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
On March 17 2021, Anchor protocol went live.
The release of Anchor protocol unleashed a new era for Decentralised Finance (DeFi) on Terra blockchain. Anchor protocol targets 20% APY for depositors of UST (TerraUSD) by transferring staking rewards of liquid LUNA (bLuna) from borrowers to depositors using a liquidation mechanism that converts bLuna rewards into UST. The result of this, is a seamless user experience that non-native crypto users can easily navigate. Anchor protocol solves APR volatility demonstrated in competing DeFi lending protocols by ignoring a singular asset approach, where the amount of one asset that is able to be borrowed is directly related to the amount of an asset available in a pool for it (assets supplied by depositors). Before Anchor, depositors were exposed to high amounts of liquidity risk. If borrower demand for an asset exceeded what was being supplied by depositors, the asset might be being ‘utilised’ 100%, meaning there are no extra funds available to be borrowed and the full amount of someone’s deposit is being used, opening up the possibility of a bank run.
Anchor has instead chosen to focus on transferring borrower yield to depositors. This minimises liquidity risk as the principal amount that has been deposited by a user is always protected. The yield (APR) that a depositor can achieve in Anchor relies on borrower behaviour.
Liquid staking is the mechanism behind Anchor APY and why we at Chorus are so excited about the protocol. Before the release of Anchor, staked LUNA was not able to be utilised as collateral in DeFi protocols on Terra blockchain and had an unbonding period of 3 weeks. Concurrently with the release of Anchor, Lido DAO announced that they would be providing liquid derivatives of staked LUNA (known as bLuna) that would be used in the protocol. Chorus One is a proud partner of Lido DAO and we are one of 8 validators offering the service to users on Anchor to mint bLuna using LUNA. The newly minted bLuna allows users to earn rewards on their LUNA that is being staked by a white-listed validator whilst also gives the user the opportunity to transfer ownership of the bLuna or use it as collateral — liquid staking at its finest! Understanding the mechanism of bLuna is the key to understanding how depositors are able to earn 20% APY in Anchor.
Borrowers in Anchor use their liquid staking derivative (bLuna) to lock up as collateral in order to borrow TerraUSD (UST). Because the bLuna earns staking rewards and is being used as collateral by borrowers, Anchor protocol is able to liquidate the collateral’s rewards being earned on bLuna by borrowers into UST for depositors. Essentially, Anchor protocol passes on staking derivative cash-flows from borrowers, liquidates the cash-flows into UST and transfers the UST cash-flows onto depositors, to earn them the target yield (20% APY as of time of writing).
If you’re excited by all of this and want to get involved — read on to learn about how you can mint your first liquid staking derivative (bLuna) through Lido, use your newly minted bLuna as collateral to borrow TerraUSD ($UST), earn Anchor’s native governance tokens ($ANC) whilst your bLuna is ‘locked up’ as collateral during the loan and then earn a further stable yield on your newly borrowed $UST by depositing it back into the protocol. This is known as yield farming in DeFi.
Step 1
Make sure you have abided by the prerequisites and you have LUNA in your Terra Station wallet.
Step 2
Navigate to the Anchor webpage and click ‘Web-app’ at the top right
Step 3
Once you have entered into the web-app, you will be shown the ‘earn screen’. This screen shows the amount of interest you can earn on your UST deposit in the protocol, how much UST you have deposited from your wallet so far and your transaction history on Anchor. Right now, we only hold LUNA and not liquid Luna (bLuna). We need to bond our LUNA from the exchange to mint bLuna (a derivative that unlocks liquidity of our tokens earning staking rewards and can be transferred at any time) in order to use our LUNA as collateral to borrow. Navigate to the ‘bond’ tab and click on the tab.
