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Cosmos Club with Neutron
Recorded: March 28, 2023 Duration: 1:01:39Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the club. I can see Mockhunters is with us already. I will give you an invite to speak. Hello, hello, everyone. If you have any issues, Mockhunters, I can see Neutron is with us.
Spade is probably coming on in a moment. Anyways, what an exciting time to be in Cosmos, huh? There are so many things going on, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, momentarily. I can see Mockhunters. Yeah.
Hello, please send Sam as a speaker. He will be speaking.
Yes. Sam is...
He is our CTO. 5am.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One second.
I believe Sam, you were able to speak now also? I can see the speaker icon at least.
Yes. Hi. Thank you for having me.
Beautiful. Welcome, Sam. Welcome to the club.
It's nice to be here. Thank you.
Just a second, guys. We're just getting...
There's a lot of people today, so just making sure everyone has the link.
Well, that's actually Spade is asking for the link.
Man, Spade is just a busy man.
All right. I can see Spade is here also.
And I just approved your request to speak, Spade. I think you're able to now.
Hey, folks. Can you hear me?
Yes. Loud and clear.
Okay. On a scale of 0 to 10, how much of a laggy robot do I sound like this time?
You sound good to me. But yeah, I know connectivity has been a worry of yours.
Yeah, I had to... I was traveling last week. I was in Cambodia and, you know, I was in a hotel, so you would think that they would have Wi-Fi and stuff.
But it seemed like I got the room that was farthest away from the router or something because it was tricky to just, like, load a web page.
So that was an interesting week, to say the least.
The last space we did, I ended up, like, literally just standing in the middle of the road outside of the hotel trying to get some 5G on a prepaid, like, SIM card that started running out, like, during the space.
So then I had to run back towards the restaurant where there was, like, some degree of Wi-Fi to top it up with my credit card while also being on the space and trying to answer questions and then running back into the middle of the road.
It was a bit of a nightmare.
Damn. The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed, huh?
Yeah, never rang so true.
Never rang so true.
But you're coming through loud and clear here, so I hope you have a less stressful space this time.
Yeah, that'd be good for a while, for a change.
For sure.
I'm not sure if soy2studio, he requested, but then he took it back, I think.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yep.
He's...
Should I add him, or...?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Soy is our community manager.
I think he can speak also.
But yeah, great.
I can see people are piling in, so that's awesome.
I think there's a lot of interest in this topic, for sure.
Both for Cosmos Hub, obviously Neutron, and how validators are helping out with Blockhunter.
So, yeah, a lot of things to talk about.
But before we do, perhaps Spade, you can just give a little intro to who is Spade and how did you end up working with and for Neutron?
Yeah, that's a good question, I guess.
So, yeah, I'm Spade.
I'm the general manager of Neutron.
So what I do is I basically spend 95% of my life just going on my computer and trying to figure out how to make the best small contract platform in Cosmos.
And I have gotten to this point because something like in 2016, 2017, I had lost faith in the financial system.
I was pretty bullish on privacy and stuff, although, you know, clearly that's not such a relevant thesis anymore with public ledgers.
But anyway, you know, I had all of these beliefs and I found out something that was called Bitcoin and that, you know, that tickled my interest.
And so I started reading about it, found it really, really cool because it would disintermediate like transfers of value.
Interesting. And then I found out about Ethereum, which would basically which was basically promising to do the same to any sort of interaction that you could program with computer code.
And then that was even more interesting. And so that kind of like hooked up my interest.
I started being pretty active in the space, although not very visible at the time.
I stuck with it for quite a few years. And then when DeFi Summer started, that's when I became very, very active.
I started contributing to a few of the DAOs that were emerging, eventually got priced out of ETH as as you should.
I ended up, you know, remaining active off chain around ETH, but also started like engaging more with Cosmos and Terra's at the time, since that was where DeFi was most active in Cosmos.
That got me to eventually join the Lido DAO as initially the community manager for Lido and Terra.
And from there on, you know, we we built a protocol that was pretty successful at the time that was very exciting.
Obviously, Terra itself didn't do so well. And so.
Well, the whole, well, when the crash kind of happened, it actually was kind of like a release moment, because a lot of the things that we had been researching and working on, namely, how do you build a cross chain protocol in Cosmos that can actually, you know, scale to the.
width of this ecosystem of 50 plus interconnected blockchains in a way that's manageable where you don't have to, you know, take the same small contracts, readapt them every time or or have to coordinate, you know, hundreds of.
Of entities at every time you want to roll out an update to the protocol.
And, you know, we found solutions on how to do this, on how to make very successful, secure, useful, convenient to use protocols.
But the problem was that there was no place where where such protocol could be could be deployed at the time.
And so that that brought us to think, well, well, well, look, maybe that's the issue that exists currently in Cosmos that that we should be working to solve, essentially.
And so, you know, around right around that time where we were forming the idea that, look, this is something that's a blocker in this ecosystem.
And that's something that perhaps we can help with.
We were looking at technical solutions to alleviate these concerns.
We had a pretty good idea of the infrastructure that needed to be built, interchain accounts, interchain accounts compatible with small contracts, interchain queries.
And we wanted to figure out, OK, what's how are we going to provide the highest degree of security to these apps as well?
Because, you know, especially when you're talking about large financial applications, they need to have the confidence that the deposits and whatever value is being handled by the protocol is not going to be captured, exploited and the like.
And so security was a very important piece as well as credible neutrality.
