antelope{cache} a sovereign ram-mining protocol for EOS, WAX, & TELOS chains
Inspired by the fleeting thought of bottlenecking RAM resources on the then block.one lead EOSIO blockchain, the need to escape the inflationary nature of native core tokens, the lack of mining contracts, and the nostalgic desire to mine a resource-intensive Proof of Work ( POW ) token in a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) environment; we created a mining contract that utilizes Antelope’s RAM as a resource to mine ‘CACHE,’ a token with exceptionally limited supply; directly governed by its miners proportionally to RAM held in reserve.
This article will define the need and purpose for the antelope{cache} protocol by drawing parallels between DPOS /RAM and the systems in the physical world, limitations to common contract security practices, the `antelopcache` contract and its associated bonafide CACHE token.
Delegated Proof of Stake & inflation woes
The brainchild of Dan Larimer, Delegated Proof of Stake ( DPOS ) is the consensus mechanism that powers Antelope chains where users elect 21 Block Producers ( bp ) to validate and produce blocks. This is similar to a representative democracy, where citizens elect officials to govern laws and even monetary policies. The latter of which unfortunately tends toward highly inflationary fiat currencies, Antelope chains have not been immune to inflationary similarities in past years. However, in recent months ( 2024 ), leaders in the Antelope space have unified and generally adjusted these inflationary policies that made native core tokens ( EOS, WAX, TLOS, etc ) unattractive stores of value. It’s important to recognize that these policies can easily regress at the whim of Block Producers ( bp ).
*no shade intended to bp’s 🥰 — lc
- DPOS ≈ Representative Democracy
- EOS, WAX, TLOS ≈ Fiat
RAM as a Commodity
Commodities have long been utilized to back the purchasing power of numerous currencies including the US Dollar which once served as a certificate of Gold held in government reserves. The currencies that subsidize Proof of Work ( POW ) blockchains effectively serve as a certificate of computational power and electricity in reserve. Antelope chains offer a unique commodity as well: RAM, a purchasable resource that every user leverages for account and contract storage.
- RAM ≈ Precious Metal, Oil, Real Estate, Corn, Coffee etc.
Moore’s Law & the Bancor
Antelope Chain RAM, whose price is artificially governed by a BANCOR algorithm, is a virtual representation of the Block Producer’s physical RAM, whose value and supply are empirically governed by Moore’s Law. This is not unlike computation power utilized in Proof of Work ( POW ) mining, where hardware becomes increasingly efficient and equally inexpensive.
- RAM ≈ Physical mining hardware
- Bancor Algorithm ≈ Moore’s Law
RAM and Cost of Production
Various models are utilized to determine the monetary value of Proof of Work ( POW ) currencies, key among them is the cost to generate an asset known as “Cost of Production” not limited to: geographic location, politics, but most importantly electricity and hardware costs. The natural symphony of these economic factors become clouded with modern Proof of Stake ( POS ) currencies, whereby locking asset A gets you more asset A, rather than utilizing asset A as a resource to earn asset B. Deducing the cost of production in Delegated Proof of Stake ( DPOS ) currencies is even more convoluted, where asset generation is directly attributed to politized voting. Beyond hardware costs, Antelope chain Block Producers ( bp ) don’t bear the same capital expenditure or risk as Proof of Work ( POW ) miners. Arguably, the greatest manufactured operating cost for Antelope chains is trickled down to its users through overhead account and contract expenses directly tied to RAM; be it through buying/selling fees ( usually 0.05% ) and/or depreciation.
- RAM fees & depreciation ≈ Proof of Work Hardware Costs & Capital depreciation
Superficial Consensus, common practices
Ideally with any smart contract, you want security, consensus, and adaptability to change; Antelope chains carry a generous suite of customizable permissions to obtain this. The most commonly utilized are but not limited to: a multi key permission ( eg. permission with 5 keys that requires 3 to sign ), time locked permissions ( eg. keys are nullified until ‘x’ time whereby ‘y’ account regains permission ), and lastly permission nullification ( eg. eosio.null ). Each of these permission structures are suitable for most contracts; the first two carry varied degrees of trust among key party(s) to achieve consensus making future ABI/WASM upgrades possible while the latter eliminates trust but limits flexibility for future ABI/WASM changes. However, there is an alternative that’s underutilized. The eosio.code permission allows contracts to run inline actions; but when isolated as the singular permission that governs both owner and active keys, it becomes self-governing.
- multi-key = permission among trusted party(s) + adaptable
- time locked = permission among trusted party(s) at ‘x’ time + adaptable
- eosio.null = permission among no party(s) — not adaptable
- eosio.code = permission to itself + adaptable
CACHE, the missing variable
The missing variable in the generalizations made above is a commodity-backed asset fully governed by the weight of its stakeholders.
Better yet.
A RAM-backed deflationary asset, fully governed by the weight of its miners CACHED RAM, a protocol amply named antelope{cache} with its bonafide token CACHE.
- antelope{cache} ≈ commodity-backed{cash}
RAM CACHING
Mining CACHE is effectively Proof of Stake ( POS ) mining, the ‘staked’ asset being RAM which is entrusted to the `antelopcache` contract, allowing miners to earn CACHE tokens proportional to the ‘staked’ RAM.
That makes this contract a “cache” of RAM which deems the mining term to be “RAM CACHING”.
Miners compete for majority ownership of each block reward via native core token deposits ( EOS, WAX, & TLOS ), this initiates inline eosio:buyrambytes actions to purchase RAM ( after default eosio.ramfee & developer fees ) in benefit to the miner’s mining record ( aka CACHED RAM ) and entrusted to the `antelopcache` managed account `cachereserve`.
