Within two weeks of starting the music reaction channel, we hit the 1,000 subscriber / 4,000 watch-hour monetization requirements, and over the balance of 2023 gained over 18,000 new friends (subscribers) who watched nearly 200 thousand hours and amassed over 2.8 million views. Compared to our travel YouTube channel which took nearly two years to become monetized, this music reaction channel was an immediate success in our eyes.

In1970, British paleontologist Lambert Beverly Halstead published a paper in a scientific journal explaining how the first-ever described dinosaur should keep its original name: Scrotum humanum (human scrotum). According to the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature rules, he argued that this was its correct name.

Paleontologists jumped in against this idea, and the commission eventually ruled against the change in the 1990’s. However, Beverly Halstead had a point. This is a story about the first dinosaurs ever received and why, by all means, one of the most scary species ever described could have been named after human genitalia.

Imagine the thrill of stumbling upon a massive, mysterious bone in your backyard. What could it be? In our age of internet access and frequent visits to natural history museums, many would likely wonder if we’ve found a dinosaur fossil. Depending on your background and curiosity levels, you might even be able to estimate the age of the rocks it was found on and make an educated guess about its identity.

On the morning after Caleb meets Ava for the first time, the two men have a very interesting conversation about how to test whether she’s actually conscious.

Caleb: It feels like testing Ava through conversation is kind of a closed loop.Nathan: It’s a closed loop?Caleb: Yeah, like testing a chess computer by only playing chess.Nathan: How else do you test a chess computer?Caleb: Well it depends. You know, I mean you can play it to find out if it makes good moves. But that won’t tell you if it knows that it’s playing chess. And it won’t tell you if it knows what chess is.

Nathan describes the distinction Caleb is drawing as “simulated versus actual.” We could also characterize it as syntax versus semantics. Either way, it gets to a fundamental problem with using linguistic competence to assess a machine’s general intelligence or its capacity for consciousness.

From the Turing Test to the Chinese Room

In his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Alan Turing describes a variation of a popular party game of the time called the “imitation game.”

In Turing’s version of the imitation game, a human being passes messages back and forth with two interlocutors in two different rooms. One of the interlocutors is another human. The other is a machine. If the human can’t tell which of the interlocutors is the machine, the machine passes the test. It can be said to think as humans do.

But not everyone agreed that the Turing test was a valid way to demonstrate machine consciousness. For philosopher John Searle, thinking meant not just the ability to speak, but also to understand what one was saying. There’s syntax, which relates to the rules for putting together grammatically correct sentences; and then there’s semantics…

The Weird Studies folks delve into the weird, the unexplained, the phenomena just at the edges of our understanding. This spirit of open-minded inquiry resonates with themes explored in my previous piece, ‘A World Without Wonder,’ where I discuss the dangers of Modernity’s relentless drive towards quantification and control.

Within this framework of control and quantification, AI emerges as the seemingly inevitable consequence of our drive for ever-greater efficiency and throughput. The integration of AI into scientific research appears as the ultimate match made for our modern condition. But are the promises of AI too good to be true? While some scientists embrace AI wholeheartedly, others advocate for greater caution and awareness of the risks involved in widespread implementation.

Recent Insights on AI in Research

Addressing these concerns, Messeri and Crockett, in their March 7th article for Nature Magazine — “Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research,” they warn that AI, while offering productivity and objectivity gains, could exploit our cognitive biases and create illusions of deeper understanding than we actually possess. This could stifle innovation and make scientific work more prone to errors.

Messeri and Crockett identify four distinct visions for AI in the scientific community: (1) Oracle; (2) Surrogate; (3) Quant; (4) Arbiter.

AI as Oracle

Raydium is a decentralized protocol built on the Solana blockchain that facilitates fast and secure trading, liquidity pooling, and automated market making. It is an automated market maker (AMM) that allows users to easily swap between different assets without the need for an intermediary, such as a centralized exchange.

The main feature of Raydium is its ability to provide fast and low-cost decentralized trading using a combination of liquidity pools and market-making algorithms. This allows for efficient and seamless swaps between different tokens, including stablecoins, ERC-20 tokens, and Solana-based tokens.

One of the key factors that set Raydium apart is its integration with the Solana blockchain, which boasts significantly faster transaction speeds and lower fees compared to other blockchains such as Ethereum. This makes Raydium an attractive option for traders looking for a more efficient and cost-effective way to swap between assets.

In addition to trading, Raydium also offers other features such as liquidity provision through staking, yield farming, and token incentivization. These features help to promote network growth and incentivize users to contribute to the liquidity of the protocol.