And while, you know, while we were hammering out how to solve that problem, we we dove deeper into the idea of interchain security, replicated security.
And that was the ideal solution to us.
It provided alignment with the Cosmos Hub and through the Cosmos Hub to the rest of Cosmos as an ecosystem.
It provided a really high degree of security and it allowed us to, you know, build that chain and the infrastructure that we thought was required to fix this problem in Cosmos.
And so, you know, it was kind of like the stars align and a few days after we kind of formed this whole idea in our head, Yelena and others came to the forums and posted Prop 72, which was saying, hey, we're planning the release of this technology to the Cosmos Hub.
And to make sure that it, you know, starts with a bang, we'd like to find three really interesting projects to take it to market.
And we're ready to to support these projects and provide some Adam funding as well.
And so we were like, well, look, OK, this is what we want to build.
They want us to like they want people that will build on their technology.
We want to build on their technology.
So let's just do this.
And that's that's how Neetron started.
You know, the rest is pretty much history, because after this, we kind of, you know, we weren't in stealth anymore in this project that we were thinking about.
And we just started engaging more and more with people.
I think we did a pretty good job at building everything that we wanted to build, which is now ready and audited and, you know, run on testnet.
And we're now getting to the final stages of things where we've made our proposal to launch the product on replicated security.
And hopefully, if everything goes well, you know, it will be live in Cosmos next month.
So it's kind of a hell of a journey, to be honest.
Right on. Right on.
And I'm sure it's only the beginning of a long and exciting journey.
We will talk about the proposal in a moment, I'm sure.
But we got Sam also with us from Block Hunters.
Perhaps, Sam, you can also just introduce yourself briefly and a little bit of your background, and then we'll dive straight into Neutron and the proposal.
Yeah, thanks.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to introduce ourselves.
Yeah, so we, as a validator, we've been active in this space, starting with 2020.
But more recently, we've expanded our reach, and we joined the Cosmos network last summer, and we're currently validating across 30 or more main networks, like Cosmos, Axelar, Sommelier, Evmos, and so on.
And, yeah, we are eagerly awaiting for Neutron and basically smart contracts on closely related to the Cosmos Hub, because, yeah, the Prop 59 that was rejected last year was a signal that things need to go in a different way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, go ahead.
No, ask me, let me know if there is anything more I need to say about us, but that's about it for me.
I think we will come back to also the role that block hunters have played in making Neutron a reality.
Well, let's talk about the proposal.
So you have a proposal up on the forum.cosmos.network.
The link is in the red, I think, for this space or so, for anyone who hasn't seen it.
It's been up for about a week.
Of course, by protocol rules, you need to be approved by governance in order for this to see the light on Cosmos Hub and get launched.
So, yeah, just perhaps talk to us.
I guess that's a question for you, Spade.
How has it gone with the proposal and how has the feedback been so far?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I think, honestly, it's been going very well.
I think, generally, most people are very excited about the launch of Neutron.
There have been a lot of questions, obviously, about the nitty gritty details of the implementation and how Neutron will work with the Cosmos Hub and some tokenomics details.
That's very understandable and legitimate.
You know, more information will be released before the proposal is submitted on chain, obviously.
So there's a limited amount that we can say at this point.
But, you know, these questions make sense.
We're looking forward to provide answers to all of them if we haven't already.
And, you know, it's been exciting to see that, like, roughly speaking, people are pretty hyped about the project, which is honestly great to see because we have dedicated a lot of work and efforts over the last nine months or so to, you know, building this as quickly and as best as possible.
And it is great to see that that people understand what we're what we're trying to do, at least from a high level point of view.
So, you know, I'm pretty, pretty excited about all this.
And perhaps unfold that a bit for, I mean, a lot of people in the community of Cosmos fanatics and cosmonauts, but they don't perhaps follow the ecosystem and proposals as closely as we do.
Maybe just walk us through what the proposal is about, what do you intend to do if I am to vote yes?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
So to go really to the basics, replicated security is a technology that allows the Cosmos hub to secure another chain using its validator set and the atom staked on the Cosmos hub.
But obviously that is, you know, that is an important thing that the hub may or may not do for another project.
And so before before a chain can be launched on replicated security, the Cosmos hub community needs to make an educated decision about whether or not that project should, you know, have that close relationship with the hub essentially.
And so the proposal is there to provide very detailed information about the project itself.
Like, what is it, what does it do, what it, like, how does it intend to work with the hub, add functionality, add, like, participate in building what people have been referring to as the atom economics zone, this idea of kind of like a micro ecosystem within the broader Cosmos that would be closely related to the hub.
So, you know, what, what's, what's the project itself, what does it do, and how does it relate to the hub, how does it pay for the service as well, because there is a, there is a cost associated with replicated security, because it requires validators to run additional nodes for the consumer chains.
And so that obviously creates infrastructure costs as well. And so there needs to be, you know, it needs to be a win-win scenario, basically. And so the hub will provide the security, the validator set and the stake, and the consumer chain needs to provide some benefits to the hub as well.
And these benefits can be, um, very diverse depending on the projects, what they do, how they're structured, how they're built, who's building them, like how decentralized they are, whatever.
In general, there are three mechanisms by which, like three straightforward mechanisms by which consumer chains can, can, um, add value to the hub as a reward for securing them.
Um, these are by sharing some sort of revenue, whether they're transaction fees that are, that are used to limit spam on the blockchain, or MED, which is, um, the, a way to mitigate the negative externalities of the power that exists when you can order the transactions within a block.
