Today we are pleased to announce our new Delegator Protection Pool (DPP), a pool that holds $250,000 at the start of each quarter to reimburse any losses that delegators might endure as a result of Chorus One’s operations in the forthcoming quarter. We have decided to introduce our DPP to minimise the inconveniences of reward-monitoring for our delegators by assuring more optimal and reliable staking rewards for them in pursuit of enhancing their staking journey.
The Delegator Protection Pool will be activated immediately and is available for any user who has delegated assets to any of Chorus One’s nodes. The Delegator Protection Pool is a pool that holds US $250,000 at the start of every quarter. The Delegator Protection Pool will be used to reimburse delegators if they have missed any staking rewards that could be directly attributed to a disruption in Chorus One’s node operations (e.g. downtime, double-signing or other network-imposed penalties). For the Delegator Protection Pool to trigger, the sum of staking rewards missed out on by all delegators on a network per incident must be greater than US $25,000. The Delegator Protection Pool will reset to US $250,000 on the first day of every quarter. For example, if $100,000 is used to reimburse delegators in Q3 2021, the pool would have decreased to $150,000. On October 1st 2021, the first day of Q4 in this example, the Delegator Protection Pool would reset to the maximum US $250,000, which would be then used to cover delegators for any incidents that might occur in that quarter (Q4). Delegators will be able to find out details about any Chorus One operational incident that has triggered the Delegator Protection Pool in a fully transparent sheet that will be continuously updated and shared with the community. The sheet will include a list of addresses that have been impacted by an arbitrary incident and show the amount of funds each address can expect to be reimbursed that would have otherwise been missed out on by affected delegators. Delegators can expect to receive reimbursement if they qualify for it within 7 days of an incident occurring and will be paid back in the native token of the network in which the incident occurred.
We have created our Delegation Protection Pool because we want to minimise inconveniences for delegators. Delegators should be able to receive reliable rewards without having to police their validator’s performance. Delegators deserve to receive straightforward, reliable rewards for securing networks of their choosing. The networks that our infrastructure secures are complex. It is our responsibility to understand complex decentralised networks and ensure our delegators receive the maximum amount of rewards they should earn for securing a given network. We value our delegator’s time and understand that delegators do not want to constantly monitor their validator’s performance. We take full ownership of our performance and want to relay assurance of our performance onto delegators to guarantee them of their staking rewards. Staking rewards on a given network can be volatile due to a number of parameters that affect the variable rate of rewards. Validator performance on a network can also impact delegator reward volatility. Our Delegator Protection Pool aims to eliminate the validator performance reward volatility to give our delegators optimal and reliable rewards. In doing so, we aim to improve our provision of staking services by saving our delegators time that otherwise might have been spent inconveniently monitoring our validator’s performance.
We place a high importance on providing the best staking service possible for our delegators via 24/7 support, accountability, transparency and community. Our Delegator Protection Pool is a welcome addition to our already considerable list of customer service offerings. Other such customer service offerings include technical staff being available 24/7 to respond quickly to any delegator support tickets and an active Chorus One community on Telegram that anyone can join to discuss important network updates and upgrades. Transparency is also a core value for Chorus One. In a world where it is quite often difficult to understand how validator operations might impact delegator staking rewards, we are making it our duty to fully communicate whenever our operations have caused our delegators to miss out on staking rewards. No business is perfect and sometimes operational mishaps can occur due to unforeseen circumstances. We are accountable to our delegators who have entrusted us with their assets. We will have an announcement for every operational incident that we endure, which affects delegator rewards that describes exact details of the incident including what happened, what the penalty was, which delegator addresses were affected and what we will do to avoid the penalty again.
We value our community of delegators that choose to stake with Chorus One and we are constantly thinking of ways to improve our staking service and experience. The introduction of our Delegator Protection Pool aspires to give our delegators peace of mind that they will earn the full staking rewards they deserve without the hassle of having to monitor our validator’s performance. You don’t need to delegate assets to our nodes to get involved in the Chorus One community. We encourage anyone to join our Telegram or follow us on social media to share their thoughts about Chorus One’s activities or events happening on other decentralised networks.
Chorus One provides staking and interoperability solutions on over 45 decentralized networks.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Newsletter: https://substack.chorusone.com
Juno is a fair-launch and interoperable smart contract network launching as a Hub in the Cosmos ecosystem. The goal of Juno is to relieve the computation burden of smart contracts from the Cosmos Hub itself, so the Cosmos Hub can specialise in core activities that strengthen the wider Cosmos ecosystem, such as security. Juno Hub acts as an alternate network that developers can use to develop smart contracts that are programmed in either Rust or Go, and then compiled to CosmWASM. A core element of Juno is the interoperability aspect, whereby developers can be guaranteed that any smart contract they develop in Juno can be ported to any other IBC-compatible Cosmos network.
