2/ Censorship resistance and decentralisation are one of the fundamental promises of blockchain, and this is why almost all of us are in this space, because we understand its importance.
3/ The key goal here is for a network to be decentralized enough to be censorship resistant. However it’s difficult to quantify at what point that happens.
4/ Having a large set of nodes in a network is a great starting point. However Proof of Stake protocols are limited by the pareto principle whereby 20% of the nodes on the network controls more than 33% of the total stake. Enabling them to halt the network.
5/ To put this in perspective, at the time of writing this, 7 out of the 125 nodes make up >33% of the stake today on Cosmos. On Solana, it’s 6 nodes out of the 182. On Celo it’s 10 nodes out of 125 nodes.
6/ This is somewhat applicable to Proof of Work protocols, currently 4 BTC mining pools control over 51% of the hashpower, as do 3 ETH minings pools. It is also arguably worse, as 51% also allows for double spend attacks. etherchain.org/miner
7/ The obvious problem is that because most validators within Proof of Stake networks are typically known entities/individuals, they are inherently incentivised to promote themselves to attract more delegators to increase their revenue.
8/ Though there is a consideration that these nodes are then less likely to be sybils and incentivised to protect their brand. But ultimately it comes down to who can market themselves better to attract the most delegators.
9/ As a result if this continues, it’s likely that by natural selection, the validator set will continue to centralise over time. With smaller validators becoming less and less relevant.
10/ The subtle/looming issue is that CEX’s are offering staking derivatives in their platforms for a while now, enabling token holders to trade their staked assets within the exchange. Which is commercially sound, but inherently centralises the network.
11/ There are multiple ways we as a community can tackle these challenges. Many of which are already being worked on already by various protocols and teams (i.e. @certusone’s work on SignOS or the #atomspread out initiative by @dokiacapital).
12/ At @solana we’re focusing of 3 key things to tackle this:
13/ Stake-O-Matic - An automated delegation matching program by the Solana Foundation that incentivises nodes on the network to delegate to smaller nodes to optimise for network censorship resistance. forums.solana.com/t/stake-o-mati…
14/ Better decentralisation doesn’t need to be seen as a compromise. Solana’s testnet right now has 103 of 382 nodes making up >33% of the total stake, yet it can still be ultra fast and cheap. There is no fundamental reason that having more block producers is slower.
15/ Staking Derivatives & DEX’s - Fight fire with fire. To compete with CEX’s offering staking derivatives at the cost of centralising PoS networks. We NEED an equally great DEX with integrated staking such as: @projectserum + staking derivatives
16/ Yield Throttling - Diminishing staking yields as the amount of stake increases on a node, and correlated slashing to stop people from splitting into identical sub-nodes. Though the latter is yet to be designed. forums.solana.com/t/validator-yi…
17/ It's crucial to the future decentralisation of crypto that we remain conscious of these considerations and continue to fight for distributed block production.
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1/ Recently, stablecoins issued on the Solana network surpassed $3B USD — and congrats to @Circle passing the $2B issuance mark for USDC on Solana!🔥
Stablecoins are a killer use-case for Solana and it still has lots of room to grow👇🧵
2/ Data from @Artemis_xyz as of Apr. 4th, 2024 shows that stablecoin issuance and transfers on the Solana network have continued to rise over the past three months, with over 3.1 billion issued and millions of daily transfers.
Stablecoins are just getting started on Solana 💪
3/ Stablecoins on Solana include @Circle USDC, @Tether_to USDT, @Paxos USDP, and a number of global currencies such as the GYEN from @GMOTrust, recently launched using token extensions.
The network is strong heading into 2024, with recent reports highlighting the 2500+ developer community, 40.7 million daily user transactions, & mature tooling.
2/Builders can win the Grand Prize & speciality prizes:
📲 Mobile Apps by @MagicEden
🪙 Finance/Payments by @helio_pay
🤖 AI by @UXDProtocol
🛜 DePIN by @ionet_official
🛠 Crypto Infra by @IronforgeCloud
🎮 Gaming by @Phantom
🤝 DAOs/Network States by @Balajis & @thenetworkstate
3/ Hyperdrive is an engineering & business competition where teams go from idea to fully-fledged project in 5 weeks.
Today, Solana Pay integrates with @Shopify, empowering the millions of entrepreneurs and merchants on Shopify to accept fast, web3 native payments with no transaction fees through the end of 2023.
2/ Solana Pay, a decentralized, open-source, peer-to-peer payments protocol built on Solana by Solana Labs, is now available to millions of businesses as an approved app integration with Shopify, the leading global ecommerce company. solana.com/news/solana-pa…
3/ Payments should be accessible, fast, and frictionless: With no intermediary, Solana Pay eliminates bank fees, chargebacks, and holding times while enabling immediate, direct payment settlement of USD stablecoins compatible with Solana.
1/ 🎉Introducing Solang: Building on Solana with Solidity
Today, @solanalabs announces Solang, a compiler enabling developers to write smart contracts on Solana in Solidity, the primary programming language of Ethereum.
2/ What is Solang? Solang is a Solidity compiler that allows you to write Solana programs using the Solidity programming language.
If you’re an EVM developer, you could leverage your existing knowledge of Solidity to start building on Solana.
3/ The Solang compiler offers features like:
🤝 Compatibility w/ Ethereum Solidity 0.8
🪙 Support for SPL tokens
💻 Support for program derived addresses
📜 Ability to call & build Solana smart contracts
⚓ Development w/ Anchor