🧵 CoA has just finalised the priorities for NDCv1. Here's the outline:

NDC core values are:
- Empowering ecosystem (for people by people)
- Respected by ecosystem (fair, accountable, transparent, and reliable)
- Dedicated to ideas of decentralisation (antifragile, scalable, with collective decision making)


- Efficient operation (don’t be a burden, instead help the community to be more efficient)
- Continuous improvement via weekly iterations (plan ahead, measure results, and adjust continuously)

Key metrics to follow:
- Accounts retention after 1/2/4/8 weeks
- Account acquisition cost
- Median number of dApps used by active accounts
- Number of accounts retained, using at least 3 dApps
- Social engagement score

Based on metrics KPIs are to be designed for individual initiatives and NDC as a whole. In alignment with core values, these need to be constantly monitored and adjusted.

Priorities for the NDC are split into 3 buckets

1. Widening adoption of NEAR
This bucket has two priorities: outreach to new audiences and onboarding successful projects

2. Public goods
This bucket has two priorities: Ecosystem-wide KYC solution for payments and Wallets Support Program

3. NDC Operations
This bucket has three priorities: streamlining the operations of NDC, update the election procedure and NDC treasury management

The full document from CoA can be accessed here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XBwM76ylQ5duwdxGhBPo249JYXwpGTZO/view?usp=sharing

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/AlexAuroraDev/qZABbD8

CoA: NDCv1 Priorities and Core Values

CoA's Priorities for NDCv1

1) According to the current legitimate governance framework we see that we're in v0 governance.

2) We believe that the recent votes of HoM don't have power since we didn’t transition into v1

3) We see that it would take time to agree on the priorities, KPIs, and budget and then get them approved by the community. This is the only thing that CoA and HoM are entitled of doing now, and this should be the focus. The transition should happen no later than November 24th.

4) We expect that after approval from the community and the trust enforcer, v1 governance will be in place. At this point, priorities will be set, the budget will be allocated, and NDC v1 will be capable of performing operations immediately.

5) We recommend that everyone involved in v0 continue funding community DAOs until v1 is in place (for no more than two months), the same way it was done before.

This would give new NDC members room to onboard and produce a good budget, and it won't let the ecosystem down during the v0->v1 transition period. We also encourage considering an option to allocate funding in stablecoins instead of NEAR tokens.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/AlexAuroraDev/CTQiq7E

CoA Statement on Governance Transition

CoA held the first regular weekly call. It is intended for these calls to become recorded and public for transparency. Attendees: @Blaze1x0, @Freol, evangel.near, Sasha from @LearnNear,  @AlexAuroraDev. Absent: @mattdlockyer, @mariekeflament.

CoA participants figured out onboarding complications: NDC work, zones responsibilities, legal risks, etc. — all of these need to be figured out for efficient work. Next step: get all available info from GWG

CoA brainstormed on priorities for NDC. Many good ideas were generated, more than NDC can handle in the following 6 months. These ideas are still need to be refined, complemented with KPIs, which should be agreed with HoM and presented to the public.

CoA reviewed HoM letter to the community and CoA overview document:
https://medium.com/near-digital-collective/ndc-v1-open-letter-6660958172d3

https://near.org/neardigitalcollective.near/widget/NDCDocs_OneArticle?articleId=Council_of_Advisors-Overview&blockHeight=99550694&lastEditor=vikash.near

CoA agreed that evaluation of HoM should happen based on metrics and corresponding KPIs, which should be connected with the priorities. Next step: review proposed metrics from the HoM letter and marry these with the priorities developed by CoA

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/AlexAuroraDev/cCRcBbF

CoA update. Week 1

This is a 🧵 about Aurora Cloud and why it's superior to any L2 stack.
TL;DR: decentralised sequencer, built-in composability between chains.

Read on for more details 👇

L2 narrative has been out there for many months. The only substantial reason for this is the scaling of the L1 blockchain.
L2s are not enabling new use cases. Nothing new would happen on L2s compared to L1. It's a band-aid.

And the scaling approach is quite simple to understand: to scale, we need MORE EVMs. But we don't want to run more networks, so we need a way to connect these new EVMs to the L1 chain. And to do this, we would actually settle these transactions on L1.

I would agree with this direction in general: EVM is a standard, and all the tools are designed to work with it. However, it cannot be scaled directly due to synchronicity, so the only thing we can do is launch more of them.

