Today, we are excited to announce our partnership with German-based, regulated custody provider Finoa. Our integration with Finoa will enable retail and institutional customers that use Finoa’s custody solution to utilize Chorus One’s staking services starting with support for Polkadot. Other networks that are part of the portfolio of both companies such as Oasis, NEAR, Centrifuge, and others will follow shortly after.
This partnership signifies a larger movement towards adoption of cryptoassets by institutional players. We are excited to help enable access to the vibrant ecosystem of yield-bearing staking assets to newcomers and established crypto investors alike.
We are constantly increasing the product and service offering to our customers. With Chorus One, we add a leading and innovative Staking provider with a wide array of protocols to our portfolio. Especially for the Polkadot ecosystem, Brian and his team provide innovative, yield-optimizing Staking solutions.
Henrik Gebbing, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Finoa
Our partnership with Finoa goes beyond purely providing infrastructure to participate in decentralized networks. In the past few weeks, we have developed capabilities to improve the user experience and returns for staking users on Polkadot through a first version of what we refer to as a “staking agent”. The staking agent is an API that algorithmically manages staking participation on behalf of DOT holders . It makes use of a proprietary algorithm and Polkadot’s key management design that allows the delegation of staking-related rights without giving up custody of funds.
The staking agent enables Finoa users that want to stake DOTs to improve their staking reward APR by continuously updating their nominations across supported validators while requiring no intervention by the user.
We have been impressed with the professionalism and vision of Finoa, who is quickly becoming one of the industry’s leading custody providers. We are also excited to make a first foray into the area of staking yield optimization and to be able to offer this to Finoa’s customers.
Brian Crain, Co-Founder and CEO of Chorus One
We will soon have more information about our staking agent and its benefits available. For now, if you are a DOT holder, wallet provider, or custodian interested in using or integrating the staking agent, please reach out to us at hello[at]chorus.one.
Finoa is a regulated custodian for Digital Assets, servicing professional investors with Custody and Staking. Reference customers include the world’s most renowned Venture Capital firms, large corporations and financial institutions. Finoa was founded in Berlin in 2018, is a qualified crypto-asset custodian (§64y Para. 1 KWG) and supervised by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin).
Website: https://finoa.io
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/finoabanking/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Finoa_Banking
Chorus One is providing staking services and developing cross-chain communication technologies for Proof-of-Stake blockchain networks.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Background picture by Ben Neale on Unsplash.
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on October 7, 2020.
We are excited to announce support for the Oasis mainnet release candidate Amber on Anthem! Starting today, token holders on the Amber network can track their account and transaction history by pasting in their address.
Try it out on https://anthem.chorus.one
Anthem is an essential tool for staking users on blockchain networks. Our goal is to improve non-custodial participation in the staking economy by giving users access to historical data about their investments, as well as allowing them to stake tokens and vote in governance on supported networks.
On Oasis, Anthem allows you to connect any address and access historical portfolio and transaction data with a focus on staking rewards. Token holders can display their balances in different fiat currencies (for Oasis this feature is not available yet). In addition, users can export account data as a CSV file and transaction data as a JSON file, enabling them to easily get the correct data for tax compliance or analytics purposes.
Try out Anthem for Oasis today and feel free to ask us questions on Telegram or through the live chat feature!
After Anthem has been live for a couple of months for the Cosmos Hub, adding Oasis marks the first step towards the multi-network experience we are aiming towards. We expect to soon add Celo and Terra, as well as expand features to improve participation for token holders in Proof-of-Stake networks such as Oasis in the near future.
Chorus One is providing staking services and developing cross-chain communication technologies for Proof-of-Stake blockchain networks.
Chorus One is a grantee of the Oasis Foundation and a genesis mainnet node operator on the Oasis network. Learn more about us in our Node Operator Spotlight.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
A better internet is only a matter of time. The Oasis network is trying to fix what’s broken by giving users back control of their data using a combination of secure compute and a proof-of-stake blockchain.
Website: https://oasisprotocol.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/oasisprotocol
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on June 30, 2020.
Over the past few months, Chorus One has led the Liquid Staking Working Group to investigate approaches and implications of tokenized stake in Proof-of-Stake networks. Today, we are proud to share the final report that we put together as part of this Interchain Foundation research project.
The Liquid Staking Research Report seeks to lay the foundation for a broader discussion around the trajectory of Proof-of-Stake and the role of staking assets in the emerging decentralized financial economy. The 88-page report covers five main topics:
Staking requires users to lock their assets to earn rewards for securing the underlying network. The way most current protocols are designed, this means the burgeoning decentralized finance ecosystem is not accessible to staking users. In addition, protocols enforce waiting periods for users wanting to withdraw their stake. The report goes into why these restrictions exist and what kind of costs they imply to users.
