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.
Dear Loom community,
We are excited to announce the launch of the Chorus One Loom validator today!
What drives us at Chorus One is the mission to create a more efficient and open world, where people have control over their own actions and assets. Gaming has become a big industry over the last decade and it is growing at a rapid pace. Many games have become their own little closed-loop economies. Players can buy and earn in-game items and this is becoming the primary way to monetize games.
But the assets of gamers in games aren’t truly theirs. The game economies created tend to be closed. You can’t move assets out of a game into a different game. You’re at the mercy of a company that can seize assets at will. You can’t just sell them to anyone. Or have a community fund and own a game collectively.
Blockchain, in the end, is about enabling human collaboration on a massive scale. We believe that gaming could be the bleeding edge in exploring the future of collaboration and creation. But the issue with games is that there are a lot of actions with relatively small monetary value. The low throughput and high costs of blockchains so far have made that adoption by games a big obstacle.
Loom plans to change that. Loom is a platform built on top of Ethereum that allows building large-scale decentralized applications. And the first area of focus for Loom is to create the blockchain platform for gaming. A place where games can issue assets, assets can be traded, games can become interoperable with each other and the emerging internet of blockchains.
This is a vision we believe in and we are excited to support it going forward. But besides the compelling vision, what else attracted us to Loom?
The Loom team is building cutting-edge technology, but they’re also pragmatic. They recognize that the goal is to bring blockchain capabilities to gaming, not to build fancy systems for their own sake. We think the tradeoffs the Loom team is making are solid.
It was only in January 2018 that Loom closed its funding round. Since then, they have made a massive amount of progress including launching CryptoZombies, a gamified course on Solidity that attracted an astonishing 370,000 signups.
Loom is using many technologies that we are interested in and bullish about. They are building one of the first Ethereum Plasma chains. They are using Tendermint as their consensus algorithm for the Plasma sidechain. They are planning to be one of the first blockchains to connect to the Cosmos Hub via IBC.
Now, you may ask yourself how we will be supporting the Loom Network. Here is what we will do:
We will be running a Loom PlasmaChain validator. We are scheduled to go live within the next two weeks and you will be able to delegate your LOOM to our validator in the very near future when the Loom Delegation UI is launched. Any LOOM holder will be able to earn tokens by delegating to our validator.
We will be participating in Loom’s governance and help steer the project to long-term success.
We will help the Loom team with making sure the network is stable, issues are ironed out and contribute tools for building a robust validator ecosystem.
We will publish regular updates about Loom to keep people informed about the project. These will include monthly video updates, but we also have an in-depth Loom Investment Thesis, which we will publish in the coming week.
Before we wrap up, a few words about Chorus One:
The company was co-founded by myself and Meher Roy. We have both been working in the blockchain space for many years. You may have heard us as co-hosts on Epicenter, which is one of the longest running and most popular blockchain podcasts. My involvement with Tendermint also goes long back. In 2015, I worked for Monax (then Eris Industries), which was the first user of Tendermint. In 2017, I became COO of the Tendermint team and helped run the Cosmos fundraiser and scale the organization. And just about a year ago, we decided to build a company to operate infrastructure for Proof-of-Stake networks.
Since then, we’ve assembled an outstanding team, which includes expertise in distributed systems, DevOps and information security, scaling tech companies and economic research. We are one of the leading Cosmos validators and will be launching staking services on many networks in the future.
We’d love to work with you make Loom reach the moon. Sign up for our email list and we’ll keep you up-to-date when we publish new content and when delegation on Loom goes live. You can also check out our blog for a lot of staking related content, follow us on Twitter, or join our dedicated community channels on Slack and Telegram. We would love it if you stop by and introduce yourself!
Brian Crain and the Chorus One Team
Photo from Unsplash by Matteo Vistocco.
Originally published at blog.chorus.one on February 11, 2019.
At this point it is hard to argue with the fact that most projects in the crypto space are being built on Ethereum, but there are many upcoming smart contract platforms that may present an alternative for developers. The Cosmos Network is one of these highly anticipated “third generation” blockchains. Cosmos is using a modular architecture and allows for easy developability and better scalability, if you want to learn more about Cosmos and its value proposition check out our introductory blog post here.
This post is introducing some of the top projects that are currently developing on Cosmos and what made them choose the Cosmos Network to host their applications.
IRISnet aims to build an interchain service protocol for building next-generation distributed applications. The goal is to provide an interface to integrate business services from heterogeneous systems into the Cosmos Network. IRISnet is extending the Cosmos inter-blockchain communication protocol (IBC) through standard transaction types with the goal of functioning as an adaptor of business logic from other private or public blockchains or even legacy systems.
