Moving on from Alameda
Early last year, Alameda acquired Ren in a partnership with the previous Ren leadership, to secure long-term development funding. Alameda has since been funding the development team on a quarterly basis. Last week, the FTX Group, which Alameda falls under, commenced Chapter 11 proceedings. Therefore, the Ren development team only has funding until the end of Q4.
The goal of the Ren team has always been to launch an open-source and community-run version of the Ren network, and work towards this goal culminated into what we call Ren 2.0. It is a new architecture based on Geth with our new MPC implementation of FROST, which enables deployment of EVM-based applications on Ren with native multichain support for all blockchains integrated with Ren, and supports all bridging features Ren 1.0 offers as well. The switch to FROST as the MPC protocol lays the ground for a truly decentralized MPC network, as it is scalable to thousands of nodes, which if deployed would make it the most decentralized cross-chain platform live in the Web3 world.
A Ren 2.0 testnet is about to be deployed to showcase its capabilities, but there is additional work to test, harden and audit the new architecture, as well as finish new node client interfaces and general developer tooling, which would not be fully ready by the end of Q4. As such, to get to the Ren 2.0 stage where we have a fully open-source and community-run cross-chain network with its own independent incentive structure, the Ren development team would need to secure additional funding.
Next steps
Funding
To get to the Ren 2.0 stage with full community control, the Ren development team will need to secure additional funding. This is currently being explored in a manner that would also benefit the Ren community the most. As talks with investors proceed, we will share the opportunities that are the most promising to the community. Through ongoing discussions with the community on which opportunity seems the most promising, when ready, a formal governance proposal would be proposed to the community. If approved, the situation would be fully resolved and would move us forward. If rejected, the community would need to lead to another round of discussions and proposals, until final decisions are made.
Sunsetting Ren 1.0
When announcing Ren 2.0 back in August, it was outlined how the Ren ecosystem would transition from Ren 1.0 to Ren 2.0 in a safe, slow, methodical manner, to ensure the safety, integrity, and continuance of the Ren ecosystem without disruptions. But given that Ren 1.0 was run under Alameda leadership which is now in bankruptcy proceedings, the Ren development team believes it is best to sunset the Ren 1.0 network and launch Ren 2.0 earlier than previously intended, to ensure the Ren ecosystem’s safety and integrity, at the tradeoff of a shorter disruption of service. While the Ren 1.0 network has remained and still remains fully safe and operational, marking this event as the end of the Alameda’s involvement in the project by sunsetting Ren 1.0, safeguards the reputation, integrity, and hence long-term prospects of the Ren ecosystem.
We believe roughly these following steps are the safest course of action for the Ren ecosystem:
- Disable minting through Ren 1.0, while keeping burns enabled (bridged assets are always backed 1:1)
- After 30 days, shut down Ren 1.0
In parallell to the above:
- Deploy Ren 2.0 on testnet
- Test and harden the Ren 2.0 testnet together with the community
- Deploy Ren 2.0 on mainnet
We will additionally be transitioning away from the renproject.io domain which has been owned by Alameda. All current sites will be hosted on IPFS and control will be transferred over to the RenDAO moving forward.
How can you help?
The Ren development team is incredibly proud of the achievement of Ren 1.0, which has processed ~$13 billion in cross-chain volume since launch, enabling the liquid movement of assets between chains, all the while remaining 100% secure with no hacks.
The future is even brighter, as Ren 2.0 would be a paradigm shift in terms of the possibilities available to build truly native multichain applications, on the most secure and decentralized cross-chain platform in crypto. The Ren development team is fully committed into bringing this next evolution of the multichain future alive, and would be nothing but passionate and excited to do so, if the community chooses to support us.
We therefore encourage the Ren community to now more than ever engage in the discussions regarding funding and incentivizing Ren 2.0 deployment and its following ecosystem growth. Make your voices heard and propose your best ideas! With your help, we can transition to a fully community-run Ren network, and leave Alameda behind us.
And if anyone wants to reach out to the team directly, you can find us on Discord or DM us on Twitter!
