We are excited to announce that we have onboarded Gnosis Chain as validators. Gnosis is one of the first Ethereum sidechains in existence and has kept close to its values from inception. Gnosis Chain is EVM-based and secured by over 100k validators around the world. It hosts a very diverse validator set and it is propped up by the community governance of GnosisDAO to ensure it remains credibly neutral at a much lower price point than Ethereum mainnet. It powers an ecosystem of DApps including POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol, the original NFT protocol), Dark Forest (a fully decentralized strategy game, built with zkSNARK technology), Giveth (public goods, peer-to-peer direct funding platform), and much more.
Gnosis has a long history of working alongside Ethereum, although Gnosis Chain is technically a new blockchain. It first specialized in prediction markets, decentralized exchanges, and wallet solutions, and joined expertise with xDAI Chain in 2021 to provide fast and inexpensive transactions. This newer chain has some great features including a block time of 5 seconds (making it ideal for everyday payments), a native stablecoin, a low-fee system (gas fees cost .01 xDAI per 500 transactions), Ethereum compatibility/interoperability, and much more. Gnosis Chain already successfully went through its Merge upgrade and on December 08, 2021, became a full Proof-of-Stake network.
Gnosis Chain runs on a dual-token framework: xDAI, which is a wrapped version of MakerDAO’s algorithmic stablecoin DAI, is the payment coin of the network. By using a stablecoin for payments and calculating gas in xDAI, Gnosis Chain can keep fees extremely low. On the other side, GNO is the staking and governance token for GnosisDAO, allowing validators and delegators to secure the chain. Currently, there are 342k GNO staked for on-chain voting, making Gnosis Chain the third most decentralized blockchain after Bitcoin and Ethereum. Chorus One is thrilled to support Gnosis Chain in our quest to expand the PoS economy.
Block Explorer: https://gnosisscan.io/
Validating Rights: The minimum requirement to run a validator is 32 mGNO (1 GNO). Gnosis follows Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake rewards system. You can learn more here.
Staking yield: 15.78%
Slashing: Staked tokens are subject to slashing.
To stake GNO or to set up a whitelabel validator, reach out to sales@chorus.one
The MEV supply chain is critical to the future performance and business models of the Solana network. Solana is in a phase of actively searching for, and ultimately choosing its MEV supply chain. One approach is to replicate the model established on Ethereum, building a searching and block-building marketplace. This path has multiple downsides, such as artificially introducing a global mempool that would increase Solana’s latency, and may also increase the risk of centralization and censorship.
We’re happy to announce that Chorus One has released a whitepaper today where we contrast the most relevant characteristics of Ethereum and Solana; review some of the features of the block-building marketplace model, i.e “flashbots-like model”, and what retrofitting it onto Solana would entail.
Given the particularities of Solana, we also propose an alternative to the block-building marketplace: the solana-mev client. This model allows for decentralized extraction by validators, through a modified Solana validator client, capable of handling MEV opportunities directly in the banking stage of the validator. Along with the whitepaper, Chorus One is also releasing an open-source prototype implementation of the approach detailed inside the whitepaper itself.
The client can be run by any validator. Even small validators or those with no specific expertise can benefit from MEV rewards by choosing to run the solana-mev client. That means the validators will be able to execute MEV strategies as they appear in their slot, in contrast with the current competitive aspect of searching, which results in a few winner bots extracting the value.
The model shrinks the incentive for independent bots to spam the network which ultimately contributes to episodes of intense traffic, as most of them send transactions targeting the same MEV opportunities.
Given that not all MEV strategies can be implemented inside the validator, independent searchers will continue to play a relevant role in the MEV space on Solana. That is guaranteed by their advantage of quickly building and updating sophisticated strategies, as well as expanding their focus to newly deployed programs and pools. This includes long-tail MEV.
In summary, the MEV client enables permissionless and decentralized extraction that benefits the ecosystem through transparent and ethical strategies, as well as increased financial returns for network participants.