Miners may reduce mining at anytime, this triggers inline actions to convert ‘cachereserve’ RAM back to its native core token in benefit to the miner ( after default eosio.ramfee’s ).
Entitlement to block rewards and voting weight are directly proportional to the miner’s CACHED RAM. If 2 miners control 50% of the CACHED RAM each, then they are each entitled to 50% of the block reward and voting weight.
CACHE Inflation
Modeled after the inflationary dynamics of Proof of Work ( POW ) currencies, CACHE begins with an initial 26.2144 CACHE subsidized block reward every 3600 seconds halved every 20,0000 blocks until its final halving of 0.0001 CACHE, after which block rewards are survived by cacheminer voted transaction fees ( voteable all cacheminers ). Despite the lengthy block intervals its important to distinguish them here as a means to control inflation and voting consensus only.
Compared to other assets, CACHE max supply is exceptionally limited, especially when paired against assets within the same Antelope environment.
CACHE, algorithmically burned
As a means to curb the physical and inflationary nature of RAM, an equivalent to the max possible CACHE mining supply is minted at genesis and burned proportionally to RAM price changes ( in terms of native core token price per KB ) at the end of each block over the course of the contracts life.
The burn supply managed solely by the `antelopcache` contract and uncirculated.
If RAM price when compared to last block is the is:
- Unchanged: CACHE is burned at constant burn rate of 10.6400 CACHE
- Increased: no burn
- Decreased: CACHE is burned as percentage of the RAM price change
Burns are adjusted in proportional to the inflationary rate of RAM compared to its original 1024 byte inflation block rate, meaning if new_ram_per_block is:
- 0: constant burn rate
- 512: burn * 0.5
- 1024: burn * 1
- 2024: burn * 2
Outside of lost keys and the algorithmic burn described above, minted CACHE can become “lost” when unclaimed. Only the latest 1024 Block rewards are stored on the `tokensubisdy` table in a First In First out basis ( FIFO ) and effectively remain as unrealized earnings until claimed as “shares” by miners, meaning any unclaimed portion of the earliest block reward will become lost.
Sovereign Consensus
`antelopcache` owner and active keys are each backed by a singular permission, eosio.code which by internal contract logic is controlled proportional to miners CACHED RAM. This effectively makes the contract self-governing and adaptable to network policy changes without trust in any parties given the required percentage of voting consensus is met.
Proposals to modify ABI/WASM contract logic may be proposed on eosio.msig by any active cacheminer and then linked on `antelopcache`. If the proposal obtains the required percentage of voting consensus at least 48 blocks out of the life of the proposal before its expiration, then `antelopcache` will approve and execute the changes under the full authority of the antelopcache@eosio.code permission assuming it has enough RAM to front the change ( this RAM would not be deducted in any way from the miners CACHED RAM balances ).
A decay in the required percentage of voting consensus was enacted to help `antelopcache` in its infancy build resilience against 51% attacks. At genesis, a proposal would require 100% voting consensus ( approval ) but 365 days into the life of the contract, a proposal would require only 51% voting consensus. Ultimately giving `antelopcache` enough time to gain distributed governance.
The risk described above is not unlike Proof of Work ( POW ) mining where value of the chain is derived from the economic security it represents.
Assuming proposal consensus has fully decayed, an attack on `antelopcache` by virtue of a malicious proposal would require controlling at least 51% of the CACHED RAM , meaning any increase in CACHED RAM would result with higher RAM prices ( eosio::buyrambytes ), making these attacks exponentially expensive, giving all cacheminers ample time to mount a coordinated response.
Conversely, any retreat by the attacker ( via withdrawal of CACHED RAM ), would drive RAM prices down and create a cost driven opportunity for all other cacheminers to increase CACHED RAM, further strengthening contract security.
Almost forgot. RAM Arbitrage.
Now that you have a general understanding of antelope{cache}, its pertinent to note the opportunity this creates cross-chain for antelope users as a whole. Whether it be RAM on EOS, RAM on WAX, or RAM on TELOS; RAM is the same commodity on each chain with different supplies, and vastly different prices; under-utilized on some and over-utilized on others.
Antelope{cache} creates an indirect RAM arbitrage opportunity, where miners can source out the best priced RAM cross-chain. Increased RAM prices on one chain may yield less CACHE, but leaves other chains with lower RAM prices ripe for mining. As prior analogies in this article, the arbitrage opportunity here is not unlike Proof of Work, where miners move their operations to geographical locations with the lowest energy rates and result with “grid stabilization”; but in this case we’ll call it a form of “RAM stabilization” or “crosschain/kb equilibrium”
Give it to me straight. What is antelope{cache}?
The antelope{cache} protocol runs on the `antelopcache` contract sovereignly governed by the antelopcache@eosio.code permission capitalizes on the parallels of a virtual DPOS environment compared to the physical, allowing Antelope chain users the opportunity mine CACHE tokens, vote for transaction fees, and ABI/WASM changes proportional to amount of CACHED RAM mining balances.
Now available to mine on each of the leading Antelope Chains: EOS, WAX, and TELOS.
Feel free to utilize our courtesy-built site to start mining CACHE with EOS RAM, WAX RAM, and TELOS RAM at antelopecache.com.
Chain analytics are available at eos.antelopecache.com/analytics, wax.antelopecache.analytics, and telos.antelopecache.analytics.
Limitations
- Contract upgrades via are limited by the max_inline_action_size limit on the eosio::global table ( variable by network ). For this reason, the contract was built to optimize for size ( -0s ).
designed with caffeinated ❤️ — lc