Um, so there are systems like auctions that allow us to make this more decentralized, um, and the revenue that that generates can also be shared with the hub.
There's various other types of fees that may be involved depending on the project themselves.
For example, projects like, um, um, stable coin issuer may charge a, um, a fee on minting or redempt or redemptions of stable coins, and that can also be shared with the hub.
Um, so that, that's the first kind of like mechanism, which is sharing whatever fees exists in, in the blockchains, um, incentive model.
Um, the other element would be if the token, uh, if the chain has a token, then it may allocate some of that voting power, some of that, um, portion of the, of the tokens to the hub in, you know, many different ways.
Um, airdrops are one, um, sharing, you know, having inflation and sharing that inflation with the hub is another system.
Token swaps are another system, which is probably a really good one because it kind of solves, um, problems for both the hub and the consumer chains.
Meaning that the, um, I think one of the main worries that people have voiced is that what if a consumer chain, um, comes to replicated security, bootstraps with it, becomes pretty successful and then leaves, right?
Token swaps solve this issue to a pretty good extent because they ensure that whatever happens, um, the hub will have upside in, in that consumer chain, right?
And so even if it leaves, um, the hub still has tokens, it still has upside from it.
So it has better incentives alignment in the sense that, um, whatever is best for the project is what's best for the hub because it, it has a financial incentive basically to, um, to, to let the consumer chain, um, evolve as needed.
Um, and there's, um, um, on the other side, there's also benefit for the consumer chain because while it is selling or exchanging its tokens for like at, at, at, at their very early, um, valuations, um, it's, it's getting Atom in exchange that can be used to bootstrap the initial liquidity of the chain.
Um, so that, that's another mechanism that I think may be, um, popular in the Atom economic zone in the future as well.
It has technical, like, like complexities of how do you do this, like securely, trustlessly, um, through governance, um, all of these things, but I'm, I'm pretty sure that technological solutions will be developed for this pretty shortly.
Um, so yeah, there, there's like multiple, uh, mechanisms by which consumer chains may allocate or share, um, their, like tokens or voting power into the, into their projects to, with the Cosmos hub and, or its community and, or its community.
Um, um, and then the last mechanism would be, um, um, how does the chain, meaning, you know, either its ecosystem, its, uh, application, um, add value or utility to Atom itself.
And so that, that, that, that can be, um, um, a lot of, um, a lot of things as well, because it is very hard to measure, um, the appreciation that a, a project may, uh, provide to, um, Atom.
Um, Atom, because, like, like, it's difficult to observe in, in, in the market itself, it's difficult to identify which part of the price is, is really, is linked to a specific project, basically.
But, um, you know, providing what new ways to use Atom, um, providing demand, like reasons why people want to, you know, get Atom, um, do something with it and hold on to it.
Um, providing ways for protocols to, um, use Atom in their treasuries, um, even burning Atom would be possible in, in some cases.
Um, you know, there, there's, like, a whole range of, of ways that, that can happen.
And there's also the, you know, more abstract concepts, like the narrative strength, right?
Like replicated security is, um, understandably perceived as one of the most important things happening to the hub specifically, um, these days, um, in, in, in Cosmos.
And so, you know, the, the success of that and the success of the ecosystem that will, um, hopefully emerge, um, through this technology is also something that will probably, to a large extent,
affect the narrative around Atom and, and the hub itself.
Um, and it also may participate to stabilizing some of the, um, some of the tokenomic elements of, of Atom, like inflation over time.
Um, I, I don't, you know, like, I don't think replicated security will, will solve all of the hub's problems overnight, but it, it can definitely be a significant part of, um, of the solution.
So the, that, that, that would be kind of like what we call the security agreement, part of the proposal.
So to recap, you have, um, information about the project, information about the security agreement and information about the technical, um, like the content of the, of that project.
Basically, what is the code?
What does it, like, how is it built?
What does it leverage?
What does it offer?
Um, has it been audited?
What are validator, um, supposed to be aware of before that train goes live so that they can take that code and, and successfully run nodes for it?
So there, there's a bunch of technical information as well.
Perfect.
And yeah, just to address a question that a lot of people is asking, not just, uh, during a space like this, but in general, what's in it for the hub or what's in it for an Adam staker, which, uh, most people are, uh, interested in, at least when we talk about the, the customer stuff.
And with your proposal, basically you're sharing 25% of the transaction fees on the Neutron network.
And now you've also added, uh, 25% of the new revenue that's been captured, uh, by a Neutron.
So that's sort of 25% of all those fees and transactions going back to Adam stakers by Neutron in exchange, replicating the security and tapping into the security that is set up in the hub.
Uh, just to get that out, get that clear for everybody.
But we won't have replicated security without validators coming on board.
So I just want to sort of pass the mic perhaps over to, uh, Sam, because, uh, I think something that a lot of people don't really think about or, yeah, consider a problem perhaps is that, uh, as you also said, Spade, validators need to be on board, first of all, and they have to spin up additional nodes to be able to make replicated security a, uh, a reality, right?
So perhaps, uh, Sam, you can talk from a validators, validators perspective, how, how it is, like, walk us through perhaps the process and yeah, how you guys are adopting to all these consumer chains starting to come in the hub.
Um, yeah, well, uh, so keeping in line with the current, uh, with the current topic, um, our, uh, I don't know, our question would, our main question, our first question would be about, um, the launching phase of the Neutron, of the Neutron blockchain as a consumer chain.