Step 4
Once you have clicked on the bond tab, you will be able to choose the amount of LUNA that you would like to bond. To bond your LUNA, click ‘I want to bond’ field and enter in the number of LUNA you would like to lock-up to mint bLuna (derivative of your LUNA). When you have entered the amount of LUNA in the ‘I want to bond’ field, you will see the amount of bLuna you will receive in return. Once you are happy with the amount of LUNA you want to bond as bLuna, you can choose your validator. bLuna is minted by Lido DAO and Chorus is a proud partner of Lido. Lido DAO has the most trusted validators in the world issuing liquid staking derivatives. When you bond your LUNA as bLuna, you will have the option to choose 1 of 8 (currently) world-class validators, which will stake and earn your LUNA staking rewards whilst you get given a bLuna derivative (claim to your stake with the validator). Chorus One is available as an option to stake your LUNA. When choosing a validator, always be aware of the risks. When you have selected the amount of bLuna you want to mint, the price for each LUNA <> bLuna will be displayed — it should be a 1:1 swap and the tx fee will need to be paid for the swap in UST. When you are happy with the amount of bLuna you would like to mint and you have selected a validator to stake your assets to earn rewards, click ‘mint’.
Step 5
You will be taken to your terra station wallet to sign the transaction. Enter the password you created when you set-up the wallet.
Step 6
Once you have submitted your transaction, wait ~6 seconds (time it takes for a new block to be created on Terra blockchain).
Step 7
Once a new block has been created, you will receive a successful transaction message. You will be able to see the amount you bonded into a liquid staking derivative (bLuna), exchange rate for it (should be 1), your transaction hash and the transaction fee you paid to convert your LUNA into bLuna by bonding LUNA with a validator. If you would like, you are able to view your transaction on Terra explorer. Click on the ‘Tx Hash’.
Step 8
All details of your conversion of LUNA to bLuna is transparent on Terra blockchain and you can view it on Terra Finder — Terra’s explorer.
Step 9
Great! You have now minted bLuna and you are now able to borrow on Anchor protocol (using bLuna as collateral for your loan). Navigate back to the Anchor web-app where you were before and click ‘OK’’.
Step 10
You are now back in the bond tab where you started, navigate to the ‘borrow’ tab and click on the ‘borrow’ button.
Step 11
Now you are in the borrow tab, you are ready to provide the bLuna you just minted as collateral to obtain a loan in UST from Anchor Protocol (and earn ANC rewards for doing so, the governance token of Anchor). On this page you can see the amount of value you have borrowed (none so far), value of collateral you have provided (again nothing yet) and the ‘net APR’ — this is the annual percentage rate of what you earn for borrowing on Anchor — that’s right, you get paid to borrow! When borrowing on Anchor, you earn ANC rewards, the amount of ANC rewards you earn is based on the amount of UST you borrow, using your bLuna as collateral. But first, we need to provide collateral in order to borrow. Click on the ‘provide’ button.
Step 12
Put in the ‘deposit amount’ — the amount of bLuna that you would like to use as collateral. In this example, we will use 10 bLuna as collateral and the system will tell us the maximum amount of UST we can borrow against our Luna as collateral. You are not able to borrow more than 50% of your bLuna amount (denoted in $USD). For example, if you bond 10 bLuna and the value is $20 for each LUNA, your $USD amount of LUNA is $200 (10 * $20). You can only borrow up to $100 USD with your bLuna as collateral in this instance, meaning you can only take a loan out of maximum $100 UST in Anchor. You can see the new borrow limit automated (up to this 50% threshold) that you can take out from Anchor using your bLuna as collateral and the fee for your borrowing transaction. When you are happy with the amount of bLuna you would like to use as collateral, click the ‘proceed’ button.
Step 13
Sign the transaction. The same method as Step 6.
Step 14
Wait for your receipt (~6 seconds to wait for a new block to be created in Terra).
Step 15
Great success! The transaction should have completed. You can see the amount you have collaterised, your new loan-to-value (amount of value you can receive from your loan, maximum 50% in USD of the bLuna you have used as collateral — more on this later) and can see your transaction hash and fee too. You can either view your transaction hash (like in step 8) or you can click ‘OK’.
