A miner’s potential to turn a profit by spending resources on energy creates costs that society has to bear. We are positive that there are more scalable ways of creating secure, sybil-resistant, permissionless networks using cryptography, mechanism design, and cryptoassets as collateral.
We estimated our carbon footprint taking into account all of our node infrastructure in data centers and supporting infrastructure in the cloud, as well as other factors relating to the operation of our business, e.g. airline miles traveled. Our calculations yielded an estimated 72.69 tons of CO² since Chorus One started operating. Since our estimation is based on multiple assumptions and because we are committed to having a climate positive impact, we will offset an equivalent of 200 tons of CO², about three times as much as our estimation.
Currently, the Regen Network team is working with a few different ecological projects around the world. We carried out a poll to get our community’s feedback on which one of 3 pre-selected projects we should support to turn our validator operations carbon negative. The Rainforest Foundation and their efforts to save the Amazon rainforest got the most support with 42% of all votes. Learn more about this initiative here.
We aim to continue to collaborate with the Regen team, validators and other players in the ecosystem to reduce the impact operating distributed networks has on earth’s climate through estimations and working out how to best perform the offsetting using verifiable contractual agreements on the Regen Ledger.
We hope to inspire others to offset their emissions and plan to work out a proposal to allow the Cosmos validator ecosystem to become climate neutral, potentially utilizing the community fund. If you are a validator interested in offsetting your carbon emissions, please contact me (@FelixLts on Twitter and Telegram) and I will assist you with estimations and the overall process.
Cover photo by Jakub Gorajek on Unsplash.
Links:
Carbon Offset Pilot Program Survey: https://form.jotformeu.com/91782610629361
Chorus One Podcast Green Validator Episode
Chorus One Podcast Regen Network Episode
Regen Network: https://regen.network
Regen Network Community Telegram
Chorus One: https://chorus.one
Chorus One Community Telegram
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on July 22, 2019.
Today we’re excited to announce the launch of the Chorus One Podcast. This podcast hosted by our team members will focus on ideas, protocols, and projects that facilitate the creation of a permissionless, open financial system.
You can find the first three episodes, as well as future weekly episodes, on all major podcasting platforms: Libsyn, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Google Play, and Stitcher.
It’s no secret that researching and publishing content to educate, generate awareness, and to publicly participate in questions of network governance is the cornerstone of the Chorus One vision to foster “ a community of engaged token holders that work together to shape the future of decentralized networks “.
With the Chorus One Podcast, we are structuring this effort and aim to provide a consistent outlet that covers relevant topics and projects tangential to Chorus One on a weekly basis. This intersection involves staking, blockchain governance, interoperability, and decentralized finance in general.
We aim to experiment with different formats, so it won’t be a standard interview-only podcast. Some episodes will explain specific concepts, others will feature a discussion with stakeholders, e.g. around a relevant governance topic, and some will just be interviews with projects from the space. What you can be sure about is that there will at least be one of our hosts/team members ( Brian, Meher, Brendan, or Felix) and lots of pertinent, in-depth information on the emerging open financial system.
The first episode is an introduction to the podcast. It is structured as an intro to our company, the podcast, and hosts covering what currently excites us most about the crypto space.
The second episode is an interview with Alfonso Cevallos conducted by Felix. Alfonso is a researcher from the Web3 Foundation working on the Proof-of-Stake implementation that is going to be used in Polkadot (Nominated Proof-of-Stake).
The third episode is an interview in which Meher dives deep into the Terra stablecoin protocol with Nicholas Platias, Head of Research at Terra Money.
We’re looking forward to having you as a listener and releasing weekly episodes each Monday. Please join our Telegram if you have suggestions for who or what to feature on the podcast!
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on July 2, 2019.