Because, uh, yeah, uh, eventually the fees may add up to the costs that, uh, are implied for, for us as validators, but, uh, in, in the beginning, the fees will be very low and, uh, will probably, uh, not cover, uh, not even one or five percent of our, of our initial costs.
How does Neutron plan to, um, to incentivize validators, uh, and, uh, to, to sustain these, uh, these additional costs?
Yeah, that, that's a really good question.
I think there's, um, there's quite a few things.
Um, the, the first thing is, like, you're right in the current, um, system of replicated security.
Um, there's a mismatch in, in timing for when the cost appears, which is, you know, from the get-go, as soon as the chain launches, you have to run a node, and so you have that additional cost.
And when the revenue starts really flowing in, which, you know, obviously depends on the adoption and, and how used the projects that have been launched are.
Um, and so there's multiple ways to, to go about this.
The first one is, um, to some extent, the hub is investing in these projects.
And so, um, some of the losses that are incurred by consumer chains may be offset by either allocations of Atom or the profits, um, from, you know, existing, um, like, validator operations.
Because consumer chains obviously have a role to play here as well.
And I think, you know, initial allocations of tokens, um, such as the one that, um, is, is being proposed by the foundation is, um, is part of that as well, right?
It's the recognition that we want to distribute, um, voting power into the chain, um, very early on.
And, um, that, that if it has a monetary value may also be by the validators in order to cover some of their expenses.
The other thing is that there is, it took a while before interest in security was really researched as a technology on the topic of its, like, its, um, economic model essentially.
And so since that has started, I think the, the, the clarity on how, on how exactly like replicated security is going to affect validators has progressed quite a lot.
And as a result of this, we've seen a bunch of initiatives kind of like start to address the potential problems that are created by this mismatch between cost and revenue.
And some of them are changing the way that the revenue is distributed or changing is the, like, or allowing more flexibility, uh, for the validators or reducing the cost for the validators.
So the first one would be reducing cost, right?
If, um, like depending on how you run your setup, um, the, the cost of running a node, um, can vary pretty widely depending on how much redundancy you have, the complexity of the infrastructure that you're deploying,
the quality of the, you know, are you using, um, are you using, um, cloud hosting or are you using bare metal servers, um, engineering?
Sorry, sorry, given we are, uh, uh, uh, our Cosmos validator is, is, uh, also at stake, uh, to say, like, to say like that, uh, we, we, uh, I think most of validators,
most of the validators will want to have the most secure environment with, uh, uh, probably bare metal hosted in house, uh, and, uh, a couple of, uh, extra sentries, uh, and a couple of sentries, uh, and a couple of sentries, which will, uh, go for it in, in the high end of costs.
So, um, it's going to be pretty hard to reduce the, to reduce the costs in this, uh, in this way.
Yeah, I mean, I, I actually really like the, the, the setup that you've described, and I think that that's a really good thing, and that's definitely what we want to, um, to, to make possible to, to sustain, um, definitely.
The reality, though, is that, like, there are validators who literally run on a computer, um, like, well, not a shitty computer, but a computer, um, in, in their house, or in a cheap, like, cloud hosting, and that has a very, like, a very different kind of, like, cost profile.
Yeah, but I, I agree with you, like, the, the, the setup that you described is what we should be aiming for in terms of the infrastructure that is used to power these networks.
So, definitely, that, that's where we want to be, um, that being said, like, there, there are stuff, like, for example, you know, like, on, on the hub, if I remember correctly, you can miss up to, what is it, like, 10,000 blocks or 9,000 something, uh, before you get slashed, before you get jailed, right?
Yes, uh, I don't know the, the, the, the, the, the specific numbers, but about, uh, you, you can miss one or two days.
Oh, last time I checked, I think it was, like, about 16 hours, basically, um.
Uh, you can miss, uh, 9, 9,500 blocks out of 10,000.
Um, and so, one of the, one of the ways that, potentially, this can be, um, reduced is, like, is by, like, you, if you have to troubleshoot your nodes at very quickly, then that means you need to be there around the clock, right?
That potentially has, as a cost.
So, if you reduce the speed at which validators get punished for downtime and, and stuff like this, you potentially relax the expectations in terms of monitoring and, or, um, having somebody who's present, um, at any time in the day, that may, uh, lead to some pulse reduction.
I do, like, I do agree, though, that this is not the, the main thing that we use in order to, there's alternatives.
Like, for example, one of the, um, like, the, so, like, like, the first thing is, like, reducing cost, right?
I think this will become more apparent with, um, with further research.
The second thing would be, um, to reduce the burden on the smaller, on the smallest validators, because what we see is that the revenue of Cosmos Hub is distributed based on how much stake you are, you have, right?
So, if there's $100 and you have 3% of the stake, you'll get 300, like, you'll get three of these dollars.
If you have 0.01%, then you'll get, um, you know, one cent, basically.
And so, that means, for the top validators, when consumer chains are muddled, they're actually making quite a bit of money pretty quickly, and, you know, break-even is not really a problem for them.
Compensating for the price of running that additional infrastructure is not really a problem.
Um, what, where, where that is a problem is at the bottom of the validator set, where you have large profit margins from running a validator for the hub, and, um, and therefore, you have much more financial pressure on the operators, um, because consumer chains and the added cost, right?
So, informal is working on what they call the soft opt-out feature, which would essentially allow, um, validators from a set percentage of the bottom, um, vote of power to not be jailed ever for downtime.