But why on Earth did we decide to resolve running the L2 network with centralized sequencing (i.e. a single computer that is ordering the transactions)? This is a direct step back to SQL.

And I reject the argument that a user is always able to settle their transactions permissionlessly on L1.
A user can only do it slowly.

LUNA crashed in less than a week; USDC depegged and recovered (!) in less than a week. There's no way for an honest participant to be in time for a change on the network with a dishonest sequencer.

This theoretical escape hatch is a dangerous marketing illusion.

"Sequencers would be decentralized eventually" -- this is nonsense. We do have an approach to decentralization of sequencers. It's called blockchain consensus. Why are we not using it then?! Oh, because it's too difficult? Give me a break.

A better way to do EVM scaling is right in front of us.

Imagine an asynchronous settlement L1 blockchain, where transactions coming to different contracts can be executed in parallel. Now launch on top of it a contract that implements EVM, so it can run EVM contracts (a dream within a dream). Repeat as many times as you need.

Such an L1 may solve the scalability issue of blockchains: since the runtime is asynchronous by definition, one can parallelize the execution of transactions. This is often referred to as "sharding" (although it is not technically sharding, the term has already stuck).

Every EVM contract would have a consensus of the L1 as a sequencer. If the validator set of this L1 is decentralized enough, then each EVM would have a decentralized and secure setup from launch.

Even more: if we designed precompiles to asynchronously call contracts from other EVMs (even with callbacks!), then we could compose these previously separated ecosystems into a single one. Thankfully, that's just a cross-contract call on L1 -- no need to have bridges.

Oh, by the way, since the above-mentioned EVMs are just contracts, one can greatly update the basic principles of their operations: allow only whitelisted entities to transact or deploy contracts for compliance; introduce custom fee mechanics and base tokens...

Or even remove the fees altogether! EVM-level payment for transaction execution is now separate from L1 level: RPCs are becoming blockchain providers with a competitive market and a wide range of business models.

This is a window into mass adoption.

How great would it be to live in this better future world, right?

A scalable, asynchronous L1 blockchain is @NEARProtocol with Nightshade consensus.

An EVM smart contract on top of it is @auroraisnear.

A solution that allows anyone to launch their own EVM-compatible blockchain is Aurora Cloud.
https://auroracloud.dev/
(Pssst: there are already four of them launched now, including Aurora MainNet.)

Every single Aurora EVM has a built-in cross-contract call precompiles:
https://dev.aurora.dev/posts/cross-ecosystem-communication

These, together with a decentralized approach for front-ends (BOS), allow some next-level stuff to happen:
https://dev.aurora.dev/posts/building-a-game-using-near-aurora-and-bos

And, by the way, the Aurora stack has been working for 2 years without any hacks and with a 100% chain uptime.

And you know what? Forget about Aurora and NEAR. Erase everything starting from the tweet #16 from your mind. Think for a minute about the current direction of L2s.

Let's cut the marketing BS. Every deployment of these separate ecosystems is weakening Ethereum by siloing liquidity, collectibles, and governance powers.

In the proposed "mythical" scenario, every single EVM deployment would strengthen the whole ecosystem through built-in composability—all while maintaining decentralization. A core principle for blockchain antifragility.

Got something to add? Comment and prove me wrong. 💪

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/AlexAuroraDev/EBUwQ80.

Why Aurora Cloud is the Best L2 Stack

🧵
Just minutes ago Aurora DAO has approved the update to AURORA token economy, marking a major milestone in the project development. The proposal was already heavily discussed by the community, but let me summarise it in this thread...

First of all, here's the link to the in-depth description of the update and the relevant discussion:
https://forum.aurora.dev/t/aurora-token-economy-2-0/2166

There are multiple constituents of the updates and let's dive deeper into each one of them.

First, with each transaction happening on any Aurora-related contracts (i.e. Aurora Mainnet, Rainbow Bridge, Aurora Silos) AURORA tokens would be burned. This makes AURORA a deflationary token.

The funds for the buyback and burn of AURORA are coming from the feature of NEAR protocol: 30% of the NEAR gas fees consumed for the transaction execution are transferred to the contracts that are called. Later this NEAR will be used for a slow buyback and burn.

Due to the specifics of the AURORA setup, at the moment this won't be automatic, since the true burn requires bridging of AURORA to Ethereum over the Rainbow Bridge.

This consumption use case of AURORA puts it on par with many other L1 base tokens (NEAR, ETH, for example). However, allows for great UX, since everything is done in the background.