Learning how to make a swap using the Raydium SDK is important for anyone looking to utilize the protocol’s features and participate in decentralized trading. By understanding how to interact with the SDK, users can effectively trade, provide liquidity, and earn rewards on Raydium’s platform. This skill can also be useful for developers and entrepreneurs who want to build on top of the protocol and create new applications and services for the Raydium ecosystem.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Required Software and Tools

Before getting started with making a swap in Raydium, you will need to have the following software and tools installed:

1. Solana Command Line Tools: These are the tools needed to interact with the Solana blockchain and make transactions. You can install it by following the instructions on the Solana documentation website.

2. Solana Wallet: You will need a Solana wallet…

Mark your calendars, SamORAI Traders! OraiDEX is excited to announce the launch of its highly anticipated Futures Trading Competition, offering a thrilling opportunity to test your skills and win big with a $15,000 USD prize pool.

Delve into the the dynamic world of cryptocurrency futures trading and compete against fellow enthusiasts for your chance to claim exciting rewards. This competition also serves as a token of appreciation for the warm reception of OraiDEX’s recently launched Futures Trading feature, and welcomes new users to experience its thrilling potential.

Here’s the breakdown of rewarding structure:

• $5,500 for 110 First-Time Traders (each will received $50)

• First-Time Traders: 110 winners x $50 each

• Top 5 Volume: $800, $400, $100 for 1st, 2nd, 3rd-5th respectively

• Top 5 Absolute PnL ($) : $2000, $1000, $333 for 1st, 2nd, 3rd-5th respectively

• Top 5 Relative PnL (%): $2000, $1000, $333 for 1st, 2nd, 3rd-5th respectively

Eligibility

To be eligible to the competition, you must meet all the simple requirements below:

• Having no open positions on OraiDEX Futures at the starting date

• Retweet this post & tag @oraidex’s on Twitter, and submit the tweet link through the provided form.

• Accumulate a minimum trading volume of $1,000.

Competition Dates:

• Start: January 16, 2024, 10:00 UTC

• End: January 23, 2024, 10:00 UTC

Possible extension: Please note that if we haven’t reached 200 participants within the initial week, we may extend the competition for up to 4 additional weeks. Final decision will be announced to public before January 23.

Ready to unleash your trading skills? Go to https://futures.oraidex.io/, connect your wallet, explore the Futures Trading feature, and dive into the action with USDC/ORAI and USDC/INJ pairs. Every trade fuels your journey towards exciting rewards in the OraiDEX Trading Competition.

We’re helping dApp developers access tamper-proof AI— at massive scale — with the world’s only specialized ZK prover for AI. This means that smart contracts can now enjoy powerful AI features without breaking the trustless creed.

*In other words — Accountable AI for Magical dApps — the biggest upgrade ever to smart contracts.*

We’re backed by inspired investors like Variant and 1kx, as well as Floodgate, Inflection.xyz, Alliance, Bankless, Stanford, GCR and others. Additionally, we’re joined by mighty angels from the Ethereum Foundation, Worldcoin, Polygon, Celestia, Solana, Microsoft, Gensyn.ai, and many more.

Stay tuned over the next few months as we:

• Debut the largest AI applications ever implemented on Ethereum via partnerships with Upshot, Worldcoin, Ion Protocol and others

• Open-source our prover, “Remainder” — the world’s only specialized ZK prover purpose-built for AI, and

• Roll-out the Modulus API, giving every dApp access to powerful, expressive AI with ZK accountability

In fact, we’re opening the waitlist to our “On-Chain AI” API today, which will start with support for powerful decision forests.

In the meantime, follow us on Twitter, check out our swanky new website, and read on for the juicy story of how we ended up here.

TL;DR of Today’s Announcement

• 🔮 The Problem: today, for dApps to access powerful AI features, they need to abandon decentralized security and assume centralization risk

• 🔮 The Solution: Modulus uses zero-knowledge proofs to efficiently check that AI providers didn’t manipulate their algorithms — on-chain

• 🔮 The Insight: specialized ZK proving purpose-built for AI delivers wildly powerful AI features for dApps at a fraction of the cost

• 🔮 The Result: dApps enhanced by tamper-proof AI leapfrog their peers in UX without betraying the trustless creed of the chain

• 🔮 The Vision: as advanced AI gets introduced to our legal, financial, medical, security and education sectors, cryptographic accountability will safeguard the backbone of our computational future.

“AI Forces a Faustian Bargain”

AI is pretty damn magical.

Each time we pester our AI copilot for advice, queue up our latest credit score, or refresh our social media feed of choice, a supercomputer somewhere runs through enough mathematical operations to make Turing himself dance in glee.

