Sifchain Update: 1 Aug. — 7 Aug. 2021
Sifchain and IBC
We recently achieved 100% success with our load tests for IBC transfers between Sifchain’s internal testnet and the Cosmos Hub’s testnet. This took a substantial amount of chainops effort as the Cosmos SDK has notable RPC endpoint reliability issues that required a lot of custom configuration with limited precedence to identify issues. Fortunately, we’re able to learn from recent issues seen by other members of the community like this Cosmovisor node hang issue or this issue where IBC channels clash with chain upgrades.
We’re continuing load tests against other blockchains and finishing the wiring of the front-end to enable IBC transfers. This will enable QA to deploy several independent manual tests against a variety of user environments, the last step before we deploy IBC to BetaNet.
IBC Token Liquidity Mining Rewards
Once IBC launches, we’ll be incentivizing token pairs for all IBC tokens like ATOM and AKT with a liquidity mining program. Just as with our old liquidity mining program for Ethereum tokens prior to the CosmosSDK 0.39 upgrade, we’ll be providing a fixed amount of Rowan in a global bucket distributed according to a Token Geyser model. We expect to offer 10M Rowan in this bucket to target a 300%+ APY for IBC poolers over 6 weeks after IBC’s launch on Sifchain.
Some IBC token projects will also offer their own rewards on Sifchain as well, more details to come.
Dev Partnerships
IBC and CosmosSDK are themselves cutting edge technologies. Much of our ability to get through critical problems has come from communication with others who are also using the technology as the documentation is limited and the source code requires heavy customization from case to case. This has led to a strain on our chainops team.
Chainops is ideally a background service for feature engineers, as is its non-blockchain ancestor, devops. Developers should be able to write and test feature code in whatever environments they need without worrying about substantial environment deployments and configuration. To help us get to that ideal, we’ve reached out to several professional validation services in the Cosmos ecosystem to see if we can get our internal environments managed and upgraded by a dedicated 3rd party, allowing our team to focus more on engineering. Some of these 3rd parties have already been helping us debug key needs or are responsible for some of the libraries and tools we rely on.
Inflationary Block Rewards
Up until recently, Sifchain ran a validator subsidy program to incentivize users to validate or delegate on Sifchain. This program has ended, but a few days after IBC launches, Sifchain will turn on inflationary block rewards to compensate validators and delegators for their capital. These rewards are based on the Cosmos Hub’s inflationary block rewards model and will yield 7%-20% APR depending on the stake rate. We recommend Figment’s article for more details on how this works on the Cosmos Hub.
Community Pool Funding
We want to make sure the Sifchain community can fund its own initiatives to be self-sufficient in addressing its own desires for the project. Inflationary block rewards will increase funding for the community pool, making it a viable method for Sifchain’s community members to submit proposals for funding various projects. Sifchain’s ecosystem fund will seed the community pool after IBC launches so that we don’t need to wait for inflationary block rewards to accumulate to start on proposals.
Your Ideas are Welcome
We’re also collecting feedback and ideas from the community here. We’ve had a blast following up with users on the following ideas:
- Community liquidity omni-treasury fund
- add POND token to the dex
- Additional Incentive payouts for Cosmos
Make your voice heard on these or other issues!
Team Updates
Each week, Sifchain’s Engineering teams report progress of their top priorities. Here are this week’s updates:
Sifnode
What is the team working on?
Following last week’s upgrade to Cosmos v0.42, Sifnode continues coordination with the other Engineering teams to wrap up all remaining issues and test cases in preparation for IBC interoperability. The team remains on top of clearing any known bugs on the IBC-enabled testnet environment.
How does this feature help the Sifchain community?
Upgrading to CosmosSDK v0.42 is an important milestone, and brings us one step closer to enabling both Cosmos and Ethereum-based assets to be exchanged through the Sifchain DEX. Security in the connections between these massive ecosystems remains our primary focus, and extensive testing is being conducted.
Peggy
What is the team working on?