Second, around 1 year ago AURORA staking was introduced. The goal of staking is the implementation of the decentralised governance. With current update, the staking rewards are fixed. And, thus, predictable for stakers.

A total of 50M AURORA is allocated to staking rewards. The bitcoin-style exponentially decreasing schedule is chosen. Every quarter staking rewards will go down with decrease of x2 every 4 years.

Third, initially announced Community Treasury now has a tangible way forward. The governance mechanism for it would be a well-established $CURVE-style VE model.

AURORA stakers would lock their AURORA tokens and will be able to vote on the distribution of Community Treasury funds every week. The place for applying for the community funding would be a governance forum.

The Community Treasury governance front-end would be implemented in aurora.plus, alongside staking. Though, as always, anyone is welcome to develop their own frontends, for example through NEAR BOS.

Smart contracts for Community Treasury will be developed by Aurora Labs in cooperation with experienced teams from the Aurora Ecosystem. Obviously, open source and at the highest security standards as with any core product of Aurora ecosystem.

Forth, the unlock of the AURORA tokens to the Aurora Council DAO is now specified. It covers now the period of the following 5 years.

Lastly, the cumbersome boost coefficient is removed.

Here are the things to expect within the actual implementation of the update:

In the shortest timeframe (~1 week), the staking rewards would be updated according to the new distribution schedule. As well as the total supply of AURORA, displayed in CMC, CoinGecko and other resources.

Soon after (~2 weeks), the buyback and burn mechanism would be installed with publicly shared info on the burning stats.

Implementation of the VE model for Community Treasury would take time, however, due to its' vast usage, no major problems are expected. I encourage Aurora Ecosystem to monitor the development on https://github.com/aurora-is-near/ and contribute with reviews.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/AlexAuroraDev/YL6KvB7

Aurora DAO's Update to AURORA Token Economy

A 🧵 on the recent precautionary pause of the Rainbow Bridge.

TL:DR: it was a bug in the NEAR Core, no funds lost; the vulnerability was never exploited on the Rainbow Bridge; operations of the bridge are fully restored.
@auroraisnear @NEARProtocol @PagodaPlatform

On the 10th of February a vulnerability was discovered in the NEAR Core.

The vulnerability concerns the validation of the block outcome root. A chunk producer (validator) of NEAR blockchain can maliciously construct the incorrect block, which then will be validated by others as if it's the correct one.

This vulnerability presents particular risks for the Rainbow Bridge due to its trustless architecture. In order to finalise a transfer from NEAR, the Ethereum side of the bridge needs to validate the inclusion of the starting transaction on NEAR.

So, if the consensus is broken, incorrect information may be committed, resulting in the draining of the funds from the bridge and potentially affect other bridge connectors.

After a short review of the submission (even before the full validation of the vulnerability), the NEAR Protocol team notified Aurora Labs about the issue.

The decision to stop the bridge and contracts that are holding users' tokens was taken immediately. The Rainbow Bridge security council was incapable of analysing the validity of the issue, but even from its description it was clear that it may be severe.

Within 30 min from the first communication the bridge was paused in a series of 4 transactions:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0fbce00aa32411f0d83b27636d45fa7d71a5d896f659a937bcf2334a032ccd0c
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x9fd20fee71446ac49cd7c8580923dbe0b05c909e3f797038eee4c18291e51840
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xfae634956088734469df3a306134c57c3e3ddda5fd0c5a723e90c5676d5bd9d5
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xf74a154d8efa728f0431d39d33b5d18a74e3815bf8ade95b4dd9a63084c73008


These transactions shut down the execution of any methods for three connectors that are storing tokens (ERC-20, ETH and eNEAR) as well as the proover contract.

As a result, both tokens and data transfers on the Rainbow Bridge were paused.

After the Rainbow Bridge was stopped, the information was propagated throughout all Aurora channels, including Aurora status page and Rainbow Bridge web-app.
https://twitter.com/AlexAuroraDev/status/1624190477103669249

Shortly after, the NEAR Protocol team confirmed the validity of the issue and the development of the patch to the NEAR Core started.

On the 11th of February the patch was developed and reviewed and the NEAR Core team started to contact validators to apply the patch. Aurora Labs's validator was updated in the shortest possible timeframe.

Throughout the weekend, validators worked on updating their instances and by the end of 12th February (Europe time) the required 67% stake was reached. Right now the vulnerability can no longer be exploited.