In many ways, Juno enables Cosmos Hub to remain credibly neutral whilst mitigating typical L1 obstacles such as network congestion and high gas fees. Juno also shares a similar set of stakeholders to Cosmos, so much so that it has decided to airdrop 47% of the token supply to ATOM holders. The airdrop aligns incentives with builders to entice them to develop secure smart contracts on Juno and be rewarded for it.
Juno is built using Cosmos SDK. Users can delegate their $JUNO to Chorus One using a wallet, such as Keplr.
Validating Rights: The weight of validators is determined by the amount of staking tokens ($JUNO) bonded and/or delegated as collateral.
JUNO Inflation: 40% annual inflation in year 1 descending to 8% annual inflation to year 5. Descending to 1% in years 5–12.
Reward Rate: Rewards from staking JUNO 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.
Compounding Returns: You need to withdraw rewards and re-stake them with some frequency if you want to make use of compounding returns.
On October 7th, we will be sunsetting Anthem, a dashboard that allows users to track and manage their Celo, Oasis, and (before cosmoshub-4) Cosmos portfolios. This means that you will no longer be able to connect your Ledger or any address on the supported networks with Anthem and view your dashboard.
The core motivation to build Anthem arose from our own needs as a staking provider to allow delegators to see and track their historical staking rewards on proof-of-stake (PoS) networks. We started with support for the Cosmos Hub to get access to historical staking return data and gradually expanded to Celo and Oasis successfully.
Anthem’s features had a multitude of benefits from being able to track your portfolio day-to-day to staking on the supported networks from a Ledger device, to being able to record your revenues for accounting and taxation purposes by exporting your account data as a CSV file. One could choose different base fiat currencies and even different display languages including Chinese, German, Korean and Spanish.
We have decided to sunset Anthem as we are unable to fit this product within our larger organizational objectives. We have not been able to give Anthem the attention to deliver a product that matches the quality of what we as Chorus One want to provide to the community.
We are immensely grateful to all the users for using Anthem and providing valuable feedback over the years. We are also grateful for the support received from the Celo and Oasis Foundations. We will remain an active validator on both the Oasis and Celo networks and continue to serve our delegators through secure and available nodes. We are going to continue to focus on advancing the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem by providing our highly available and secure infrastructure, by doing work on interoperability (e.g. Celo <> Cosmos IBC), liquid staking (e.g. Lido for Solana), and through other initiatives.
In case of any questions, you may contact us at support@chorus.one or through the Intercom plugin on our website.
Your funds are completely safe. Chorus One is still a validator on both Celo and Oasis and you can stake your tokens with us.
There is NO impact on the users of Anthem. Your funds are completely safe! Your stake and tokens are still completely accessible and you don’t need to perform any transactions (be wary of folks claiming otherwise). Anthem was just a frontend to the Celo and Oasis blockchains. In fact Chorus One is still a validator on both Celo and Oasis and you can stake your tokens with us. The only change is that you will have to stake using alternate wallets.
There are alternative tools for both supported networks Celo and Oasis. Simply connect your Ledger to one of the following alternative wallets.
Oasis recently announced the launch of their web wallet and their Chrome browser extension as well. You can use the web wallet to
For Celo, we recommend using the official Celo Wallet app, which supports most of the features Anthem had (plus a variety of additional ones). In addition, Celo block explorers are helpful to observe your portfolio and the network itself
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
Yesterday, Lido for Solana went live on Solana mainnet. In about 24 hours since launch, around $7m worth of SOL have already been staked with Lido by over 400 accounts.
Now that these stakers have unlocked all this liquidity, the biggest need of the hour is to enable them to utilize it in DeFi protocols.
We understand that and we’re thrilled to announce that we are live on two AMMs — Saber and Raydium.
Saber, the leading cross-chain stablecoin and wrapped assets exchange on Solana, has launched the stSOL/SOL pool currently holding roughly $300,000 in liquidity.
Raydium, an automated market maker (AMM) built on the Solana blockchain which leverages the central order book of the Serum decentralized exchange (DEX), have launched a first stablecoin pool with stSOL
In the near future, another stSOL liquidity pool with an ETH pair will be launched on Raydium.