And what that means is that, basically, let's say I'm validator number 175, um, if, if the cost of, um, of running a chain would make me go bankrupt, I can just decide not to run a node.
The counter on that consumer chain for my, uh, missed blocks will continue to go up, but I will never get jailed on the Cosmos hub, meaning that I can effectively continue validating the Cosmos hub and not the consumer chain.
Um, the, the, the, the thing with this feature is that, you know, initially it was believed that, um, the subset problem would make, um, partial ICS adoption and secure it.
The proposed solution by, by informal here is that it only applies to the bottom of the validator set, and it only applies to the extent of a percentage of the voting power that's chosen by the consumer.
So, um, for example, let's say Neutron decided that 5% or 10% of the, of the validators of the voting power, sorry, um, will not be, like, jailed for downtime.
Then that means that a large number of the bottom validators are not required to, um, to run the chain.
And so if they don't have the financial, they don't have to, I think the current version still provides rewards, um, proportional to the voting power.
So that is basically, um, you know, get, get revenue or like a little bit of additional revenue from the consumer chain, but no need to, they don't need to run the chain.
Um, exactly how that's implemented can evolve over time and, and become more refined, but what that would make, like, what that would do is that it would significantly lower the burden of launching the first consumer chains while all of these things are figured out.
And while the first consumer chains, um, drop and start like generating revenue basically, and this can be, um, bold over time.
Um, the last thing as well is changing how we just like how the customers hub distribute revenue, because as we've said, like currently the, the revenue is distributed based on how much stake, how much voting power you have.
And so what that does is that because the stake is quite concentrated towards the top of the validator set, if the consumer chain is, is generating pretty good revenue.
Um, you, um, you still have a situation in which the top of the validator set is making pretty good amounts of money, but the bottom of the validator set is only getting the crumbs of that revenue.
And so an, an alternative idea, um, which is actually being explored currently as well.
Um, I think as far as I know is the idea of a stipend, which is instead of distributing the revenue based on stake initially,
we first distribute the revenue up to a certain threshold, uh, be it, let's say like $1,000 per month or, or whatever is, is required to achieve break even across the set linearly to all validators.
Meaning that at first we don't stake weight, we just distribute equally to all validators until we know that they are breaking even, that they have enough money to cover their operations.
And then once that's achieved and we know that we're not putting financial pressures on the validators, um, then we return to the general mechanism of stake weighted distribution to reward, um, having more stake.
Basically what that does is that it also, um, um, removes the pressure on small validators because they know that as long as the consumer chain is generating some revenue, they'll, they'll get a large share of this, basically one, um, one divided by 100, 175% of like a 75.
Um, and so, you know, it, it, it, it, it allows consumer chains to sustain the cost of ICS much faster than if they had to achieve break even on the smallest validators, despite the, the imbalance in how fees are distributed, basically.
Okay. So what I'm trying to say here is that there's a lot of levers, a lot of parameters that we can, um, use to make ICS more economically sustainable and, and approachable for validators, um, and, and consumer chains.
Um, and so as a result of this, it's like, there definitely are challenges and there, there will be challenges with the adoption of this technology on the technological and on the economical and probably on the political side as well.
Um, but there's, there's, there's a lot of tools that we can mobilize in order to solve this, these issues as they come up.
And what I think I'm pretty, um, happy about is that like, clearly this is now a topic that everybody, um, has in mind and is aware of.
And so that, that gives me pretty high degree of confidence that, um, it will be addressed basically.
Like we, we won't be, uh, putting the, the, the, the, the cosmos subsolider set under duress unnecessarily, um, for an extended period of time.
There may be a few rough patches while these things are refined, but, uh, I'm pretty hopeful that this, the, the solution that we'll end up with is, is going to be pretty plus EV for everybody, basically.
Okay.
Uh, these are some pretty interesting solutions.
Thank you for, uh, thank you for, for providing them.
Uh, one last question that, uh, I have and, uh, missed asking it.
Um, what would, uh, the slashing parameters on, uh, Neutron be, uh, will you keep the, the rules from Cosmos hub, like, uh, 5% in the last 10,000 blocks or is it going to have some specific new rules?
Uh, that, that's a really good question actually.
So in replicated security, you have this thing called, uh, the, the, the white listed parameters, which basically says what parameters can be changed by the consumer chain and what parameters can only be changed by the Cosmos hub.
And slashing is, um, is, is, is part of that basically.
Um, so Neutron cannot fully autonomously decide from one day to the other to change, um, how it's going to punish validators.
That's the first thing, like, that's actually a parameter that the Cosmos hub itself controls.
The second thing is that the current version of replicated security has recently been updated to protect validators from slashing.
While we, um, while we, um, wait for an update, um, because the current version, what it did is that when the consumer chain, um, sees that a validator has, um, you know, misbehaved double signed or missed a very large number of blocks, it produces a proof and it sends that proof to the Cosmos hub.
The Cosmos hub sees that proof and then it can trigger the, the slashing as a result, right?
That's a very important part of what makes, um, replicated security capable of securing chains, basically.
The problem is that in the current version, the hub doesn't have a mechanism, a, a cryptographic solution to check that this proof is honest, that the validator actually misbehaved on the chain and that the chain isn't just trying to slash validators for fun, basically.
Okay, like the slasher chain from Game of Chains, right?
Yeah, exactly.
So the hub so far doesn't have a mechanism to check this, right?
