Cogent Crypto and Cogent Cogs

Why Cogent Crypto? Why Cogent Cogs?

Cogent Crypto

Cogent(adj): (of an argument or case) clear, logical, and convincing.

We think blockchain technology will have a bigger influence and bring about more radical change than any previous technology ever invented by humans; bigger than written language, bigger than the printing press, and bigger than the internet. Cogent Crypto seeks to use, build, and teach about blockchain technology to realize a radical new vision on how “value” is recognized, exchanged, shared, discovered, distributed, represented, and ultimately created.

Why Solana?

To truly change the world and improve our system of value exchange, scale is critical and we believe Solana is the first blockchain technology that has the potential to reach “internet scale”.

• Innovation: Solana’s famous 8 key innovations have laid a strong foundation to outperform other L1s and continue to stride towards global adoption.
• Rust: Rust is one of Solana’s super powers. It is one of the fastest and safest programming languages with an incredible concurrency model. There’s a reason why Rust is continually winning Stack Overflow’s most loved language award.
• Developers: As they often say, follow the developers. Solana’s focus on developers is huge. The frequent high-award hackathons, traveling hacker house events, ecosystem tooling (like Anchor), and much more show that Solana is serious and welcomes developers around the world.
• Mainnet ̶-̶b̶e̶t̶a̶: Whilst in its beta Solana has identified and acted upon a range of issues and bugs, such as the network wide slowdowns. Once Solana is humming at many thousands of transactions per second for a full year with no major hiccups, Solana will welcome “Mainnet”. We think it is hard to overstate just how early we still are with Solana.

Why a Validator?

We chose to start our journey in the Solana space by creating and running a validator because we see it as the foundational part of the Solana ecosystem. What better way to learn about blockchain, Solana, and the surrounding problem space then to help power and decentralize the network itself.

We see staking and attracting stake as an interesting way to monetize tools and applications that we build. It as an opportunity to make things that are helpful to the entire community without a need to have paid for services. Expect new and interesting tools built by cogent to appear over the next few years.

How will we be a top validator?

Here is how we got to where we are now and how we will propel our way to the top.

1. Be a helpful and contributing part of the Solana community:

The first thing we did was help other people who wanted to become a validator. We created articles and tools that we wished existed when we were thinking about becoming a validator. For example, we wrote “How to Become a Validator” and then created a handy calculator on the economics.

The second thing we did is reply to every question on Twitter or Reddit that we could that was related to staking. We found ourselves writing very thorough and complete responses and eventually took those responses and wrote helpful guide about staking: see Part 1 and Part 2.

Continuing on that path, Cogent Crypto will put out more helpful guides and eventually start building more tools for the community with extra incentives for Cogent Cog holders and our stakers.

2. Deliver maximum value to our stakers:

From the very beginning we wanted to be a top performer and make it a no-brainer to stake with us. We read every bread crumb and bit of information we could on how validators work, how returns for staking work, and, eventually, the Solana source code. We reached out and made relationships with the top validators and tried to learn as much as possible. The goal was to always be #1 on https://stakeview.app/ and https://stakewiz.com.

We will continue to strive to maintain our lead in performance metrics and provide value adds for the community and our stakers.

3. Bring others along the ride of our success:

We think Community is key. Focusing on building value, teaching and learning within our community will allow for a long-term, true value add to our flywheel of success. To help further reinforce long-term value, we wanted to have a way for our community to share in our collective success. That’s why we created Cogent Cogs.

Why Cogent Cogs?

Cogent Cogs exist to experiment with NFTs in unique ways and to share the value we have created as a validator with the members of the Solana community at large and our stakers. They also offer an opportunity for us to share our passion for art and AI.

Revenue share:

First and foremost, each Cogent Cog represents a .01% ownership of the Cogent Crypto validator earnings. It’s been said time and time again that it is impossible for the average person to start a validator and take part of that value stream. Cogent Cogs looks to bridge that value capture capability by enabling anyone in the Solana community to capture validator earnings without having to take on the risk of striking out on your own from scratch. In total, these 2,500 Cogs represent 25% of the overall Cogent Crypto validator revenue.

Commission Revenue: Our current commission is set at 0% and are ranked in the top 10 validators by APY. We remain committed to providing value to our community. Our software and hardware optimizations would allow us to be in the top 50 of 1,700+ validators by APY even if we set a 10% commission.

Block Rewards Revenue: Over time, we think block rewards will eventually outpace commission earnings from stakers. As Solana has gotten faster and processed more transactions, we’ve already noticed large increases in block rewards. In fact, we’ve had a few Epochs already where we were break-even with 200K stake and 0% commission. Furthermore, a fee market is being created by the Solana team that will bring a significant increase in block rewards when many transactions are trying to operate on the same contract. Think Metaplex candy-machine mints. We think that will be a HUGE increase in block rewards and possibly enough by itself to account for more rewards than commission.

MEV rewards: MEV which originally stood for Miner Extractable Value has been a huge money maker in other crypto networks and mev markets and validator add-ons are being built by folks like Jito Labs and a few others. MEV markets that pay validators outside the Solana protocol to prioritize high value transactions, guarantee ordering and other desired behaviors will exist. We are actively testing and helping MEV companies with their software and lending our expertise where possible to help make MEV markets a reality for Solana. Our revenue share strategy will make us the first validator to redistribute MEV earnings back to stakers and the ecosystem.

Sharing Mechanism: Because the space is evolving rapidly, it is possible that the best solution for sharing validator rewards today will be different tomorrow. We anticipate a version of a staking contract with your Cog that will enable reward collection. More details are to come. If we do end up making a significant profit before turning on commissions and having the staking programs ready, we will airdrop validator earnings directly to wallets that hold Cogs on a monthly cadence.

Art:

Everyone knows that art is subjective and beauty is in the eye the beholder so we’ve embraced that mindset to create1,500 very unique Cogent Cogs. We used AI, specifically a highly modified version of VQGAN+Clip, to assist in creating the collection. There are no repeating components across the Cogs. We collectively processed over 50,000 iterations, with full code changes in between, to get them just right. We think they are beautiful and hope the community does too.

Side note: if you have an interest in AI we have a whole discord channel dedicated to latest happenings in AI and would welcome anyone from newbies to AI experts to join the discussion.

How do I get a Cogent Cog?

To grab yourself a Cogent Cog and start earning your rewards today, please visit Tensor or Magic Eden.

Once you have your Cogent Cog, make sure you stake it directly on the Cogent App.

Be sure to check out our Discord where we have an active and helpful community. We welcome you to reach out to us if you have any questions.

If you’ve liked our involvement in the community or simply want the best staking returns please consider staking with our validator, Cogent Crypto. Search “Cogent” in your preferred staking application and stake as much as you’d like. We will continue to look to reward stakers beyond just APY returns and find ways to add value any way possible. We are all still early, cheers 🍻

Updated March 2024