The project is a strategic partner of the Interchain Foundation and Tendermint, who are the main driving forces behind the Cosmos Network. The IRIShub will potentially be the first hub to interoperate with the Cosmos Hub and its connecting zones. Bianjie.ai, the core team from China behind IRISnet, is currently focused on getting their hub ready for mainnet and developing the IRIS Service layer. IRISnet has started its own incentivized testnet, where participating validators can earn IRIS tokens for completing tasks. There are plans to launch a hackathon titled Game of Genesis after the final Cosmos testnet competition Game of Stakes took place. If everything goes as planned, the IRIShub will be live shortly after the Cosmos Hub, with a targeted launch date around the end of Q1 2019.
When asked why IRISnet chose to build on Cosmos, Suyu Huang from the Bianjie.ai team said the following:
“IRISnet believes in the vision of an internet of application-specific blockchains and aims to amplify the value of business applications. The interoperability solution of Cosmos (IBC) was a natural fit for this problem.”
Sentinel is building a multi-protocol network layer to provide access to services and distributed resources for P2P and decentralized applications. Their first service is a decentralized Virtual Private Network (dVPN) that allows users to redirect and mask their internet traffic through a set of high-bandwidth nodes.
Each service on the Sentinel network will be a Tendermint zone with its own network of service nodes and validators staking tokens, which will be able to interoperate within the Cosmos Network. Another exemplary service on the Sentinel network is Swixer, a cryptocurrency mixer that is utilizing cross-chain swaps allowing users to anonymously convert tokens. The Sentinel team is planning to develop a SDK to enable easy integration of third party applications that require access to distributed resources and services.
Sentinel is being built using Tendermint and the Cosmos SDK due to their core strengths in the areas of scalability, governance and interoperability:
The Agreements Network is a decentralized contract management platform aiming to serve as the legal layer for the networked world. Lawyers can generate template agreements and represent them on the network using a toolkit consisting of standard processes like signatures, payments and registrations. These templates can then be invoked and operated in an automated fashion and at scale, with the network providing data assurance for contract formation, chain of custody and fulfillment of obligations.
The Agreements Network is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain based on Hyperledger Burrow utilizing Tendermint consensus and a custom EVM implementation optimized for executing legal processes. The project’s goal is to function as a hub within the Cosmos Network through which other zones can access and interact with the legal agreements between participants stored on the Agreements Network.
The advantages of this approach are:
FOAM aims to bring location-based information to the world of blockchains and smart contracts. By combining low-frequency radio hardware with a peer-to-peer network of nodes staking the FOAM token and token curated registries (TCRs), the FOAM network is incentivizing the creation of a GPS alternative including a world map filled with information (Points of Interest). The project aims to enable parties querying the network to provide a so-called “Proof of Location” to smart contracts, which could be useful in many applications spanning from blockchain gaming to trade finance.
The team raised around $16.5 million at the end of July 2018 through an innovative token sale approach that required users to interact with the protocol before being able to sell their tokens.
FOAM will utilize Tendermint consensus in combination with staking FOAM tokens for consensus between nodes belonging to a FOAM zone. A zone in FOAM refers to a set of radio beacon nodes covering an area of the world within the FOAM network. The team is currently developing an architecture for how such zones could connect to the Cosmos Network.
TruStory is a social network application that wants to bring an end to fake news by identifying the truth behind claims through a decentralized network of topic experts. TruStory is using tokens to incentivize identifying accurate and refuting inaccurate information. In the first version, TruStory will be purely focused around cryptocurrency-related questions.
The team behind Preethi Kasireddy creating TruStory decided to develop on Cosmos for a number of reasons:
The Cosmos Network is positioned as an attractive platform to host decentralized applications. The separation of the consensus and application layer logic (ABCI) together with the modularity of the Cosmos SDK allow developers to easily compose applications with modules fitting to their use case.
Application-specific blockchains utilizing fast finality Tendermint consensus that are able communicate through the IBC protocol could help to usher in a new era of scalable and interoperable blockchain applications. We are excited to see how the Cosmos Network will evolve and are looking forward to help secure this ecosystem in our role as validators. If you are searching for validators for your zone on the Cosmos Network, don’t hesitate to reach out to us through our website or our other channels linked below.
About Chorus One
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Medium: https://medium.com/chorus-one
Slack: https://chorus.one/slack
Telegram: https://chorus.one/telegram
Originally published at blog.chorus.one on November 29, 2018.