Step 16
Now you are back in the borrow tab and you have provided bLuna as collateral, which you have previously minted. You are now able to borrow UST on Anchor! You can see the value of your bLuna collateral (denoted in USD), net APR (% of ANC you earn for using your bLuna as collateral), borrowed value (nothing yet) and the type of collateral you have provided — LUNA. In the future, Anchor aims to allow other liquid staking derivatives to be used as collateral — for now though, bLuna is the only available option. You are now ready to borrow — click the ‘borrow’ button in the top right corner of the page.
Step 17
You will now be given options about how much UST you would like to borrow with your bLuna as collateral. The first field is a ‘borrowed amount’ field. This field is automated depending on the green slider below it that you can drag to the left and right of the screen. This slider is the ‘Loan-To-Value’. As explained in step 16, this is the amount of a loan you can take out compared to the value you have put in the system as collateral (bLuna). It is impossible to take more than 50% of a loan out with the value of your bLuna (in USD) so on the right hand side it has a max LTV of 50%. The system recommends a 35% safe LTV. We would recommend much safer than this, perhaps somewhere around the 20% mark to be extra safe. If your loan to value is 50%, you have 10 bLuna valued at $20 — your value is $200. You are able to take out a loan of maximum $100 UST with this. However, if the value of the LUNA drops e.g. to $9 (cryptocurrencies are volatile), your collateral will be liquidated by the protocol to pay your debt as your LTV is 55%. This is because the value of your collateral is now $180, you have a loan of $100, the system does not accept this (too risky) and instead sells your collateral (bLuna) to recover the loan it issued you of $100. You are then left with whatever is left of your collateral that was not sold off by the system to recover its debt. However, if your LTV starts at 25%, you will take out $50 of UST in a loan and have value at $200 USD of bLuna. If the price of LUNA falls to $9 as above (collateral value now $180 USD), your LTV is still much lower than the required 50% threshold (it would be 27%) and here you would be much less susceptible to market risk of LUNA and costs of being liquidated. For the above reasons, we recommend exercising caution and hedging risk by borrowing a very small amount of UST to your bLuna collateral. Click the ‘proceed’ button when you are satisfied with your LTV.
Step 18
Sign the transaction by entering your password, the same method as Step 6, then click Submit.
Step 19
Wait for your receipt.
Step 20
Your transaction is complete! You can view your new LTV, outstanding loan ($UST), transaction hash and transaction fee you paid for your loan. Click ‘OK’ to exit out of the confirmation box.
Step 21
Nice one! You have successfully minted bLuna and then used your bLuna as collateral to take out a loan on Anchor! You can see all the details on the borrow page. You can also see your ‘borrow limit’ — this is related to your LTV. The borrow limit in this example is at 40% because we chose a low LTV (~20%). The system is telling us that we can borrow more if we would like to, however we recommend not going anywhere near your borrow limit.
Step 22
Navigate to earn and click the ‘earn’ tab. It’s time to start earning a yield on the $UST you have borrowed!
Step 23
In the ‘earn’ tab, click the ‘deposit’ button.
Step 24
Enter in the amount of $UST you would like to earn a yield on. This is like a savings account. If you only have $UST that you have borrowed from Anchor using bLuna as collateral, you can enter in the amount you borrowed. In this example, we borrowed ~$37 UST, so we will deposit our borrowed amount into the protocol to earn a yield. Click the ‘proceed’ button to deposit your $UST.
Step 25
Enter in password to sign the transaction to officially deposit your $UST into Anchor — like in Step 6.
Step 26
Congratulations! You have successfully minted $bLuna using $LUNA (choosing Chorus One as a validator of course), used your $bLuna as collateral to borrow $UST (earning yourself $ANC, Anchor protocol’s governance token) and then deposited your borrowed $UST into a money market protocol and received $aUST (a token that is a claim on your underlying $UST), which earns you a stable yield above >20% on your $UST — not bad compared to a traditional savings account! Click the ‘OK’ button to proceed.
