A Winter of Dynamic Progress: Pion Protocols, Frost Algorithm, Core Updates, and More

Winter 2024 Highlights and Recap

Published in

Muon

3 min readMar 22, 2024

With the arrival of spring, we turn the page on a winter rich with developments at Pion. Read on for a recap of what we achieved in winter.

Muon Ecosystem Updates

Pion Protocols

After ensuring Pion’s smooth operation, we shifted our focus to creating protocols representing Pion’s actual use-cases.

Chain-Independent Randomness (VRF Protocol): a protocol to generate secure and verifiable numbers
Cross-Chain Token Standard (ERC404-m): a protocol to build intrinsically cross-chain tokens and NFTs
Off-Chain & On-Chain Connecter: Using this innovative protocol, projects can simplify their smart contracts by executing their complex operations off-chain.
AI Unit: An infrastructure base to integrate AI with the blockchain ecosystem smoothly and securely

See the details in Muon Ecosystem Outlook 2024 and Muon AI Unit articles.

Tech Updates

In spite of this shift in our focus, our developers kept enhancing the Pion network and its core. In January, Pion fee structure went live and became functional. A new and faster version of TSS was implemented on Pion using Frost algorithm. The shield server was also updated so that projects can pay network fees on behalf of their users. In addition, Muon core was updated and can now support short-term memory as well as different networks with different network IDs.

Moreover, the following two were developed to facilitate using Pion for projects:

A single node network simulator that helps projects develop their apps on a local environment
A trustless executor node that lets projects automate running their Pion requests and on-chain transactions

Partner Updates

SYMMIO’s New Frontend

Our friends at SYMMIO have released their new Frontend that enables teams building on top of it to create individual partnerships with & within different ecosystems.

THENA Rebranding

February marked the beginning of a big change for THENA. The unveiling of their new branding and logo accompanied by the release of their plans for 2024. See the details.

Burning $FEAR

In our October Recap, we gave details about FEAR Games’ Pion node. On Feb 21 FEAR’s PION node started to burn $FEAR. See their tweet.

DeRand Launching

And last but not least is DeRand’s launch on Feb 21. DeRand is a random number provider built on Pion and leveraging its VRG protocol. They have recently been promoted by Linea.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Pion is the Muon ecosystem’s Canary and first mainnet. It is a chain-independent and stateless DON (Decentralized Oracle Network) that enables dApps to make their off-chain components decentralized. By incorporating Pion (by Muon), the manner in which decentralized applications store, process, and access data will be fundamentally transformed.

Run a Pion node.