And so that created a risk, um, a very small risk because all of these chains can be, you know, like they are reviewed, they are, the, the, the code base are open source, they're audited.
And so these would be caught before they're launched most probably, but just in case to really make sure that that doesn't happen, um, the replicated security was updated.
So that for a validator to be slashed for double signing on a chain, not only does the consumer chain need to make a proof that this double signing happened and send it to the hub, but then the hub community needs to make a proposal that says, Hey, look, here's this proof.
If we've checked, um, with, you know, the data on the consumer chain, that validator actually misbehaved, let's vote to slash that validator to punish the, um, to punish the, the, the malicious behavior, basically.
Um, and so that means that unless the Cosmos hub community makes a vote, that's called an equivocation proposal, uh, unless the community, the Cosmos hub community actually votes for you to be slashed, you won't be slashed.
Um, the other thing is that there's no slashing for downtime on consumer chains.
Um, and so the only punishment for not doing great job, uh, as a validator on a consumer chain currently is, uh, you can get jailed for 10 minutes on every,
um, on every node.
So that means, um, your Cosmos hub node, as well as all of the consumer chain nodes that you're running, um, meaning that you don't get rewards for 10 minutes and you have to make a transaction afterwards to un-jail yourself.
And that's only if you miss, um, you know, the upper limit of the, the missed blocks.
Um, so if you go down for, let's say two days, um, you're going to be jailed.
And when you go back and you, oh, my node is offline, um, and you turn it back on, you'll just make a transaction and un-jail yourself.
Um, so that's the only risk to the validators currently in the future, um, there will be the untrusted protocol upgrade, uh, which basically provides the hub with the ability to check that the proofs sent by the consumer chains, um, are, are honest, that they're true and that the validators actually misbehaved so that the equivocation proposal is not required anymore.
Um, and, and the hub can verify, um, and, and the hub can verify slashes before it, it slashes anyone.
Awesome.
I'm not sure, Sam, if you have more questions from a validator point of view.
Uh, uh, no, not really.
I just wanted to thank Spade for, for his, uh, for his pretty clear answers and, uh, clarifications.
Yeah, for sure.
Very thorough.
I have a question.
Like, as a validator, um, knowing all of what we've just discussed, um, how, how do you feel about interchain security?
Like, are you worried you're gonna be, like, losing money or getting slashed or whatever?
Or do you feel like, actually, this is, this is being reasonable?
Well, we were already enthusiastic about interchain security and looking forward to it, even though we had some worries.
Um, but you've cleared some of them out, especially the slashing, uh, the, the, the slashing part.
Because, yeah, uh, some accidents, uh, uh, with the more and more consumer chains appear, the risk of accidents grows exponentially.
So, um, I don't know, one chain goes down and, uh, you, uh, you delete the pre-validator state JSON and, uh, your validators, your, your validator double signs by mistake.
Uh, if that kind of risk is mitigated, um, our worries are lessened.
Yeah, that makes complete sense.
Yeah, I, I agree.
And I think it especially makes sense for, you know, this initial period where we're taking this, um, technology to, to production.
And obviously, as I said, like, there's, you know, everybody needs to get used to it and, and, and develop the processes and tools to make it easier, uh, as time goes on.
So I think it makes sense to have this kind of like very low risk environment initially when we start just, just to provide like everybody, a clear idea of kind of like what's the risk reward for ICS.
Um, if you're a validator, you do have some cost, which, which we've talked about.
Um, so infrastructure costs, labor costs, and everything, you have some risk, which is not slashing, um, unless you do, um, misbehave.
And then you, there's a proposal on the hub to slash you because you misbehaved, extra, extra.
It seems very unlikely at this point.
It's very rare in general, but also because there needs to be a proposal about it, it's very unlikely that you'll be slashed.
And then there's being jailed.
So if you really let your node not be live for a long time, then potentially you can miss rewards for 10 minutes.
In terms of rewards, you get commissions on all of the consumer chain revenue that's being generated.
So for validators, you know, like it's, it's a question and I'm looking forward to additional like technologies and work being done to make it an even better deal than it currently is.
For delegators, it's pretty straightforward.
As a delegator, there is no cost for you to, uh, onboard a new chain to replicated security.
Um, there is only the, you know, the, well, the slashing risk mitigated by the equivocation proposal, so very low risk.
Um, and then there's also the, um, the jailing.
So you may lose 10 minutes of rewards if your validator goes down or more if it doesn't tries to injail itself.
Um, but on the reward side, you get most of the revenue from the consumer chain.
And so for delegators, I think it's, um, it's pretty clear cut that replicated security is,
is, is pretty good because you have very, um, there are very limited technical, uh, factors that could negatively impair you.
Um, and you get the revenue from, from the chain plus any token allocation, plus any appreciation of the price of add-on and stuff.
Speaking of, uh, uh, delegators and users for that matter, the question that, uh, keeps popping up here is, uh, how would the user experience be?
Like, what is, uh, is it dissimilar to what we know from different app chains or will it be a different user experience using, uh, Neutron?
Yeah, that's actually a really good question.
So there's, there's, there's a few things, right?
Um, the first thing is that Neutron as a, uh, project, as a platform, as an infrastructure, um, piece, um, is mostly something where you'll only see the differences if you're a developer and you're using this infrastructure to build applications.
Right. You, you will, it will change your life because it will make it much easier for you to retrieve data from other chains to like for your applications or to control stuff on other blockchains from Neutron.
If you're a user, um, these, you know, like as a user, I don't use interesting accounts, uh, at all, actually not, not like not frequently.