For a comprehensive overview of the motivations and the model, please refer to the whitepaper here.
Mars will bring a multi-chain lending market to the Cosmos, enabling yield-seeking and margin trading applications like shorting and leveraged longs on any integrated Cosmos SDK chain, starting with Osmosis.
Mars started as a lending protocol on the Terra chain and has been working to launch its own Cosmos chain after the Terra LUNA and UST collapse. Users who held MARS on Terra may be eligible to claim a newly minted MARS token after the launch of Mars Hub. These MARS tokens will be available via Station, Terra’s new interchain wallet, and Keplr as soon as Mars Hub is live. More information about the airdrop is in the blogpost.
Below, we explore some of the new concepts associated with Mars v2 to address the diverse use cases of borrow & lending, trading and yield farming protocols, that usually disperse users’ capital and, consequently, dry up liquidity.
Mars’ innovative Hub and Outpost architecture allows the protocol to be deployed onto every Cosmos chain. The outposts comprise of two main applications, Red Bank and the Rover. The Outposts can be seen as bank branches, where users can deposit chain-specific tokens for lending that will generate yield. Optionally, the deposit can serve as collateral to borrow assets to be used on other Cosmos chains. Yield is generated from interest accrued from Red Bank borrowers. This revenue stream is paid out to Red Bank depositors, Mars Hub stakers, and the Safety Fund atop Mars Hub.
The Red Bank is engineered to lend not just to individuals but to specific whitelisted smart contracts too. This feature is known as contract-to-contract lending (C2C).
In summary, Mars outposts are managed by Mars Hub but are deployed onto other Cosmos chains. Mars’ first outpost is scheduled to launch on Osmosis in early February with borrowing and lending support for ATOM, OSMO, and axlUSDC (Axelar USDC). The community will then be able to propose further assets to be listed via governance.
Rover is a new credit primitive that allows a user to benefit from the cross-collateralization of different positions within a sub-account. Represented by NFTS, they will provide a user with a centralized exchange style platform in a decentralized manner. The cross collateralisation enables all the positions a user has taken to be considered when determining the health of the account and thus enhances capital efficiency.
The Fields of Mars is one feature within a Rover account and consists of Vault strategies such as LYF and LLP. These Vaults via the Rover, borrow from the Red Bank and provide the leverage for the given strategy. Fields of Mars is pre-authorized to borrow without posting collateral directly into the Red Bank. It can be seen as they have a virtual ‘credit line’. It’s not that collateral doesn’t exist, but that the Fields application controls the collateral instead of the Red Bank itself.
The fields of mars allow users to, for example, leverage yield farm positions by using rover credit accounts. Users can LP assets borrowed from the local Red Bank, with the LP shares held as collateral by the smart contract. If the debt-to-collateral ratio were to exceed a safety margin, the contract would liquidate the LP share.
Source: Mars Protocol v2 whitepaper
The MARS tokens are planned to govern Mars Hub and its outposts throughout the Cosmos. Token holders would be able to stake MARS tokens and participate in on-chain governance directly on Mars Hub.
Our specialized research team actively follows up and contributes to the governance of protocol. A weekly summary of proposals and votes for the Cosmos ecosystem is released every week on Chorus One’s Twitter handle.
We also recently released a report that goes deep into the subject of governance on Cosmos. You can download it here.
Climate change is not a new phenomenon and no country is spared from its pangs. Governments & institutions have been slow in tackling it and the results are for everyone to see. The devastating hurricanes in the Atlantic, the extended droughts in the West, and the horrific floods in South Asia are all examples of the increased intensity of natural disasters due to climate change. Though there has been a gamut of initiatives that have promised to fight climate change, one of the most promising ways has been the use of carbon credits.
