Today, we are excited to announce our staking partnership with Zero Knowledge Validator (ZKV), a collective of blockchain entrepreneurs, researchers, and developers focused on advancing the adoption of privacy and zero-knowledge technologies across multiple blockchain ecosystems.
Chorus One will provide node infrastructure to enable the Zero Knowledge Validator team to focus on privacy-focused initiatives and to participate in network governance representing their community and mandate. We will initially operate the Zero Knowledge Validators on Cosmos and Osmosis, with other networks to follow in the future. By delegating to the Zero Knowledge Validator nodes, ATOM and OSMO holders can support ZKV’s mission while ensuring their tokens are staked with the industry-leading reliable, secure, and diversified node infrastructures that Chorus One has built over the past three years.
The ZKV team, led by Anna Rose and Will Harborne, is active on the forefront of privacy research and development in the Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, NEAR, and Mina blockchain ecosystems. Anna, who is hosting one of the most esteemed crypto podcasts (Zero Knowledge Podcast), is a pillar in the community and has provided a platform for privacy-focused researchers and builders to come together through a series of high-quality events such as the Zero Knowledge Summit, hackathons, online webinars, and more. Will, co-founder of the zk-STARK-based decentralized exchange Deversifi, has a vast network and experience in building scalable, privacy-preserving applications. Together with their collaborators and team of researchers and developers, ZKV provides invaluable help to projects and entrepreneurs to develop and grow their privacy-focused applications.
We are thrilled to be able to provide our services and work closely with ZKV. We expect this collaboration to increase our own knowledge and involvement in the promising field of privacy-preserving technologies and are looking forward to helping the ecosystems we are a part of tap into the resources and support provided by the ZKV team.
If you are interested in learning more, join the upcoming ZKV online event this Wednesday (June 30) focusing on privacy in the Cosmos ecosystem, which will also feature our CCO Felix Lutsch during the panel discussion. Register here: https://hopin.com/events/privacy-in-cosmos
Our mission is to help stakeholders participate and shape the decentralized networks they are a part of. Aside from accepting delegations on our own public nodes and building protocols to advance the staking ecosystem, we are also providing infrastructure services to stakeholders seeking to participate in staking and network governance themselves. To learn more about how we assist our partners that include institutions and companies like Zero Knowledge Validator in their exploration and participation in the staking ecosystem, visit our whitelabel node product offering at: https://chorus.one/products/whitelabel-staking
Chorus One is offering staking services and building tools that 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
Zero Knowledge Validator champions privacy and zero-knowledge technology across the blockchain ecosystem through various initiatives such as research, content, and events.
Website: https://zkvalidator.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZKValidator
We are pleased to announce that we have onboarded Osmosis, a heterogeneous, interoperable automated market maker protocol built on the Cosmos SDK that gives users and LPs flexibility and customisation never before seen in existing AMMs.
Osmosis is governance-first, it places emphasis on governance having a maximum level of customisation on protocol parameters so it can keep the protocol competitive in the long-run.
Osmosis is likely to introduce a new wave of innovation and creativity for AMMs as participants have the accessibility and flexibility to customise all aspects of an AMM. LPs can select their time horizons for providing liquidity, third-parties can incentivise pools ad-hoc, governance can distribute OSMO rewards where they deem fit, pool creators can play with mathematical expressions (curves) for lower-slippage swapping and users can swap assets cross-chain using the Interblockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, whose usage in the Cosmos ecosystem has been kickstarted following the chain’s launch this weekend:
Osmosis is airdropping a portion of OSMO to those who were holding ATOM when the screenshot was taken for the quadratic fairdrop. You can see if you are eligible here. Without doing anything, holders of $ATOM taken on the day of the blockchain screenshot receive 20% of their allocated OSMO rewards. To achieve the other 80% of allocated rewards, 4 steps are required by $ATOM holders within the first two weeks, outlined below:
Further information about who can claim the airdrop and how to claim it can be found here and here
Osmosis uses the standard DPoS staking mechanism found in the Cosmos SDK. Users can delegate their OSMO tokens to Chorus One to receive a share of rewards generated by the network.
Epochs: Osmosis uses epochs to account for reward distribution. There is 1 epoch per day. Therefore 1 epoch is ~14440 blocks. Staking rewards are distributed at the end of each epoch.
Validating Rights: The weight of validators such as Chorus One is determined by the amount of staking tokens (OSMO) bonded as collateral.
OSMO Inflation: 300m OSMO in year one. 200m in year two. 166m in year 3. More here.
Staking Reward Rate: Rewards from staking OSMO will vary depending on newly minted and distributed to stakers and the total amount of tokens that are staked at a given time. Another unique aspect of Osmosis is that only 25% of inflation rewards go to stakers (as of genesis). As OSMO is highly inflationary, the expected APR for staking OSMO can be expected to range somewhere between 300–1,000% for the first year (this depends a lot on how OSMO holders are engaging with their tokens). At the time of writing, with around 5.6% of the supply staking (6m of 102m available OSMO tokens), OSMO stakers are receiving a ~3.5% rewards on their OSMO tokens a day!
Learn more about the details of staking reward rates for chains built using Cosmos SDK here.
Chorus Commission: 7.5%
Withdrawal Delay: After withdrawing, your staked funds will only become accessible after the unbonding period (28 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. Offences include double-signing (5% slashing penalty for delegators) and downtime (no slashing penalty, validator is ‘jailed’ and delegators miss out on staking rewards for minimum 2 hours).
Re-Staking: You need to withdraw rewards and re-stake them with some frequency if you want to make use of compounding returns.
Minimum delegation: There is no minimum delegation.
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Learn more: https://chorus.one/networks/osmosis
Wallets: Keplr
Block Explorers: Mintscan
Staking: Keplr — Once Keplr is installed, find ‘Chorus One’ on this page, click ‘manage’, put in the amount of $OSMO you would like to delegate to Chorus and then click ‘ delegate’.
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.