I just don't use them. They're not made for me. They're a piece of infrastructure.
Sure. So, you know, the, the value proposition of Neutron is not going to be directly visible to the user, but it's, um, in that the user is not going to interact with these features directly, but it will be directly visible in how it simplifies the cross-chain experience basically.
Because currently let's say, you know, I'm on X chain and I want to go and provide liquidity on osmosis.
I have to bridge my assets, swap them, deposit them in liquid, in a liquidity pool, and then bond the tokens.
Right.
With Neutron, you can make a very simple small contract that will use Neutron's infrastructure, use Neutron's technology to do all of these things in just one transaction.
So that, you know, you just say what you want to do and then the small contracts and the infrastructure does it for you.
So you only, you know, you go to your wallet, you sign one transaction and that's done.
You just, you just wait for the confirmation and that, that you're done basically.
Um, so I, I think that's going to be a major UX change in how we use the inch chain because suddenly it will be possible to use applications from all across cosmos without having to constantly change the chain that you're using in your wallet, signing multiple transactions, bridging back and forth.
All of this will get abstracted away from you.
You won't need to have to do all of this manual work and it will be put into the application and to the infrastructure layer.
Basically these, the technology will do the work for you.
Um, yeah, that's the way the, the, the, the customer's up becomes the one-stop shop, the hub as, uh, as we like to say, right, uh, name, the hub actually becomes, uh, sort of meaningful to, uh, to be the place where you actually do stuff with the consumer chains, at least.
Um, yeah.
So talk, so talk to us about the timeline here or the rollout, because, uh, I believe you are planning to launch end of April.
So, um, but yeah, talk to us about the roadmap from here.
Yeah, for sure.
So, uh, you know, we've always emphasized a lot on security.
So whenever we, uh, get ready to push some code publicly, we, we really want to make sure that we're doing anything that we can to ensure that, um, we're not putting out vulnerability, like vulnerable code, basically.
Um, so we've been testing, reviewing, um, running test nets on Neutron's core code.
We've been, um, getting it audited a second time as well.
Um, the core components of Neutron, so like it's Cosmos SDK modules, it's, um, you know, it's interesting accounts, interesting queries, interesting security.
All of this has been, um, audited twice by Oak Security and now by Informal Systems.
That part of the audit has been completed.
What we're waiting for right now is we developed, like initially we were planning to, um, we were planning with the roadmap where replicated security would be live in January.
Um, and so we, you know, we limited what we included in the roadmap, um, but that didn't happen.
And that gave us more time to develop additional features to make the launch of Neutron more exciting, but also to make Neutron a better place for developers, um, to build applications.
And so we, um, we use that time to develop, you know, token factory, um, multi hops, um, IDC hooks.
And if you're not a developer, that probably doesn't speak to you much, but, but if you're a developer, um, then you're, you're probably starting to salivate now because all of these things make your life just so much easier, uh, to build applications around basically.
And especially if you're going to be leveraged in cross-chain stuff, that's the first thing.
The second thing is we also developed, um, a set of smart contracts that will allow the zone to bootstrap itself, um, at launch.
That's probably a pretty vague kind of phrasing.
Um, there, more information about this will be released soon.
Um, but basically we want to ensure that all of these things, the additional modules and the, um, the additional smart contracts that were developed, uh, are also,
audited before they're, uh, before they're submitted to the Cosmos hub to be launched.
Um, and so we're, we're waiting the final kind of like reports on this.
The way it's going to work is we already have the core components, um, audits report.
We've already implemented all of the potential bug fixes for the few vulnerabilities that were identified.
Um, for the, um, for the rest of the audit will basically, uh, we're basically expecting kind of like a, a.
Um, semi final audit report, um, in the next few days or very early in April, um, with all of the core contracts, um, that, that I just described being audited.
Um, but we'll actually continue auditing throughout the whole launch period, just because we don't want to change the binary after it's like while it's being voted on or, or, or stuff.
But the reality is that if a vulnerability is identified during that period of time, we still have the, the, the, the possibility to do it.
And so just because we have that, that power, we decided to continue auditing and auditing and auditing basically until the, the, the last day where the zone is actually launched.
Um, just so that we give ourselves as much chances of, of, of identifying any potential vulnerability.
Um, so once we have this kind of like preliminary final audit report, we'll add it to the proposal.
And once, you know, the Cosmos hub community has been given all the tokenomics information, all the initial allocation information, all the audit information that it needs to make an indicated decision.
Um, the proposal will be put on chain for people to vote on, um, that should be like, that should be happening early April.
And once that's done, there's basically two weeks during which people will vote on whether or not to launch neutron.
If they decide that, yes, um, the, you know, the hub should proceed with launching neutron validators will be able to, um, take the binary that is attached to the proposal,
spin up a node for it, and then if two thirds of the voting power do like, does that, then neutron will be live and it will start running and producing blocks and, and, and everything.
Beautiful, beautiful.
Yeah.
Can't wait for that day.
And it's coming very soon.
If everything goes smooth.
Yeah.
It's really exciting.
I agree.
I mean, if I, if I'm excited about it, I can only imagine you and your team, but yeah, sorry, go ahead.
No worries.
No worries.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Indeed.
Um, it's the culmination of, of quite, quite a bunch of, of work and thoughts and, and, and everything.