Carbon credits are a type of environmental commodity or certificate that companies and individuals can trade that represent carbon dioxide that’s kept out of the atmosphere by some act of conservation like reforestation. By putting a price on carbon emissions, carbon credits can help to internalize the costs of climate change and encourage businesses and individuals to find ways to reduce their emissions. Additionally, carbon credits can be traded on a market, which allows for the flexibility to find the lowest-cost emissions reductions and to reward those who are able to achieve the largest reductions. But the carbon credit market has long suffered from issues like lack of transparency, double counting, and/or creative accounting.
Tokenizing these carbon credits on the blockchain is obviously a better solution since the credits can’t be sold/traded once they’re retired, the data is publicly verifiable, and immutable too. That’s why Chorus One collaborated with Regen Network, a platform that originates digital carbon assets unlocking regenerative finance in the world of web3 to offset our carbon footprint for the years 2021 and 2020. We run and operate nodes for Proof-of-Stake networks that are extremely energy-efficient compared to, say, Bitcoin, but that’s not the end of it. We calculated our approximate CO2 emissions for the last 2 years by estimating our team’s device usage, travel to company retreats and conferences, emissions by the data centers we utilize, etc.
This also contributes to the Cosmos ZERO Carbon Campaign, an Interchain Foundation initiative for the entire Cosmos ecosystem to achieve net-zero carbon emissions for their network validator node infrastructure and operations.
CosmosZERO is the first all-ecosystem governance process, and not only keeps Cosmos at the cutting edge of competitive advantage with protocol governance leading the way across the ecosystem to offset our carbon but also is helping usher into the IBC ecosystem the new asset class of interchain carbon credits, which many believe will be uncorrelated with the crypto cycles —
Gregory Landua, Co-founder, Regen Network
We arrived at a total of 130 tons and used the Regen Marketplace to retire an equivalent amount of CO2 via The Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project and The Kasigau Corridor REDD Project. Regen Marketplace was recently launched and allows individuals and institutions to buy, sell, and retire on-chain ecological assets in a few clicks. You can view Chorus One’s portfolio of retired eco credits here.
We hope to encourage more organizations to retire their carbon offsets on-chain. At the end of the day, we have to remember that this planet is the only one we have and we have to do our part to protect it.
We are excited to announce that we have onboarded XPLA network as validators. XPLA (“Explore and Play”) is a proof-of-stake, Cosmos-based, gaming-specific L1 developed by Metamagnet in collaboration with its primary partner, the Com2uS Group, one of Korea’s leading public gaming companies. C2X, a blockchain gaming platform, was also created by Metamagnet. While C2X will remain as a gaming platform, XPLA intends to be a gaming mainnet that serves as a center for any third-party studio to make games and create media content. Game developers can quickly transition their Web2 creations to Web3 using the XPLA SDK.
With the advent of the Blockchain industry, applications that use NFTs have taken over the planet, some of which are money grabs and, in the worst instances, frauds. Because of these uses, the NFT market may pose significant dangers to both users and investors. The XPLA chain was created to address these issues and to establish the benchmark for the long-term, sustainable development of blockchain applications. XPLA chain is designed to be a platform that may embrace the blockchain media content ecosystem, with a focus on gaming, content, and entertainment that will continue to progress in the future.
Tendermint serves as the basis for XPLA, also powered by the Cosmos SDK and a PoS algorithm. The XPLA chain is designed to support not just the Cosmos ecosystem but also the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which will boost XPLA chain ecosystem usage by enabling Ethereum-based blockchain and dApps. Validators like Chorus One operate full nodes, contribute to consensus via vote broadcasting, validate new blocks on the blockchain, and participate in blockchain governance. Validators may vote on behalf of delegators, and their voting power is weighted according to the total amount staked. The validators and delegators will earn a portion of the transaction fee as compensation for new block verification and will participate in the mainnet operation with the shared objective of developing the ecosystem by managing the mainnet node. The top 130 validators enter the active set.
Validating Rights: The weight of validators is determined by the amount of staking tokens bonded as collateral.
Token distribution: The maximum supply is $2Bn XPLA tokens. Refer to the whitepaper for a detailed overview of the tokenomics.
Inflation rate: 0%
Slashing: Pledged tokens can be slashed.