Step 27
You will be taken back to the ‘earn’ tab, which also shows you the APY currently (it is variable and can fluctuate day-to-day — but it should always remain close to the target rate of 20%). Another cool feature on the ‘earn’ page is the amount of interest you can expect to earn in 1-year with your $UST deposit. In this example, you can see our deposit of ~$37 and we will earn ~$8 on our deposit over the course of a year. You can always visit https://app.anchorprotocol.com/earn and look at the total deposit tab. Your total amount should increase every block — you receive a yield on your savings every ~6 seconds (block time).
Step 1
If you would like to repay the loan, withdraw your deposit from Anchor’s savings protocol. You will receive $UST back in return for return $aUST.
Step 2
Put in the amount you would like to withdraw, then click the ‘proceed’ button.
Step 3
Sign the transaction on Terra station, as in Step 6 of the borrowing tutorial.
Step 4
Wait for transaction to process
Step 5
Withdraw complete! You have received the $UST back that you initially loaned using bLuna as collateral. You will have returned your aTokens back to Anchor protocol (your original claim to your underlying $UST tokens). Click OK to return back to the webpage.
Step 6
Navigate to the ‘borrow’ tab and click the ‘borrow’ button.
Step 7
Click the ‘repay’ button.
Step 8
Use the toggle to bring your LTV to 0%. This means that you have no loan with your value (collateral) — because you are repaying your debt! Click proceed when you have dragged your LTV to 0 and you have officially repaid your loan and you have returned all $UST that you borrowed.
Step 9
Sign your transaction in your Terra station wallet.
Step 10
Wait for your receipt (should take ~6 seconds).
Step 11
Transaction complete! You have repaid your debt and have no outstanding loan! Click OK to finish.
This is the end of the tutorial! If you would like, you are also able to withdraw your bLuna as collateral from Anchor in the ‘borrow’ tab, where the ‘Collateral List’ is.
Congratulations! You have successfully used your $LUNA to mint $bLuna (an instantly transferable and usable liquid staking derivative of $LUNA), used that $bLuna to take out a $UST (TerraUSD) loan in Anchor, received $ANC governance tokens as reward for supplying collateral to the protocol for the loan (>100% $ANC APR )and deposited your minted $UST into the savings protocol to earn a 20% $UST APR on your $UST deposit.
Yield farming ain’t much, but it’s honest work.
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 an opportunities 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.
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We are looking forward to sharing further opportunities going forward!
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
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When an individual or team come(s) up with an innovative idea, often the first source of funding they turn to is in the form of a grant. Grants in the blockchain ecosystem are usually milestone-driven and issued by either foundations or patron organisations. Recently though, there has been a new approach to promote ecosystem development. Free TON, a blockchain with roots stemming from the Telegram Open Network community and a live instantiation of the Telegram Open Network protocol, has focused on endorsing ‘permissionless innovation’ within its ecosystem. Free TON has been using decentralised contests as opposed to issuing grants to reward those that are making contributions to its network. Whilst it is still early days, this innovative rewarding mechanism used by Free TON could be a secret ingredient that other blockchains could adopt, to assist them to foster faster innovation and community growth within their own ecosystem.
When it comes to fundraising, grants are often a good place to start. Grants are distributed to individuals or teams with no expectation of return from grantors (e.g. there is no surrendering of equity or requirement to pay back the principle and/or interest in the future). There is usually immense competition to receive grant money as there are limited amounts of funds available to be distributed by grantors and receiving funds without needing to make a return on the original investment is a highly lucrative prospect for grantees.
In blockchain, grants are generally issued on a milestone basis to ensure the grantor’s funds are being used appropriately. If an individual or team shares the same vision as a foundation or patron organisation, they can request funds from them to bootstrap their project. Once both grantor and grantee are aligned, a grant ensues and the grantee begins work on reaching deliverables specified in their grant application.
There are two typical types of grants a team can apply for in the cryptocurrency ecosystem: foundation grants and ecosystem grants.
Foundation grants in the blockchain industry are given by non-profit organisations dedicated to supporting growth within their own ecosystem. A longstanding foundation is the Ethereum Foundation, an organisation committed to fostering Ethereum’s research, development and community. In February, the Ethereum Foundation announced an allocation of more than $1M across 25 grants to make the Ethereum staking experience easier, safer, and more secure.