Um, we'll probably be doing, so like for the validators out there, um, we'll probably be coordinating with IFA, which is in charge of the replicated security test nets to do a full dress rehearsal as Lexac calls it, which is, um, we'll be practicing to launch neutron on the replicated security.
And so if you're a validator and you're going to be, um, participating in neutrons, actual launch, the main net launch, um, I invite you to get into the cosmos hub discord and, you know, stand by for the announcement of this, because it's probably the best way for you.
If you haven't been participating in game of trains and, and whatever to, um, you know, to get hands-on experience at exactly what you'll be expected to do, um, so that you can do so with, with the highest degree of confidence possible.
Basically, um, we're also, you know, always available on discord and telegram.
Um, so neutron community, whatever, um, feel free to ask me or soy or, or whatever, if you want the links, um, because we're, we're always here to, to answer questions.
If you, if you have them.
I'm not sure if the audio would just drop there.
Can, can you hear me?
Okay.
Yep.
Cool.
Um, yeah, just to echo exactly what space said there about in terms of, uh, getting in touch, you know, we're always available on, on telegram and discord.
Um, and I just wanted to say, uh, obviously good to speak to you again, Cosmos club and, and thanks for hosting the space.
I think it's, uh, it's been really productive session.
Yes.
Um, sorry guys.
And so like, I was just kicked off.
I don't know what happened there, but, uh, if you asked me a question or said anything, I don't know what happened.
It's what it's just expressing our gratitude.
Really?
We think it's really been a productive space and, you know, obviously the, the, the proposals live on the forum now, and it's important to sort of create awareness.
Of that and make sure people are informed and, and get the chance to, to ask questions and stuff.
Um, and we sort of felt like you guys were like really good hosts, um, and block hunters, you know, them well, and we know them well.
And they're like a good representation of, of the, of the validators in terms of they've been really supportive of us, like through, through test net and, you know, creating media for us and stuff like that.
So, um, just want to say thank you very much to everybody to, uh, today who's sort of attended and for block hunters, especially, uh, for, for coming up and answering some questions.
Nice, nice audio, but yeah.
So, um, I actually, I just got an SOS.
I think that's why I was kicked out.
I got a call, um, but I have a one last question and then I made you a, sorry, a co-host.
So if there's other questions and you have time, of course, then feel free to, uh, uh, yeah, invite people to speak and, uh, and continue.
But, uh, one last question for me, at least is, um, if, uh, if I dare to dream a bit, you know, let's say the proposal goes through, the launch goes smooth, everything is great.
And, uh, we can look out of a year, two years, uh, uh, from now, how does both neutron and, uh, cosmic self look like if we can allow ourselves to dream a bit, um, and both Sam and space, uh, feel free to answer on this one.
Um, that, that's a really good question.
Um, and by the way, if you want, if you want to drop and go save a life, like, please feel free to do, to do so.
Um, I'll drop, I'll drop soon, but yeah, I'll stick on for a few minutes.
All right.
Um, so it's, it's a very tricky situation, like a question basically, because, you know, it's not like we could control this, right?
Um, I'll tell you about what we intend to work on, but what, what's important to realize here is that, that, that's mostly what we're doing.
It's mostly in the hands of the various DAOs that are involved, so the neutron DAO, uh, to be formed and the Cosmos hub governance, uh, as well, right?
So, you know, we can, we can produce any code that we want.
If the community doesn't want it, then it's, it's just not going to go into production.
Now, the, the, the way I see the hub and neutron in, in a few years is, um, the hub is this kind of like powerhouse that secures five of the most successful projects
in, um, um, Cosmos and the industry.
It's remained somewhat selective, but that has allowed it to have very, very deep relationship, um, and, and kind of like integrations within these, uh, with these chains and their ecosystem.
Um, these chains are potentially, you know, like multiple, um, execution environments, um, neutron itself as, um, potentially, um, become a, well, I mean, I, I can't tell you what neutron will be,
but what we intend to work on is, um, um, we are going to be, um, looking and working on providing, like, basically what, what, what we want to work on is ways for neutron to become
the best settlement layer, um, in, in Cosmos using replicated security, um, and to provide the best execution environments for various applications to be launched on top of it,
so that they can access a lot of the benefits of app chains, like customizability, dedicated block space, very high performance, um, while still benefiting from all of the cross-chain, uh, infrastructure that the neutron L1, uh, will ship with, with,
to benefit from its liquidity, from its user base, from the security of the hub, from the censorship decentralization of the validator set of the hub, and so that allows it to bridge multiple ecosystems together,
and, and essentially the hub becomes kind of like this, even, um, you know, like baseline layer that just secures this ecosystem of ecosystem that's on, on, on top of it, basically,
and that, that, that vision allows the hub to monetize what the hub has so far been best at, which is stability, um, security, minimization, uh, minimalism,
and, yeah, I think, like, personally, that's something that I'm very excited to work toward, um, and, and I think there's a clear, like, a clear alignment between the two projects in, in, in that vision, um,
I'd love to hear what people think about it, basically, um, as I said, that's just something that we intend to work towards, but,
you know, it'd be really useful to have, you know, it'd be really useful to have, you guys' opinion on it.
Um, well, you've said, uh, you've put it into, into a very good, uh, uh, into a very good way. I don't have really much, uh, words to add to, to, to what you said.
Uh, um, perhaps, uh, the fact that, uh, a lot of projects have been migrating recently through the Cosmos, uh, ecosystem,
and, uh, we're looking forward to more and more, uh, projects coming here, both as sovereign chains and consumer chains, given this.
And, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