By pooling staking assets of their customers, cryptocurrency exchanges can alleviate some of the costs for staking end users. Through clever liquidity management and by allowing users to simultaneously stake and access services such as (margin) trading on their centralized platforms, exchanges are able to offer superior products to token holders seeking to participate in staking. The report illustrates this trend and its potentially detrimental second order effects to Proof-of-Stake.
The core goal of the report is to examine alternative staking models that could allow non-custodial staking to rival the centralized custodial experience. To do this, we define liquid staking as protocols that tokenize stake in some form. Tokenized stake, sometimes also referred to as staking derivatives, could allow staking users to access decentralized finance helping them to manage their positions in a flexible and non-custodial manner. The report differentiates between native, non-native, custodial, and synthetic approaches to liquid staking.
The report takes a look at the high-level risks and benefits of liquid staking taking into account the user, network, and legal perspective. We discuss everything from potentially interesting staking-related financial products, over the effects on network centralization and governance, to the regulatory implications of different approaches.
The final part of the report describes proposed designs within the space going into potential benefits and weaknesses of models brought forth by project teams like Rocket Pool, StakerDAO, Stake DAO, Acala and others.
Download the full research report here:
https://mirror.chorus.one/liquid-staking-report.pdf
We’d like to thank everyone that provided us with feedback or contributed to this research in any other way. We are looking forward to continuing to push forward the decentralized Proof-of-Stake ecosystem. Visit our website at https://chorus.one to learn more about our services.
Chorus One is providing staking services and developing cross-chain communication technologies for Proof-of-Stake blockchain networks.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
The Interchain Foundation (ICF) is a Swiss foundation, founded in 2017, with the mission of promoting and advancing research and development in open and decentralized networks, with a particular focus on the Cosmos Network.
Website: https://interchain.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/interchain_io
The Liquid Staking Working Group is committed to advancing the state of the art in staking economics and understanding the broader impact of advanced staking protocols. Join the official Telegram to participate in the discussion.The Liquid Staking Working Group has been hosting meetings in which implementing teams and other relevant projects presented their work. Recordings of these meetings during which representatives of companies like Terra, Matic, UMA, and Unslashed presented can be found on the Chorus One YouTube channel.
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on June 16, 2020.
Chorus One has received a grant by the Web3 Foundation to develop parts of a bridge that will enable Substrate and Cosmos SDK-based blockchains to interoperate as part of the fifth grant cohort.
Such interoperability will allow, for example, a user on a Cosmos SDK blockchain to move TerraUSD coins to Substrate chains to take advantage of applications in the Polkadot ecosystem.
A core piece of Chorus One’s vision is the ability to freely transfer value and information across sovereign blockchain networks and applications. The Polkadot and Cosmos ecosystems have both been at the forefront of cross-chain interoperability.
We are excited to contribute to bridging these two ecosystems with this initial project that will enable Cosmos SDK blockchains to keep track of consensus updates on Substrate-based networks.
Polkadot combines the versatility of heterogeneous blockchains with the security and convenience of a single security pool and validator set. This is one of the most daring and promising visions of the blockchain space and could unleash unparalleled innovation. The Polkadot ecosystem is consistently shipping great software to advance that vision. We are incredibly excited to help bridge the flourishing Polkadot and Cosmos communities.
Brian Fabian Crain, CEO of Chorus One
A Substrate light client that’s compatible with the Cosmos SDK is a great first step towards bridging the Polkadot and Cosmos ecosystems. We’re excited to see the results of this work and eventually a complete bridge between both networks.
Dieter Fishbein, Head of Ecosystem Development at Web3 Foundation
This grant-funded project lays the groundwork for a bridge between Polkadot and Cosmos. The current project code consists of three parts: a relayer implementation that allows necessary information to pass between two blockchains, a Substrate-IBC module for the Cosmos SDK that is geared towards handling Substrate data, and a Substrate client consisting of WebAssembly bytecode to verify BABE and GRANDPA consensus information on Cosmos chains. In order to have a fully functional bridge, a second follow-on project that allows Substrate chains to validate Tendermint messages is required.
Our WebAssembly Light Client design for Substrate on Cosmos SDK can be extended to support any other blockchains whose light client logic is compile-able to Wasm. One key advantage of the design is the ability to upgrade the Substrate light client, which is derived from the canonical Rust implementation, on Cosmos SDK chains without requiring a full governance process and hard fork for each upgrade. Additionally, the design may be able to easily handle consensus algorithms and allow them to interoperate with the Cosmos ecosystem via IBC. Find the full details and technical description of our approach here.
We are excited to contribute to realizing a world of interconnected blockchains. If you are interested in working with us on this, reach out to us via the channels linked below.
Chorus One is operating validation infrastructure and building tools to advance the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem.
We will offer staking on Polkadot when the network goes live. You will be able to support our work and earn staking rewards by nominating our validators with your DOTs.
Website: https://chorus.one
Anthem Staking Platform: https://anthem.chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Image on cover art by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on May 5, 2020.