Raydium’s AMM aggregates Serum’s central limit order book, meaning that pools have access to all order flow and liquidity on Serum. For stSOL the following two markets exist on Serum:
In addition to these integrations, we are working with Mercurial Finance to go live with a stSOL/SOL pool that will use our internal price oracle to create a maximally efficient liquidity pool.
Keep a lookout for this and further upcoming integrations at https://chorus.one/products/liquid-staking
We are thrilled to announce the launch of Lido for Solana. Lido, the leading protocol bringing liquidity to staked assets on Ethereum and Terra, has expanded its offering to Solana. Lido’s liquid staking token for Solana — stSOL — allows its holders to passively earn Solana staking rewards with a diversified set of professional node operators while retaining the ability to collateralize their stake in DeFi applications such as liquidity pools or lending protocols.
Over $6bn have already been staked with Lido by more than 29000 stakers making Lido the largest non-custodial staking protocol for Ethereum and Terra. This overwhelming confidence in Lido’s liquid staking products will only grow with the addition of Lido for Solana to the cohort. As is true with other Lido staking products, Lido for Solana is going to integrate with a number of decentralized finance applications making it easy for stSOL holders to earn passive rewards!
Lido for Solana makes the value locked in staked SOL tokens accessible by issuing stSOL in exchange. Lido for Solana makes Solana staking extremely attractive by providing
Liquid staking circumvents the opportunity cost of having your tokens locked up in a PoS protocol.
In Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, users participate in securing the network by locking up their tokens. They get rewarded as a result in the form of native tokens. The staking assets are used as collateral to register validators in the consensus process. This means that while assets are staked, they are held in an escrow on the network. Consequently, staked assets are inaccessible to the token holder while they are being used to secure the network.
Another restriction in most PoS protocols is that even when a token holder decides to exit a staking position, they are only able to do so with a delay. This is most commonly referred to as the unbonding period. In Solana, this period is known as the deactivation/cooldownand lasts for approximately 2–3 days (1 epoch). There are many costs associated with such illiquidity.
Liquid staking circumvents the opportunity cost of having your tokens locked up in a PoS protocol. In liquid staking, the staked positions are tokenized and derivative tokens are issued. These derivative staked tokens are a claim to the underlying, illiquid staking positions and become the liquid representation of the native token. These liquid tokens can be used in various financial products thereby enabling stakers to earn additional yields and manage their liquidity risk exposure.
Liquid Staking on Solana issues liquid tokens called stSOL which can be used in various DeFi integrations available on the platform. Liquid staking for Solana is available on mainnet at https://solana.lido.fi
After approving your transaction you will see the new stSOL balance reflected on the widget.
Head over to the DeFi integrations section at https://chorus.one/products/liquid-staking/ and choose your preferred DeFi Integration. Alternatively, visit https://lido.fi/lido-ecosystem to explore the latest decentralized applications where you can use the stSOL token.
chorus.one
The complete documentation for the project can be found at https://chorusone.github.io/solido/. Head over to the page to explore staking guides and other technical resources.
The launch on the Solana mainnet was preceded by 2 security audits and an ongoing bug bounty program, highlighting the importance placed on the security of the protocol. The complete source code for the on-chain program has been made publicly available and can be accessed at https://github.com/ChorusOne/solido
github.com
Join the liquid staking revolution by heading over to the widget!
Further information and the latest updates on Lido for Solana can be found on the official website.
Chorus One offers staking services and builds 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
[Update: The bug bounty has concluded.]
We are taking another step in making Lido for Solana more secure by announcing a bug bounty in partnership with Immunefi. To date, we have had two audits done on our source code. The first one has been done by Bramah Systems and the second one, which is ongoing at the moment, by Neodyme. This bug bounty is a step further in fortifying the security of Lido for Solana ahead of its launch in September.
The bounty amount of $100,000 could be soon revised to $2,000,000 if the proposal to bump it up gets accepted. The $2m proposal is getting voted upon and as of now has received 100% votes in favour of increasing the bounty. The voting is still open though and ends on the 1st of September.
Immunefi is a bug bounty platform for smart contracts and projects to protect them against catastrophic exploits by rewarding white hats who find bugs in the system. Rewards are distributed according to the level of the vulnerability exposed, with levels varying on a 5-point scale based on Immunefi Vulnerability Severity Classification System.
The bug bounty covers smart contracts as well as the lido app website. The primary focus of the bug bounty program is the Lido Program’s smart contracts but there are generous rewards for discovering bugs in the Lido web app as well.