While the NEAR Protocol team was developing the patch and communicating with validators, Aurora Labs's Bridge team analysed the full 2y history of the Rainbow bridge to find out, whether the vulnerability was ever exploited.

The result of the analysis was negative: incorrect transfers were not performed, ever!

Rainbow bridge was unpaused with two transactions (one of which was batched) shortly after the report of sufficient stake upgrade:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3fbc04ed38248430850a407c5af6691accea5f703d3986f66762e390a7d838b5
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xfedcf8fdfbb6d15796e8ae16b062263a5ec03eddc70642992597416b72a92667

The unpausing of the Rainbow Bridge was immediately communicated on all Aurora official channels:
https://twitter.com/AlexAuroraDev/status/1624842592159469569

Today, NEAR Protocol publicly released the security patch 1.31.1 that was applied by the validators during the weekend:
https://github.com/near/nearcore/releases/tag/1.31.1

It is still possible to leverage this vulnerability, e.g. in the case staking distribution would change in favour of the validators that have not upgraded, so it's important to update the NEAR nodes. However, the chances of this event are negligible.

Overall, this vulnerability was treated in a very professional manner with quick reactions, transparent communication and advanced research. That's how things should be done in blockchain.

I'd like to thank the Security, Bridge and Infrastructure teams in Aurora Labs, as well as the Security and Protocol teams in Pagoda for great and efficient cooperation and care for the users of both NEAR and Aurora.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/AlexAuroraDev/wODAVOh

An in-depth review of the Rainbow Bridge incident on 10th of February 2023

Do you have the feeling that blockchains NGMI? And that they look like Ponzis?
In this 🧵 I will share my reflections on the topic and what we should do to change this sentiment.
TL; DR (spoiler): Fix blockchain UX and get them users.


Blockchains are platforms - places where users and businesses meet and produce value. A portion of this value is extracted into a cryptocurrency behind the blockchain.

The difference between Blockchain and Web2 platforms is in the extraction mechanisms. For ordinary companies, "the platform fees" are simply appreciated as revenues. While blockchain value accrual is a complicated beast.
https://twitter.com/AlexAuroraDev/status/1523635464632414208

But everything else is essentially the same. So let's take a sneak peek at the biggest IT platforms of the world: e-commerce.

A nice high level overview can be found in this article, I'll highlight some important points:
https://preventdirectaccess.com/ecommerce-stats/

The biggest market is B2B ($8.5T, 64%), while B2C is substantially smaller ($4.9T, 36%).

The amount of retail users that participate in e-commerce is HUGE: 2.14B, which translates into ordinary transacted value of below $2300 per user *per year*.
(and $6300 per user per year for the whole market, including B2B)

Obviously, median check size for B2B sector is way higher and the number of participants is much lower.

When we look at social platforms these reveal similar data: vast retail user base, low value/revenue per user.

What are the stats for Blockchain? Well, we can take an extremely conservative approximation of $3.7B transacted per day (only Bitcoin!) and a rough estimate of 80M wallets, which probably mean that number of actual users is lower. Let's take 40M.
https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd

This leads us to an astonishing $33.8k per user per year in transacted value. More than x5 comparing to e-commerce.

Note that these estimates are not even taking into account the values of NFTs, Ethereum and side chains!

Why?! Is Blockchain a luxury? Is it expensive? Is it only for rich people?
Obviously not. Transactions on Ethereum nowadays costs less than delivery from AliExpress. And the country with the highest blockchain adoption is Vietnam, not Switzerland!


I strongly believe that this is happening because "Blockchain users" are for the most part investors, and not just everyday users.

If we look at the structure of communities we will find support for this opinion.

Blockchain communities are formed around protocols and tokens, not around products, which is typical for an ordinary world.

Baby shark lovers, WoW players, Off-grid/van-life believers, TikTok-ers. Are there any "tokens" for these?

Instead, a blockchain "user" knows everything about RSI, golden crosses and head&shoulders. Oh, yeah, and since this year, a Wyckoff Distribution too.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/070715/making-money-wyckoff-way.asp

So, we end up in a situation with lots of investors and not a lot of users. I mean EXTREMELY LOW number of users comparing to any sizeable web2 platform.

Why does it matter?
For IT, the platform flywheel looks like this: investors bring money, which flow into development, which result into apps, which bring users, which increase market size and allow investors to invest more. This is how AppStore works (+ 30% fee ofc).