Chorus One Commission: 7.5%
Re-Staking: You need to withdraw rewards and re-stake them with some frequency if you want to make use of compounding returns hence additional delegation is needed for compounding.
We are excited to announce that we have onboarded Teritori Network as validators. Teritori is a multi-chain hub aimed to link IBC and non-IBC communities, trade services and NFTs, start new projects, and expand current ones. To facilitate trade, Teritori allows users to affirm their Web3 identity & protect their reputation. The center prominently contains daily-use dApps such as an NFT launchpad, a marketplace, and social features for people and communities: Innovate, Trade, and Organize. The network will also include a DAO tooling suite, a job board, and a multichain dApp store.
Following the bull run, the Teritori team examined the ecosystem and addressed existing concerns: despite the desire to decentralize everything, most of the technologies we use on a daily basis remain centralized, resulting in scams and security vulnerabilities. Builders, on the other hand, have struggled to locate the people to execute the right job in their projects. Because the majority of our interactions are driven by community approval, protecting our identity and reputation has become critical. Teritori also plans to introduce Berty Protocol to offer a decentralized alternative to the existing Web2 communication tools we all use on a daily basis. With the transparency that’s provided in tool sharing and identity verification, Teritori seeks to solve these pain points.
Teritori is based on the Cosmos SDK chain and the governance/utility token TORI. TORI is initially very inflationary. The Teritori DAO and TORI holders will be able to vote on the blockchain’s future direction as well as the next features/dApps to be added to the ecosystem. 40% of tokens released per block will be in the form of staking incentives given to validators like Chorus One and delegators who assist to protect the chain. Validators and delegators are critical to the Teritori network’s security. At genesis, there will be 100 validators according to their stake. Additionally, Teritori is monitoring the latest developments on GNOLand in order to be among the first projects to deploy the dApps on this new ecosystem when live.
Validating Rights: The weight of validators is determined by the amount of staking tokens bonded as collateral.
Token distribution: Similar to Bitcoin’s ‘halving’, issued Tori tokens are reduced by ⅓ every year. 200M Tori tokens were issued at mainnet genesis.
Inflation rate: 126.59%
Staking APR: 491.40%
Slashing: Pledged tokens can be slashed.
Chorus One Commission: 5%
Re-Staking: You need to withdraw rewards and re-stake them with some frequency if you want to make use of compounding returns hence, additional delegation is needed for compounding.
“Sometimes a bull market, sometimes a bear market, always a builder’s market” — Sahil Lavingia
Chorus One was incorporated in 2018 when Proof-of-Stake was still in its nascency. But as all of us have seen, it’s now proven to be more secure, decentralized, and energy-efficient than Proof-of-Work. The maturity and adoption of PoS brought in increasing institutional interest as the low-risk profile of staking acted as a conducive entry point for many institutions who were testing the crypto waters. We covered more on this topic in an article some weeks back. Chorus One has been helping institutions get PoS exposure through our white-label and research services and today we’re extremely excited to announce the launch of OPUS — a multi-chain staking solution that will significantly speed up and scale an institution’s staking operations. The needs of any institution vary quite a bit and there aren’t many enterprise-ready staking solutions catering to them all. OPUS was designed after months of research and conversations with our existing clients and other crypto-friendly companies, keeping their needs at the center.
“Cryptoassets are becoming an integral part of the world’s financial system. They open the possibility for a more efficient and innovative economy. Staking cryptoassets allows participating in this revolution and earning strong returns with minimal risks. At Chorus One, we are grateful to be able to support institutions of all kinds to safely and effectively participate in the Proof-of-Stake economy.” — Brian Crain, Co-Founder and CEO, Chorus One
OPUS also follows industry-leading security standards and access to MEV rewards, the latter now being an important factor post the Merge. Here’s a quick overview of OPUS’ primary features -
Security is of paramount importance and one that’s non-negotiable. Hence, OPUS follows a range of security practices like authorizations/authentications using Open ID Connect (OIDC), double signing protection to prevent losses, and all private keys being stored in FIPS 140–2 compliant vaults. OPUS is also non-custodial meaning customers remain the sole possessors of withdrawal keys.