The Peggy team maintains focus on supporting the added features and capabilities that come as part of the IBC-enabled future of Sifchain. Top priorities are reviewing, auditing and testing smart contract changes that activate support for double pegging IBC and ethereum assets as well as simplifying the implementation of whitelisted tokens that will go-live in the first weeks of Sifchain’s IBC-enabled DEX. Peggy team members not working on IBC are focused on Peggy 2.0 smart contracts, relayer and sifnode changes.
How does this feature help the Sifchain community?
Beginning with a whitelist of IBC-enabled tokens allows for a more graceful introduction of connections that should prove to not only simplify the user experience as executing cross-chain operations become more familiar but also help to ensure greater network stability and monitoring coverage as access to greater volumes of unlocked liquidity traverse the ecosystem. Peggy 2.0 will help Sifchain gather liquidity from multiple different EVM based chains.
Chainops
What is the team working on?
Relayers and channels have been stood up between Sifchain and additional Cosmos-based tokens and we are now conducting further environment setup by running full nodes on every network with which we plan to connect for IBC launch. To this end, monitoring and diagnostics are in flight to address and resolve any issues related to these connection points between various networks.
How does this feature help the Sifchain community?
Relayers and channels need to be established for every supported network in order for Sifchain to connect to several blockchains through IBC. Integrating our own resources into the networks with which we will be supporting interoperability is also important so that we have greater visibility and controls with regards to these active channels.
Frontend
What is the team working on?
As the upgrade to an IBC-enabled Sifchain DEX approaches, the team is polishing the enhanced interface design and is working through the testing of moving IBC native assets through Sifchain and onto Ethereum.
How does this feature help the Sifchain community?
With IBC enabled, token holders from both Ethereum and Cosmos will be able to take advantage of the benefits of one chain while holding a position on a token native to another, bringing us one step closer to Sifchain’s mission of connecting liquidity on all blockchains. The Sifchain DEX frontend will be the primary destination for executing these cross-chain operations so it is important that the interface is intuitive and runs smoothly.
Testing
What is the team working on?
Similar to last week, all development pertaining to the deployment of our IBC enabled network goes through rigorous testing and security analysis and the Testing team is coordinating cross-functional efforts with internal teams and external partners. Security audits are coming back and the team is clearing outstanding flags.
How does this feature help the Sifchain community?
Major changes are being made to the Sifchain codebase. Extensive end-to-end testing needs to be carefully performed and employing best practices should allow for a successful deployment.
Data Services
What is the team working on?
The Data Team continues with experimentations and code amendments related to the margin trading feature in development. Peer reviews and cryptoeconomic analysis are being performed to refine experimentation strategies and edge case behavior. Other progress has been made with finalizing the implementation of removing the c prefix from token denoms in Sifchain as well as with updates to endpoints that were necessary for accommodating the IBC launch.
How does this feature help the Sifchain community?
As Margin Trading is the next major feature to be implemented after IBC integration is completed, extensive simulation on relevant code needs to be performed. Endpoint updates allow for the broader tech community to leverage Sifchain’s tech.
Decentralized Exchange (DEX)
We welcome traders and developers to give feedback and participate in our network! The best ways to join our community are Telegram, Github, and Discord.
For now, in order to take full advantage of the Sifchain DEX, you must have a Keplr wallet for managing assets on Sifchain and a MetaMask wallet for managing assets on Ethereum. Check out our usage guide article, video tutorials, and “getting started” documentation!
Validator and Delegator Rewards
It should take half an hour to set yourself up as a validator. Sifchain has been running a validator subsidy program that started on February 19, 2021, at 5:00 AM GMT alongside the launch of BetaNet. You’ll see details about this incentive program in the BetaNet usage guide article. Delegation is a great way to earn validator income without running your own validator. You can do so in Keplr.
Validator in a Box: Plug and Play Passive Income Generator
Running a Sifchain Validator on Kubernetes (K8S)
Liquidity and Swapping Rewards
Sifchain allows users to swap any asset on any bridged chain (like Ethereum) for any other assets. Liquidity providers can add liquidity into Sifchain’s liquidity pools where they earn income. Check out our article about swapping and our article about liquidity pooling!
Get in Touch with Sifchain
Official Channels
Media & content creators, contact us at communications@sifchain.finance.