But if you remove users from the equation, you'll get a typical blockchain-style flywheel: investor money bring developers; they develop apps, which because of farming incentives bring new investors.

As a result we see developed constructs: mercenary capital, rug pulls, market manipulations. New investors becoming exit liquidity for previous ones.

In TradiFi they call such markets Ponzi.

From the other side, users are not coming because of two main reasons: first, the tech is complicated and early-stage (its' guts are exposed to the end users). Second, people are just scared to touch it, because of the developed sentiment.

It already took 7 years explaining to my father (PhD!) why I believe blockchain would change the world. And I'm still not quite there. On the contrary, my mother constantly blames me for discouraging her buying Bitcoin at $3500 in 2018. 🤷

Quick recap:
Blockchains don't show the structure similar to other platforms. The core distortion is in the ratio of investors to users (similar to Ponzis). Users are not coming because of the complexity and negative sentiment.



OK. We've just translated some feelings into tangible problems. Take a breath. Thanks for reading up to this point.

But we still have some things to figure out...

What would help? Bringing users back into the equation. And we *really* need to do it fast.
Because web2 tech giants are trying to incorporate blockchain values into their messages already.

Changing sentiment? Let's elaborate on this option...

As a vertical we started our comms with anon thesis and failed it with Bitcoin used on Silk Road.

Then starting from 2014 we continued with traditional cult of individuals. At first it worked great.

But then we got into late 2017 and devastating summer/autumn of 2022 which proved that deification of weak humans turns them into scammers and ends up with billions being lost.

All of the above results into legislators putting in place more regulations to protect investors from scam.
And this is what actually works in traditional markets.

 But, seriously, why on Earth people care about FTX more than of ghost guns, which are now 50%+ of all firearms in the US? 🤷


Let me answer this in simple words...

We, as an industry, suck at marketing.

So, it would be extremely hard to do anything with the sentiment fast.

The only way forward is enhancing user experience and bring the blockchain down the stack. After this, everyone would keep their eyes on the blockchain *values* (remember above mentioned Apple?), leaving specifics to nerds like us.

When people use Internet, do they care about TCP/IP? Even the "secure connection" concept is now omitted! A user can get detailed info on the connection IFF he performs some additional moves.

Why do we force people to keep the blockchain in mind every time they use it: gas cost, gas price, base tokens, priority fees, stuck txs, etc.?
We really need to remove it. Only then we would be able to compete with web2 for users.

Kudos to everyone working on this!
And for anyone who is seeking for the tech that solves this problem, check out Aurora.

In short, all Aurora txs are gassless transactions with ability to hide blockchain concepts from the user completely. It's demonstrated in Aurora+.
https://aurora.plus/

We have a great 20-min Aurora+ release event that explains all the concepts and outlines the roadmap (follow the updates, new releases are coming soon!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpWtYBdKD6s

I invite builders who are waiting for Account Abstraction on Ethereum, to come to Aurora, use similar tech and test the hypothesis you have in mind right now!

Build hard through these times and fight the dark centralised side. May the force be with you.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here:
https://typefully.com/AlexAuroraDev/acH9Kxf

Blockchains are NGMI. What should we do?

🧵
This is a thread for entrepreneurs looking to leverage the benefits of blockchain, and facing the fundamentally important question — which network should I choose?

Let’s get started, and try to separate the signal from the noise.

When I asked over 100 teams "How did you choose your deployment chain?", the answers were:

→ 75%, brand awareness. They'd simply heard of the chain.
→ 20%, "encouragement" from their VCs.
→ 5%, some deeper, more considered reasoning.

I was shocked.


Around 3/4 of the teams simply punted on the problem, though the importance of getting it right can hardly be overemphasised!

Often, there's no margin for pivot, so making the right decision is critical.


Step one is understanding the contract runtime.

If it's EVM (Ethereum compatible chain), you'll find plenty of tools, developers, expertise (security audits), etc. And you'll avoid vendor lock in.


With non-EVM compatible blockchains, you need to deeply understand and *really need* their unique value propositions.

An example may be @NEARProtocol, which offers theoretically infinite scalability, through sharding.


In case you go for EVM-compatibility, you face a large and growing number of options.

Comparative evaluation metrics typically include TVL, MAU, market cap of the native token, etc.

Let’s dive into these.


Total Value Locked (TVL) represents the amount of "money" or value located within the ecosystem.