Every client would have a dedicated infrastructure with multi-region redundancy that would also allow them to increase or decrease validators as and when required, depending on the protocol. This is also supervised round-the-clock by our DevOps team for issues and real-time updates can be enabled on Telegram or Slack.
OPUS is designed to be chain-agnostic. Starting first with Ethereum, this will soon expand to other networks so you can use the same interface to interact with multiple networks.
MEV-Boost queries and outsources block-building to a network of block builders. The validators that run MEV-Boost on their nodes will earn maximum rewards that then increase the rewards of all OPUS users too. Since the rewards generated by the non-MEV-Boost validators would be substantially lower, it would be prudent for institutions to partner with solutions that already enable MEV rewards.
That’s not all. We have many exciting features in the pipeline that will be rolled out in the next few weeks. If you’re interested in exploring OPUS and knowing more, drop an email to staking@chorus.one
In September, we hosted Steakwallet-rebranded Omni in the first episode of our monthly Twitter Spaces series. Below are highlights of the 50-minute long Q&A, featuring Omni’s CEO Serafin Lion Engel, CTO Alex Harley, and Chorus One’s CCO Felix Lutsch as we explored the unique features of the Omni wallet and how to choose the right validator.
Q: Serafin and Alex, why don’t you first start with an introduction to Omni?
A: So Omni is what we like to call the next generation of wallet that makes using Web3 as easy as ever. It’s basically your one-stop shop for everything Web3. It’s a wallet where you can do anything you need to do in order to use Web3 all in one place and it’s fully self-custodial. So anything, from staking to liquid staking, to depositing, to yield vaults, or onto lending protocols like Aave to multi-chain NFT support, and now alternative bridges and swaps. You can hook up your Ledger… We support more than 25 protocols at this point, all major EVMs, non-EVMs, and Layer 2s alike. There’s a lot of heavy lifting going on under the hood in order to make it as seamless as it is, but we’re very proud of our UX. We think that’s really what differentiates us and we think it’s a very next generation experience for a multi-chain ecosystem. Yeah, that’s only in a nutshell.
Q: Alex, what are some of the other features on the app that folks right now must not be using or must not be knowing about?
A: So with this Omni release, we really chose features that we felt were very important to UX, to rally around. So obviously, there was a lot of work over the last few months getting this [Steakwallet] rebrand out the door, but we wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a rebrand and that it would be a totally new wallet experience too. I would say, in my opinion, the biggest feature we added was the ability to do trustless and non-custodial swaps and bridges. So we partnered up with DEX and bridge aggregators across a range of different networks to allow people to easily swap and trade assets from inside Omni. We view this as a key unlocker for users. One of the main problems we had for Steakwallet users, previously, is that we had all these amazing opportunities for things to do like depositing into Yearn or seamless staking. But if they had one asset, say FTM on Phantom but we had something amazing going on Polygon, it was impossible for them to actually access that. So adding that in the app for us is a total game changer right now, because we have this whole concept of exploring networks.
We have a dedicated Content Team in-house to bring the latest and greatest of each network right to your home screen. Now people can see something fun to do or interesting like a cool APY or something and swap from an asset they actually have to get to that. Right now, we’ve partnered with three different aggregators and we’ll be adding more in the coming months. Bespoke networks like Tezos, NEAR and some other L2s are coming up; people will be able to jump to those straight from their wallet.
The second thing we added was our Ledger support. And we’re pretty proud of this because we have total feature parity for every network. So you can actually use your Ledger with every network we support. You can even use it for wallet connect applications. So you can vote on snapshot for example, which is quite cool, via Omni wallet. And then the third and final big feature we added was our multi validator support. Historically, we just wanted to offer people what we perceived as like the best yield for a token.