Payouts are done in either ETH, DAI, RAI, or LDO
All the web app bug reports require an accompanying PoC in order to be considered for a reward. Payouts are handled by the Lido for Solana department of the Lido team directly and are denominated in USD. Payouts are done in either ETH, DAI, RAI, or LDO, as per the bug bounty hunter’s preference.
For a list of assets in scope please refer to the bug bounty page at Immunefi
immunefi.com
Note: For researchers who want to start their research early, a development version is available at https://solana-dev.testnet.lido.fi/, but this devnet deployment is not in scope. Additionally, any web/app bugs not directly related to what is in the Assets in Scope table but relevant for lido.fi, should be submitted in their main bug bounty program, assuming it fulfills all other requirements.
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. Lido for Solana will integrate stSOL widely into the Solana DeFi ecosystem to enable stSOL users to make use of their staked assets in a variety of applications.
medium.com
With a proposal to increase and expand Lido’s bug bounty program to $2m underway, it is clear the Lido DAO is very serious about maintaining the security of its projects.
research.lido.fi
Lido for Solana is going to be a very mission-critical project and consequently a lucrative target for attacks. We take security seriously and this bug bounty is an effort to battle-test our codebase. We encourage all white hats to participate in this program and be rewarded with handsome bounty amounts.
For applying to the bug bounty and for further information, please visit the Immunefi bug bounty page
immunefi.com
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
Our content is intended to be used and must be used for educational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, financial or investment advice and should not be construed or relied on as such. The information is general in nature and has not taken into account your personal financial position or objectives. Before making any commitment of financial nature you should seek advice from a qualified and registered financial or investment adviser. Chorus One does not recommend that any cryptocurrency should be bought, sold, or held by you. Any reference to past or potential performance is not, and should not be construed as, a recommendation or as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit. Always remember to do your own research.
Chorus One is delighted to sponsor 5 full scholarships ($2000 each) to
Chorus One is committed to gender diversity in the Crypto Space. We actively run, support, and fund initiatives that help more women enter the industry. Preethi’s drive to provide scholarships to Indian women resonates with our values — which is why we decided to fund 5 women from across the world to be able to attend this Bootcamp.
You can apply for the scholarship in 5 easy steps
The last date to apply AND submit your coding assessment is Tuesday, August 17th.
In this supercharged week-long Bootcamp you will get a hands-on experience on how to design, develop, and scale a Web 3.0 app on Ethereum. You will have the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded peers and world-class founders with experience in building successful apps on Ethereum You will get to understand the best practices and common pitfalls.
Learning how to build Dapps on Ethereum is overwhelming and frustrating. The architecture, tooling, and even the programming language are different from traditional Web 2.0 development. It requires unlearning and subsequent relearning blockchain development concepts from the ground up. Keeping this in mind, Preethi has designed the course in a step-by-step manner!
Preethi is an entrepreneur, writer, engineer, and investor. She was an early engineer at Coinbase, later worked at a16z, and then quit one of the most sought-after jobs to teach herself coding and start TruStory.
Lido, the largest liquid staking project on Eth2 and Terra, is looking to expand its offering to the high-performance blockchain Solana. Chorus One is building this service for Lido. 3 months ago we submitted the proposal to build Lido for Solana. The proposal received support from an overwhelming majority of LDO holders.
Over the last 3 months, we have made rapid progress behind the scenes. This is the story of our journey in building the liquid staking solution for the fastest blockchain in the world
‘Lido for Solana’ is a Lido-DAO governed liquid staking protocol for the Solana blockchain. Anyone who stakes their SOL tokens with Lido will be issued an on-chain representation of their SOL staking position with Lido validators, called stSOL. This will allow Solana token holders to get liquidity on their staked assets which can then be traded, or further utilized as collateral in DeFi products
On the 30th of April, 2021, Chorus One submitted a development proposal to the Lido DAO as a snapshot vote. The proposal was to build a Lido-operated liquid staking protocol for the Solana blockchain
The proposal was put to vote on the 6th of May and every LDO holder was invited to participate. The proposal received overwhelming support. 79 LDO holders holding 96.85m LDO voted exclusively in favor of the proposal.
The proposed design is centered around a liquid staking token, called stSOL, that will accrue staking rewards and represent staking positions with Lido validators on Solana.
medium.com
The stake deposited to the Lido contract on Solana will be distributed to these validators following a logic similar to the Lido Ethereum liquid staking solution. Lido on Solana will have a fee mechanism similar to that on Ethereum which allows splitting of fees between node operators and the Lido treasury (e.g. to be used for the insurance fund). Lido node operators, as well as parameters such as the fee, will be controlled via the governance of LDO holders on Ethereum. Additionally, in the initial version, governance decisions will be carried out via a Multisig controlled by Lido stakeholders on Solana.