Given the mercenary and transitory nature of TVL observed throughout the history of crypto, this metric is more noise than signal.
https://defillama.com/chains


If the chain has enough bridges, liquidity can and will flow in from other chains, but generally this is a short-lived function of farming incentives, such that TVL as an evaluation metric should more or less be tossed in the bin.


MAU stands for Monthly Active Users. It would seem straightforward — the higher MAU of the chain, the bigger the addressable market, right?

Wrong.


Why? Because it turns out that these “active users” are usually not users of the ecosystem, but rather specific apps.
About 33% MAUs on Polygon are users of a coinflip gambling game. Is this really your target market?
https://www.gokustats.xyz/dashboard
https://dappradar.com/polygon/high-risk/make-me-rich


“But, if a user holds AVAX, then it’s simpler to onboard them if we run on Avalanche, right?”

True, but the significance of this reasoning diminishes over time, and IMO, you can omit this consideration, too.

And here’s why.


Blockchain pioneers quickly discovered that UX is a problem, and consequently are focused on improving the onboarding experience — bridges bring the assets, wallets do airdrops, some apps offer gasless transactions, etc.


If your focus is Web3 users, then differentiating on UX may be a challenge, because switching costs, in terms of experience, is generally low, as the interaction paradigms from chain to chain are mostly identical.


But there’s an even larger consideration.

For every thousand Web3 users that exist today, there’s a million Web2 users just waiting to discover the blockchain!

This is a blue ocean, and so your best choice may be the chain offering the best path for Web2 onboarding.


Surprise-surprise, @auroraisnear offers great advantages here; including protocol-level "meta-transactions", available since day 1.

Web2 users frictionlessly onboard in less than a minute at Aurora+, enjoying 50 free transactions per month!

https://aurora.plus/


(Alpha-leak for those who actually read threads — this process will become even simpler by the end of 2022! NIA, DYOR, you know the drill. 😉)


Back to our story, and it looks like MAU belongs in the bin next to TVL. 🤷‍♂️

Continuing with “brand value”, often connected in perception with the market cap of the base token. Turns out, 99%+ of L1 token value is in the brand.
https://twitter.com/AlexAuroraDev/status/1523635464632414208


As part of the brand, it would seem that a network’s Foundation and VCs can help with direct investment and introductions, increasing an entrepreneur’s chances of success.


Regarding Foundations, these can be bad investors, as their focus on the ecosystem tends to dwarf their focus on any given app. And a Foundation would never advise an app to leave the ecosystem, even when that’d be the best option.


Regarding VCs, access is generally independent of network choice. Given how relatively narrow the Web3 space is, the whole crypto VC ecosystem is interconnected, never more than two handshakes apart.


So even if the premise of brand-value inheritance exists, its influence is negligibile, sometimes even less than the influence of a single strong personality in the space.

Therefore, we can probably toss brand into the bin along with TVL and MAU.


“We’re going multi-chain. So the starting point doesn’t matter, right?”

Wrong, and potentially twice.

First, is found in the thread you’re reading now on the importance of chain selection.

Second, is that multi-chain is much harder than you think.


Consider Uni V3. Industry leader. Multi-chain. But hardly enough TVL on the Celo network to function with low value swaps.

Multi-chain deployments can be considered franchises. Just like in the real world, the success of a franchise comes down to location.


If we discard TVL, MAU, 90% of brand value and consider that multi-chain is usually too hard, what’s left?

Well, the unique offerings by the given ecosystem — architecture, scalability, containers, native oracles, even expertise!


And users.

Never forget that an ecosystem with investors and LPs, but without users transforms into a Ponzi, in which latecomers simply end up being the exit liquidity of the early settlers.


Here, the past can inform the future. Web2 leaders like Meta, Google, Amazon, Apple & AliBaba are giants because of users.

Millions of users.

While investor capital may be needed to get off the ground, it’s the users who are the key ingredient needed for long term value.


Bottom-line entrepreneur cheat-sheet:

→ EVM compatibility is usually the way to go
→ Infinite scalability is critical, because…
→ Seamless onboarding of Web2 users is your path to real growth.


And I couldn’t be more excited being the CEO of a company delivering all three!

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/AlexAuroraDev/EOIuzp9

Big thanks to @dafacto for helping me with this thread! It won't be that crisp without his additions! 💚

How to choose the deployment network for a blockchain startup?

Decentralization. A core value of the blockchain. Though probably it is a distant future rather than the current situation. Or the opposite? This is a 🧵 about professional validators and why things are better with decentralization than it seems from the first sight.


