Announcing the $GEL Token — Stewarding Gelato Into a Sustainable Future
Governance, staking & slashing — aligning the interests of developers, their users, and Executor bot operators in the Gelato Network
We are excited to announce the upcoming Gelato token ($GEL) which will serve as the central focal point that ensures dapp developers, executor bot operators and the core protocol developers all work together to further grow and make the Gelato Network more robust in the future.
Since its inception in May 2019, it was clear that building the generalistic infrastructure for automated smart contract executions on Ethereum will require being a community-led and decentralized project in order to ensure those dapp developers that are building on top of Gelato have a direct say into how the protocol should function and develop.
After having spent two years on R&D, releasing the first two versions of the protocol on Ethereum mainnet, securing and automatically managing positions worth over $180M, partnering with and powering transactions on some of the most widely adopted projects in DeFi such as Instadapp, and having users execute millions of dollars worth of limit orders on Sorbet (which includes a surprise when your limit orders execute 🐰🥚), we finally decided that now is the perfect time to melt the ownership of Gelato into its community. This will be done by enabling everyone to participate in steering the project into its future and making the system itself more robust so it can handle even greater responsibilities.
Decentralizing governance and enhancing system robustness through staking are the key two functionalities that the $GEL token adds to the Gelato ecosystem.
1) Governance
All token holders will be able to have a say in the future direction of the protocol via voting on proposals in the Gelato DAO. The goal is that in the long run, developers that use Gelato to automate their smart contracts functions will govern over the protocol in order to determine the “rules” by which the Executor bots that serve the network have to adhere by.
Decisions include setting fees for Executors, deciding on developer incentive schemes, and enforcing that Executors always execute transactions in the best interest of the end-user.
2) Staking & Slashing
For Executor bots, in order to be able to participate in executing transactions in the Gelato Network and thus earning rewards from doing so, they will need to acquire & stake $GEL. Staking will allow executors to earn the ability to reserve “slots’’ which give them the exclusive right to earn fees from executing transactions in a certain period of time.
Potentially slashing the stake of Executors bots will serve the purpose of disincentivizing bad behavior, such as censoring or front running transactions, making such actions uneconomical. The Gelato DAO will have the power to enforce these decisions and the obligation to monitor the behavior of Executors. Executors will become more accountable for their actions which will enable us to further decentralize who can run these Nodes as well as providing some interesting future functionalities such as executing transactions based on off-chain conditions.
What’s Next
Gelato is already firmly established on Ethereum but is now expanding to serve the needs of automated smart contract executions on more web3 blockchains including Polygon (previously Matic Network), Binance Smart Chain, and many more. We are still in the very early stages of Gelato’s existence and the demand for a reliable and decentralized network of bots is only growing stronger, and Gelato intends to lead the way.
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About Gelato
Gelato Network is a protocol that automates smart contract executions on Ethereum. We are building the underlying infrastructure enabling reliable automation on top of Ethereum and with it a key part of the Web3 middleware stack, enabling trustless, automated flows of value between all smart contracts and upcoming Layer 2 networks.
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► Check out what we’ve been working on at 🍦 https://gelato.network/ 🍦
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