Ecosystem grants are grants from patron organisations [1], meant for supporting blockchain development. Ecosystem grants come from organisations that have an interest in developing an ecosystem for the benefit of their organisation, rather than the benefit of the blockchain itself. For example, Huobi is a patron organisation that has recently announced a $10m fund for Polkadot ecosystem grants. Patron organisations are prepared to disperse grants to ecosystems (such as Polkadot in this example) because the development of the ecosystem brings their organisation more business.
Non-repayable funds have traditionally been dispersed by foundations and patron organisations in the form of grants to encourage development of software that helps grow an ecosystem, often specifically focused on applications and tools that might be hard to monetise in a different way.
Recently an argument has been made by Lane Rettig on grants:
Grants do not make the most of one of blockchain’s core properties, permissionless innovation as grants are given first to people we already know and trust, then to people who are like us.
In turn, this leads to conflicts of interest from grantors and there is a lack of transparency over how biases affect decision processes to issue grants. For this reason, Free TON has introduced a novel way to disperse non-repayable funds in order to develop their blockchain in a more decentralised manner, using contests to reward contributions rather than grants.
Free TON is a blockchain derived from the original Telegram Open Network protocol. Telegram Open Network itself was halted by the SEC for being considered a security in 2020. However, the underlying code of TON was already open-sourced and therefore some individuals in the TON community that were excited about the original TON project, decided to use and continue developing the code from TON repositories to deploy the blockchain in a completely decentralised manner, without any corporate entity backing it. In fact, just 5 days prior to Telegram officially announcing that it was completely removing itself from any association with the blockchain it had created on May 12 2020, a collective banded together to announce they would continue advancing the technology that had been created by developers working on TON, completely separate to Telegram under a new name, Free TON. Free TON has unique features, such as the “self-healing” vertical blockchain mechanism and Instant Hypercube Routing, which enable it to be fast, reliable, scalable and self-consistent at the same time. What separates Free TON from other projects re-using Telegram Open Network’s code is the large community they have managed to build around the project. To date, there have been 3,000 entities join contests to earn TON Crystals (the token for Free TON blockchain) and there are 10,000 members in the Free TON community globally.
As it stands, Free TON contests are the only way to receive TON Crystals, meaning TON is only distributed amongst those who have contributed to the network. There are 5 billion Free TON Crystals; 85% of these will be distributed to those who contribute to the project (partners and users), 10% will be distributed to developers and 5% will be distributed to validators. To date, there has been 528,444,782 Ton Crystals distributed to 115,874 unique addresses out of a total supply of 5,022,346,449 TON Crystals (i.e. 10.5% of tokens have been distributed to contributors so far). Founders of Free TON wanted to distribute TON Crystals in a meritocratic way by rewarding users with TON Crystals who are actively involved in developing the project. Currently, it is very difficult to obtain TON Crystals on secondary markets. Meaning for now, the main utility of TON Crystals is to use them in governance processes (e.g. voting on contests). Free TON is committed to empowering their community to engage, contribute and make decisions via decentralised governance.
To spur innovation within Free TON blockchain, contests are created with rewards of TON Crystals for winners. Anyone in the Free TON community can propose/vote on contests, vote on solutions to contests and propose/vote on jurors to judge the solutions to contests. Contests are wide-ranging in Free TON and there are 19 different Free TON sub-governance groups, all hosting their own contests. Contests are not just for developers in Free TON, it is also possible for those with non-technical backgrounds to participate.