Systems with a single managing actor is a norm for web2. A norm that in some cases is extremely harmful for the people who use these systems. It is enough to recall Cambridge Analytica or Wirecard cases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecard_scandal


Same corresponds to Governments. Anywhere where there’s a single person in charge, democracy is doomed to become autocracy or dictatorship, that makes only harm. Just look at Russia.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/taking-dictators-literally-and-seriously-xi-jinping-vladimir-putin-ukraine-russia-china-iran-11646421800


Only weighted approaches where any action may be questioned and rejected can make a sustainable move towards better future for all.

Unfortunately, this comes at cost. Decentralized democratic procedures are slow and might seem non-suitable for the current world order. This is a major topic and if you want me to share the thoughts about it in a separate thread, please indicate.


Though democracy was invented and successfully utilized for centuries, until 2009 there were no ‘democratic’ software approaches developed. Bitcoin changed it, marking one of the most important innovations in the 21st century to date.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Satoshi Nakamoto designed a system where anyone would be able to participate as a maintainer, not just a user. And if the number of maintainers is high, this system would become decentralized – a digital democracy.

Nowadays we have many blockchains that *can* be decentralized. However, many people are claiming that their decentralization is a myth because of a small number of the validators – nodes that maintain the system.


A common practice is to measure Nakamoto Coefficient – a minimum number of validators that is enough to execute incorrect transactions on the blockchain (often referred to as 51% attack on PoW or 67% attack on PoS/BFT networks).
https://www.minima.global/post/the-nakamoto-coefficient-an-attempt-to-quantify-decentralization

High NC means that the network is decentralized, while low -- the opposite. However, NC, being a simple metric, unfortunately is not capturing all the intricacies of the decentralization.

Validators may be run by the highly connected entities (to intentionally increase the NC). They might be using the same cloud providers or protocol implementations, which dramatically increase the risk of an attack.

Besides that, the number of *delegators* (in PoS consensuses) capable of performing an attack through re-delegating to a single validator, may be lower than the NC.

A special case would be the social attack vectors, where KOLs, usually, protocol founders, are de-facto unilaterally governing the direction of the development of the protocol.
The list of centralization threats can grow for a while.

But besides the negative factors, blockchain space got itself into an intriguing position that unites different ecosystems. And this is possible because of the professional validators (PVs).

PVs are the organizations that are specialized in running servers. They don’t develop dApps. They don’t onboard millions of users. They run servers and get paid according to the consensus algorithm. Any blockchain needs such participants.


And if there’s a need, the open market suffices it. Companies like BisonTrails, @everstake_pool and @dsrvlabs have been created to run many blockchains simultaneously. And now such validators are usually responsible for a large chunk of operations of any major blockchain.

This brings us straight to a surprising outcome: blockchain decentralization is not something separate for each blockchain. There is a connection through PVs between them.

To put is simple, imagine a collusion of validators in NEAR. It must include PVs because of the stake distribution. And there’s no point to break only NEAR, since the same companies are operating Solana, Arbitrum and Optimism.

If one network is hacked, many of them would be hacked at the same time.

Wait, isn’t it bad? Yes and no. The total amount of maintainers in the space is much less than just a sum of the validator numbers, indeed. But the amount of money *lost* by these maintainers in case of the collusion is an order higher than they own in a single ecosystem.

Importantly, this world order helps smaller blockchains to enjoy the decentralization of the bigger brothers: PVs are the same and their attack on a small blockchain would mean destroying their reputation everywhere.

The only other ‘technical’ thing that blockchains should nowadays worry about is the wide distribution of the base token – so the delegators are not the threat to the decentralization. Thus, introducing a limit of tokens sold to a single party. Good figure would be 1-2%.

Social aspects of the decentralization is a much more complicated question. Is it OK that a tiny set of people can drive masses? State developed branches of government to keep any influence contained. Maybe it’s time for us to adopt these ideas?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h5Jy4EVFMs

The only thing that is clear now is that the number of validators or Nakamoto Coefficient or any other technical metric is not able to fully describe the decentralization of the protocol. But perhaps we don’t need to focus on this term for a *single* protocol?

Open market unites different blockchain ecosystems through PVs. Let’s stop fighting because together we are stronger. Blockchain adoption is non-existent comparing to web2 adoption. It’s time to change this.


You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/AlexAuroraDev/WIjgYJY