And as we went down this journey, we found that there are many yields. For individual tokens, you can lend Aave on USDC, or you can deposit into Yearn, for example. Or maybe a better example is Proof-of-Stake gas tokens: You can often stake them. You can also lend them. So part of expanding the capabilities of any one token was of course diversifying yield opportunities, but also diversifying who you can stake with. We didn’t want to be so opinionated and force people to stake with our specific validator of choice. On Omni today, you can choose who you want to stake with. And of course, we show you all the information like voting weight and this kind of stuff so you can make educated decisions.
Q: We briefly spoke about the providers that you work with. So you have a bridging provider and you also mentioned Yearn, Aave, and also the multi-validator support. If someone is on Omni right now, they can choose the list of validators they want to stake with. Was that a conscious choice to provide a list of validators? How did you guys plan that out on Omni?
A: Yes, that was a conscious choice. We originally started with one trusted partner and we just got so much inbound interest. Same with these other features I mentioned — like the Ledger support, the bridging and swapping support. We received a ton of user feedback that these would be great features to add. Again, same with the multi validators stuff. We did not want to be so heavy-handed and force users to choose one validator. It’s a great thing from a network security perspective. People want to balance their stake for personal security in case of slashing events. For network security, we don’t want to stake too heavily with a single validator.
Now that we have this multi-validator feature, our setup is such that we still present to users an opinionated list of high quality validators, especially on certain networks. Phantom comes to mind, where there’s basically 100% slashing risk for delegated funds, and that’s not a position that we want to put users in where they could potentially, in the worst case, lose all of [their funds]. So we basically partner with validators who have slashing insurance. We want to recommend validators we feel are of high quality in this space, while also giving users, at the end of the day, the absolute choice so they can delegate to who they feel strongly for.
We don’t want to be a centralizing force in the Web3 stack and we want to give users as much choice as possible. So we always have safe defaults that we set that we think are maximizing safety and convenience, but also have a positive offset for the space at large.
Q: Right. Even from the perspective of decentralization, it’s very important to not have a single point or a single recommended validator for any particular service — which is why you also have this question of centralization and Proof-of-Stake and whatnot. Felix, what are the most important factors that a user may think of when they choose to stay with a particular validator? Is it the brand name? The security they offer? The community they have around them? What do you think is the most important factor?
A: I think there’s a lot of things that you could look at as a user if you’re looking at a validator. There are also different kinds of customer profiles depending on what you are interested in. You might choose your validator just based on that. Security is one. Say, you want to make sure your funds are safe, you would want to make sure the team that is running the validator has a secure setup — such as using different data centers, using state-of-the-art infrastructure. Of course, that might also not be that easy for you to figure out as a simple retail user. What people tend to do is to look at the track record of a validator: how have they performed on other networks or in the past? What other networks do they support? Who is working with them? By simply looking at a validator’s website, you can usually get a bunch of the information. I think many are also just driven by the brand — whatever that means. That can mean a lot of things for different people.
Some validators might be more involved in the community, helping you understand a bit more about the staking model of the network. Or, they might do other things for the network’s community that you would appreciate — such as contributions in terms of research, looking at what’s happening in the network, just keeping people up to date through a bunch of newsletters. There is deeper research on certain topics that might be of interest to you — be it MEV, liquid staking or whatever you’re interested in. Ultimately, one [of the ways a user may choose their validator] is because of the tool that the validator team is building. Open source stuff is often hard to fund, obviously because it’s open source and there’s maybe no business model attached to it. The validator can be a good party to build these kinds of things and have the business model around the delegations that it’s getting.
Sometimes, validators contribute to the code base of the network or build block explorers or other tools that help developers or users really interact with the network. So if you’re someone that has tokens, it makes sense for you to look at who you think contributes most to the network’s ecosystem at large and the adoption of it. Delegate to them and, ideally, also delegate to multiple validators if it’s possible [for security].
NB: This article is an abridged version of the conversation between Chorus One and Omni. For the full conversation, replay the Twitter Space here.