Using an example, Free TON has a DeFi sub-governance group. The first proposal was to select a jury, which would judge future submissions to Free TON DeFi contests. There were 7 Free TON Sub-Governance DeFi members initially in charge of selecting additional members for the jury. Any Free TON community member could apply to be a Free TON DeFi Juror by submitting a CV (if it had adequate DeFi experience, they would be selected). All selected DeFi Jurors receive rewards as incentive to monitor and vote on DeFi contest submissions. Once a DeFi Jury was established, it was possible to propose Free TON DeFi contests in the sub-governance group. In order for a Free TON DeFi contest to be initiated, it must first be discussed in the DeFi sub-governance forum and before it is officially proposed as a contest. Once it is proposed as a contest, it must receive over 50% of votes in favour from Free TON community members to initiate the contest. Once a Free TON DeFi contest has reached quorum at over 50% and been initiated, anyone with a Free TON address is then able to submit responses to the contest. Descriptions of contests are clear and include: description, motivation, requirements, terms, criteria, artefacts, rewards and voting process for each one. The most recent Free TON DeFi contest was a Stablecoin Architecture and Design contest with 137,000 TON Crystals available as a reward for submissions reaching the Top 10. The contest had 13 submissions and 12 jurors voting on each submission. Votes (and comments) from jurors on submissions are transparent and publicly available to see.
Free TON has introduced a novel way to engage community members in the longevity of the project. Contests are a fast and accessible way for participants to contribute to a blockchain. Free TON has decentralised all aspects of their contests, meaning rewards are going to those who truly deserve them. Contests remove the conflict of interest that sometimes arise from foundations or patron organisations giving grants to projects they might have a previous relationship with. Contests that are decentralised are in line with the ethos of blockchain and decentralisation. Traditionally, grants have been issued by centralised foundations or patron organisations. A centralised entity fostering development of a blockchain might not achieve the same efficiency and innovation as what Free TON can achieve with their decentralised contests. Free TON are already improving their contest process and are now discussing BFT governance as the new Free TON governance system for contests. Innovative governance and accessible contests without reward distribution bias is Free TON’s competitive advantage over other blockchains. Building an active, decentralised community around a blockchain is perhaps one of the most critical facets to get right to ensure longevity of a blockchain. Using contests to reward individuals or teams working on development of a blockchain has rarely been seen prior to Free TON. We find innovative governance that uses contests to promote innovation within a blockchain might be a trend that other blockchains could use to foster their own ecosystem development in the future. For now, Free TON’s community continues to grow, albeit slightly in the shadows, as there has been little speculation on the token due to the fact it is not widely available on secondary markets. When the token is eventually widely able to be traded on secondary markets, those that have participated in contests to contribute to developing the blockchain might be handsomely rewarded by the time the rest of the ecosystem discovers the blockchain’s capabilities and community.
Today, we are excited to announce that we will acquire and continue operating Cryptium Labs validator nodes on Tezos, Near, Polkadot, and Kusama following their announcement to terminate their services to focus on other ventures.
This first of its kind acquisition will enable Cryptium’s delegators staking over $125M worth of assets to continue earning rewards through a professional (and likewise Swiss-based) staking provider.
“Cryptium Labs has been one of the pioneers of Proof-of-Stake. They were among the first professional validators and contributors to protocol development, especially on Tezos. It’s an honor for us to continue operating their nodes and ensure a continuous high-quality service for their customers. We have no doubts that the Cryptium Labs team will go on to do great work through their new venture and make major contributions to the crypto industry.”
Brian Fabian Crain, CEO and Co-Founder of Chorus One
“Looking back it has been a wild journey and while it’s sad to leave the validation game, the team is incredibly excited to share with the world what we have been working on. We started Cryptium Labs as one of the first Proof-of-Stake validation companies in the world with the simple premise to provide secure and available validation from the Swiss Alps. Chorus One has been there with us since the beginning and has been incredibly innovative in the PoS space. I am excited that they will continue providing high-quality validation services to all the original Cryptium Labs delegators.“
Adrian Brink, Managing Director & Co-Founder of Cryptium Labs
If you have been delegating to Cryptium Labs on Near, Polkadot, Tezos, or Kusama, you do not need to take any action. You should be aware that there will be a migration from Cryptium Labs’ to Chorus One’s infrastructure within the coming weeks. We will maintain the former Cryptium Labs validators with the same care we operate our existing validator nodes and will relocate all server infrastructure and migrate cryptographic material to our platform.
