Discover the technology behind Novum’s restaking platform
Novum has developed novETH, a Liquid Restaked Token (LRT) poised to revolutionize liquidity and adaptability within the realm of DeFi. As a liquid restaked token, novETH provides liquidity to otherwise illiquid assets deposited into restaking platforms such as EigenLayer.
novETH will soon be deployed on testnet, marking an important milestone for us. As we progress with the project’s development, let’s acquaint ourselves with the underlying technology.
What exactly is novETH?
novETH is a liquid restaked token that delives Ethereum staking and restaking rewards automatically, while maintaining liquidity and the capacity to engage in other Decentralized Finance opportunities.
How does novETH work on a high level?
Novum’s architecture has several key functions:
- Pool restaker’s assets to mint novETH: Novum contracts collect deposits from users and mint the equivalent novETH based on its exchange rate.
- Delegate assets to Eigenlayer Operators: Operators are in charge of running Actively Validated Services (AVS’s) and ensure that all rules are followed to avoid loss of restaker’s funds due to slashing.
- Manage restaking strategy: AVS’s pay Novum rewards for the work Operators provide. Novum selects operators and AVS’s for users and takes care of the capital delegation.
- Collect and distribute rewards: Novum’s contracts ensure that all rewards are fairly distributed to restakers and operators while taking a fee to finance the protocol’s development.
The core components powering Novum include:
Deposit pool
The deposit pool serves as a vault allowing restakers to convert their liquid staked tokens and acquire novETH tokens based on the novETH exchange rate. Remember that novETH is a reward bearing token, hences its price will increase depending on the rewards and subsequently be higher than ETH. The deposit pool simplifies the process for restakers by making the asset delegation process and rewards collection easy.
Node delegator
The node delegator contract oversees the transfer of deposited liquid staked assets to contracts for each selected operators on Eigenlayer. Assets within each node delegator are delegated to a single operator, thereby ensuring economic security across all nodes operated by said operator for different AVS’s.
Node delegators also handle reward claims and execute various strategies for different rewards, thereby automating the reward redemption process for restakers and facilitating substantial gas savings.
Withdrawal manager
The Withdrawal Manager module facilitates the conversion of novETH tokens into a portion of all assets managed by the protocol. Redeemers will receive rewards obtained by Node Delegators for delegating to Operators subscribed to various AVS’s.
The withdrawal functionality is still under development due to its complexity, which is primarily due to EigenLayer’s 7-day withdrawal delay whereby user funds can not be immediately be withdrawn. We will be sharing more details once the functionality is available. We expect to have is in place for our Mainnet launch.
Governance
Having the right governance process in place is of essence in order to protect user’s funds from slashing, optimise rewards and offer the highest security level. This encompasses mainly the selection of Operators and AVS’s.
At first, the governance will be handled by Novum’s team and be made transparent to users. You can find more details on how Operators and AVS’s selection criteria in our documentation. On the longer term, we will establish the NovumDAO in order to make the entire process decentralized.
What are our next steps?
In the coming weeks, we intend to:
- Release our testnet: start to collect feedback from the community and make product iterations
- Polish and communicate on our incentive program for early liquid restakers — you can already find more information about our referral program and incentives in our docs.
Conclusion
The promise of novETH is to make the restaking process seamless, secured and as rewarding as possible. Stay abreast of updates by joining our discord and be the first to receive news of exclusive incentives. Finally, if you’re interested to join our team or collaborate with us, please reach out :)
All announcements will also be announced on Novum’s Twitter page.
Stay tuned and join the discussion today!