We started building Lido for Solana in April 2021. Towards the end of June, we made the codebase audit-ready and we got it audited by Bramah Systems. We have now made the source code public for the whole world to review. In line with the design, we are performing a Multisig ceremony with 7 participants on the Solana testnet. Soon we will be announcing a bug bounty on Lido for Solana.
Lido’s first design was inspired by the Stake Pool program in the Solana Program Library (SPL). In fact, our first version wrapped over the SPL stake pool. However, over time we swapped out the Stake Pool program for a different approach. The end result is a Lido program — similar to the Stake Pool program — but with key differences.
#2 — By doing so all validators get the same fee percentage, which may be lower than that of the node they operate publicly, and by making it 100% commission, we encourage delegations to Lido.
After extensive in-house testing, we commissioned an audit from Bramah Systems. We addressed all issues identified during the audit and re-enforced the security of the Solana program. However, in order to hold Lido to the highest security standards, we are looking for an additional audit.
In a nutshell, the audit covered the following aspects
In order to trust any program with your funds, two things need to be true:
A prerequisite for these is having access to the source code. Therefore, we have made our codebase public for everyone to view. Anyone can visit the Lido for Solana repository, where we have published the source code under the GPL V3 license — https://github.com/ChorusOne/solido
github.com
The documentation for the project can be found here.
To make our project even more robust, we are going to announce a bug bounty for developers to test the project for exploits.
We will be announcing the exact scope, prioritized vulnerabilities, and rewards categorized by threat level on our web page and on Twitter in the coming weeks.
We decided on using multisig governance for the Lido program. Before we get to the details of our Multisig program, let us see why we need it in the first place.
Programs on Solana can be upgraded unless upgrades are explicitly disabled, and this gives the upgrade authority (the address that can sign upgrades) a lot of power. After all, it could upload a new version of the Lido program that withdraws all Lido funds into some address and runs away with the funds. On the other hand, if we don’t allow the program to be upgraded at all, and then if it turns out to contain a critical bug, we can’t fix it. A multisig is a good middle ground, where no single entity can take control over the programs and their funds, but we can still enable upgrades.
Multisig Programs/addresses require multiple signatures to approve a transaction. These are smart contracts that enable multiple signers to review an action on the blockchain before it is executed. This allows for decentralized governance. Chorus One used the Serum Multisig program to introduce decentralization in Lido for Solana. This multisig has N=7 participants and requires at least M=4 of them to sign for a transaction to be approved.
The complete multisig ceremony will be covered in a later post dedicated to just that.
It is important to note that the role of the multisig is not to make independent decisions regarding Lido for Solana, but only to execute decisions made by the Lido DAO. The 7 parties that comprise the multisig are
Node operators are crucial to the success of this project. Evaluating and onboarding a responsible node operator is an important step. Shortly after the Lido DAO was initiated, the Lido Node Operator Subgovernance Group (LNOSG) was formed. This group was tasked to onboard and represent node operators in the DAO structure.
With the announcement of a proposal for Lido for Solana, we also announced the onboarding of operators for it. Any node operator that wants to apply could do so by filling up a form.
The frontend for interacting with Lido for Solana (currently pointing to Devnet) is here. We have integrated 5 Solana wallets with the frontend — Phantom, Solflare, Ledger, Solong, and Sollet.
Apart from that, we are exploring integrations with the following DeFi applications to utilize stSOL’s liquidity.
Any projects that want to reach out for integration can do so by sending us an email at support@chorus.one
Going ahead we are looking for another audit of our code. That coupled with the results of bug bounty will put us on the path to the mainnet launch. Stay tuned for the latest announcements at https://twitter.com/ChorusOne
Our content is intended to be used and must be used for educational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, financial or investment advice and should not be construed or relied on as such. The information is general in nature and has not taken into account your personal financial position or objectives. Before making any commitment of financial nature you should seek advice from a qualified and registered financial or investment adviser. Chorus One does not recommend that any cryptocurrency should be bought, sold, or held by you. Any reference to past or potential performance is not, and should not be construed as, a recommendation or as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit. Always remember to do your own research.
Chorus One is offering staking services and building protocols and tools to advance the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Newsletter: https://substack.chorusone.com