As a result of the acquisition, the display name, commission rates, and other metadata related to the respective validators will be adjusted. Validators will be Chorus One branded and, on networks we are already active on, commission rates will be brought in line with our existing nodes to remain consistent. On Tezos, where we do not operate a baker as of now, we will maintain the commission rate Cryptium established.
This acquisition serves as our entry into the Tezos ecosystem. Our initial focus on Cosmos and Tendermint resulted in us never launching a Tezos baker. With the acquisition of the Cryptium Labs baker, we are finally becoming a part of this long-standing and established Proof-of-Stake network and its community. We are thrilled to expand our portfolio of networks to Tezos and are hopeful to maintain and even improve upon the secure and stable operation Cryptium set up.
While Cryptium Labs is dissolving, its former team centered around Adrian Brink, Awa Sun Yin, and Christopher Goes will work on bringing financial privacy and sovereignty to everyone. Stay tuned for future announcements!
The Chorus One team wishes them the best of luck for their future endeavours; we are thankful for their contributions to the staking ecosystem and grateful to be able to continue their legacy!
Finally, we would like to welcome all former Cryptium Labs delegators into our community. Please don’t hesitate to reach out through our channels linked below if you have any questions or want to learn more.
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
Cover background photo by Isaac Struna on Unsplash.
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on March 1, 2021.
Happy New Year! Today, we are excited to announce the launch of our The Graph mainnet indexer node. Find us e.g. on the official dashboard (chorusone.eth). This post will focus on our journey so far and what you can expect when considering to delegate GRT tokens.
The Graph has become the industry standard for retrieving data from Ethereum applications, with prominent users including Coingecko, Uniswap, and many others.
We have experienced ourselves what it means to write custom code to retrieve blockchain data, to store it, and to service it for our staking platform Anthem. One of the reasons that makes us excited about The Graph is the potential to make extracting valuable information from any blockchain much easier, while at the same time not relying on a centralized party to maintain availability and to ensure integrity of the data.
The Graph is a core piece to enable truly trustless applications. By providing our infrastructure and expertise to the community, we hope to accelerate the growth of this ecosystem!
The Graph is one of the most complex decentralized protocols with various, highly interconnected elements. The intricate economic design that features multiple roles (check out a primer here) is designed to optimally provide indexing and querying capabilities through a decentralized network of participants.
As a GRT holder, one option to participate in the system is by delegating to indexer nodes that are storing and servicing data. By delegating, GRT holders essentially increase the power of their chosen indexer operator in the protocol. Indexers need to allocate stake to subgraphs and are required to service queries from data consumers, the volume of which is determined by their relative stake allocated to a specific subgraph. To compensate delegators for putting up their capital to back indexing nodes, they receive a portion of the query and inflation rewards earned by the indexer. Indexers can determine their reward cut (the commission taken on newly minted GRT from the protocol) and their query cut (the commission taken on fees from queries served).
The rest of this post will focus on the inflation and reward cut dynamics, since these are expected to have the majority impact on the staking rewards received, especially in this early bootstrapping phase of the network.
If you are seeking to find out how much you will earn at the start, when queries fees are still low, these are the things you need to consider:
There’s also a one-time 0.5% fee when delegating GRT that is burned lowering the circulating GRT supply. At the time of writing there is around 9% of the GRT supply staking meaning the APR for staking GRT is 30% (before commission). Since our indexer does not have many delegations yet, our effective commission rate is actually negative meaning you’ll earn an even higher APR until delegations fill up!
Fellow indexers and community members have already written delegation guides and built dashboards that are helpful if you want to put your GRT to work, here is a selection:
Official The Graph Dashboard: https://network.thegraph.com/
Staking Facilities Guide for Ledger + Metamask: https://stakingfac.medium.com/the-graph-staking-guide-5ec1455f4783
Graphlets Dashboard: https://graphlets.io/
The Graph Portal: https://thegraphportal.com/
Cover background image by Arash Ashgari on Unsplash.
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on January 1, 2021.
It’s been over 2 months since the decentralization of the SKALE Network ( mainnet phase 2) began. With an unique approach of requiring participating investors to stake a minimum of 50% of their tokens for a period of at least 2 months ( Proof-of-Use), the SKALE team focused on attracting long-term supporters of the project, as opposed to speculators looking for a quick flip.
In this post, I want to take a look at a snapshot of the on-chain data that shines light on how SKL holders are engaging with the network now that the Proof-of-Use period has come to an end.
SKL is an ERC-777 token (backwards compatible with ERC-20), so information about it is available on Etherscan. We can see that there are 4,083,530,877 SKL tokens, which are held by 3,903 different addresses. 166,857,860, or roughly 4%, of those were sold in a public sale through the Activate platform. For a detailed breakdown of the supply and associated lockups, check out this 1-pager.
I want to start this analysis by taking a look at token transfers. Visualizing the transaction counts and amounts, we can clearly see how the initial tokens were distributed to investors leading up to the phase 2 mainnet launch on October 1. We can also note an uptick in activity when the first SKALE staking period ended Dec 1 (as of now, tokens can only be staked for periods of 2 months). At this point, the first tokens unlocked and the SKL token gets listed, e.g. on Binance. On Dec 1, 6,358 transfers were carried out moving 267m SKL, or around 6.5% of the supply (see chart). Right after, activity declined significantly with on average around 500 transfers happening per day during the past week.
Looking at the total stake in the network, which e.g. can be found here, we see that the overwhelming majority of tokens are involved in staking. 74.5% of all tokens are delegated, which places SKALE in the company of established networks such as Cosmos (71.42%) and Tezos (79.44%, see Staking Rewards). In terms of addresses that are involved in staking, we see that there are 1,167 unique delegators. 30% of all addresses that hold the SKL token are also staking.
Furthermore, one may wonder how many SKL tokens have been unstaked or are planning to unstake at the next boundary (Feb 1). The official dashboard shows 112m SKL (~3.7% of the currently staked supply) have been unbonded after the first staking period. So it seems like a majority of token holders plan to continue staking (it should be noted that a majority of token holders like the foundation, team, and early investors have longer lockup periods and cannot transfer their tokens yet).
Generally speaking, the interest in staking seems to remain high. While this amount will likely increase as the month continues, we can currently see that 15m SKL tokens plan to unstake at the next boundary (Feb 1). This is three times as much as new delegations that are coming in (i.e. accepted and proposed), which amount to around 5m SKL tokens at the time of writing. If we assume constant growth and that this ratio will remain until the end of January, then the staked supply would decline by roughly 80m, which would barely impact the staking ratio.
There are currently 47 validator organizations running a grand total of 152 nodes, whose resources are distributed across elastic SKALE-Chains. The average reward per node, which is split between the node operating entity and its delegators, is 211,075 SKL per node. With 152 nodes, this means the SKALE Network is currently paying out 32,083,400 SKL (or 1.04% of the supply) per epoch.
Using the median commission rate across validators of 12%, this means the average SKL delegator is currently earning 0.9152% per month on his SKL, translating to an APR of 11.55% (including compounding).
Looking at the stake distribution among nodes, we can see that a majority of the stake is controlled by a small subset of validators with only 3 of the 47 entities controlling right about 33% of the stake (see chart).
SKALE’s design seems to have successfully incentivized an engaged base of holders that are interested in supporting the project through staking. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the project is still in a very early phase of decentralization, which can be seen both by looking at the token distribution among addresses (the top 100 addresses hold a majority of all tokens), as well as in the stake distribution across validators. For more on the importance of censorship resistance in Proof-of-Stake, check out e.g. this thread by the Solana team.
Chorus One is offering staking services and building protocols and tools to advance the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem.
We are an active validator on the SKALE Network. Support our work by delegating to us. Learn more here.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
SKALE is an elastic blockchain network that gives developers the ability to easily provision highly configurable fully decentralized chains that are instantly compatible with Ethereum. SKALE chains can execute sub-second block times, run up to 2,000 tps per chain, and run full-state smart contracts in addition to decentralized storage, execute Rollups, and machine learning in EVM.
Website: https://skale.network/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/skalenetwork
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on December 10, 2020.