AI is going to radically transform our society. And yet, this modern day superpower is entirely off-limits to anyone building on blockchain technology. The reason is simple: AI operations are too computationally expensive to run directly on-chain. This means that to bring AI features into the smart contract, we’d need to trust AI operators to always run models without manipulation.

Let’s just say that, in the context of crypto, trust is nearly always a very bad idea.

As Ronald Regan famously put: “доверяй, но проверяй”

🔮 The Problem: for dApps to access powerful AI features, they need to abandon decentralized security and assume centralization risk

“ZK is Accountability End-Game”

Thankfully, we needn’t despair! To bring the magic of AI to the blockchain without throwing away decentralized security, we rely only on the verifiable magic of ZK.

As applied to AI, zero-knowledge cryptography allows us to verify that an AI model was executed “correctly”, without revealing the secret sauce behind the model. In other words, we use math to check that AI results were not secretly manipulated. By verifying this “proof of correctness”, on-chain, we get blockchain-equivalent security at a fraction of the cost.

Step 1: add ZK-AI to your dApp. Step 2: profit.

Thanks to math, we can now know — with cryptographic certainty — that your AI copilot didn’t supply secretly doctored code, that your credit score wasn’t nudged by a prejudiced bank, and that your social media feed hasn’t taken on a political bias. We call this marriage Accountable AI.

🔮 The Solution: Modulus uses zero-knowledge proofs to efficiently check that AI providers didn’t manipulate their algorithms

“Specialization Always Wins”

That’s all fine and dandy, but bleeding-edge ZK cryptography doesn’t come for free. In fact, even though it saves money by naive blockchain standards, generalist ZK provers still add >1,000x more costs to AI compute (over just trusting our service providers to do the right thing).

In fact, in the past year of building the world’s 1st ZKML applications, we’ve continued to bump into the same cost+performance ceiling. There’s simply no way around it: ZK + ML == economic violence.

That is, until we noticed that modern AI is wholly predicated on the advance of highly parallel processors (read: GPUs). If we create the same step change in ZK proving, we’d be massively opening up the design space for smart contracts.

Or, to put it another way, instead of counting on a faster all-terrain bus, ride our maglev bullet train (codename: “Remainder”) — we have champagne on board ;)

🔮 The Insight: specialized ZK proving purpose-built for AI delivers wildly powerful AI features for dApps at a fraction of the cost

Why drive a faster bus when you can ride a bullet train?

“Accountable AI is a Superpower”

Empowered by “Remainder,” we’ve already started to build out a community of developers and partners obsessed with the next generation of AI-enhanced dApps (wanna join the fun?). In particular, we’ve been consumed with the task of bringing powerful AI features to concrete use-cases — at massive scale.

To help us achieve that vision, we’ll be debuting multiple high-octane ZKML applications over the next few months, starting with a collaboration with NFT appraisal leader — Upshot.

Upshot uses AI to deliver extremely accurate, timely NFT prices (upwards of 100+ millions appraisals per hour at 3–10% MAPE). This means the opportunity to open new financial markets for long-tail assets: awesome! And yet, despite this exciting potential, subscribing to Upshot’s price feed today also means trusting Upshot to never tamper with their pipeline.

The holy grail, of course, would be to deliver Upshot’s astonishing AI prices to the chain without giving up on blockchain security. Which is precisely what we’ll be providing by integrating their machine learning oracle into the Modulus API.

The result is an NFT price feed forged with AI superpowers AND blockchain security, a marriage uniquely enabled by Modulus’ specialized ZK proving.

Never show up to a knife fight without magic

From tamper-proof AI price feeds to authentic machine artists, dynamically intelligent DeFi to trustworthy game economies — there is so much to come. Not to mention the forthcoming paper, the open-sourcing of our codebase, as well as a couple surprises along the way ;)

🔮 The Result: dApps enhanced by tamper-proof AI leapfrog their peers in UX without betraying the trustless creed of the chain

“The Secret Sauce is the Team”

Coming from our experience in academia, we knew Modulus needed to be the kind of company where integrity of character is never compromised. And from the folks we call “Moodlers” here in the serene Stanford hills to our investors, clients, and partners — I think we’ve knocked it out of the park.

In particular, leading our Seed round: Jesse, Alana, and Geoff at Variant, Dmitriy, as well as Justin and Wei at 1kx. Thank you for helping us focus on true value creation, and the good work of impact-oriented technology. Additionally, massive shoutout to Ann Miura-Ko from Floodgate and Tyler Whittle from the Taproot Wizards for being our earliest supporters. And rounding out our superhero roster are the spectacularly talented investors of Inflection.xyz, Alliance, Stanford, and GCR.

As well, we have been the fortunate beneficiary of Zhang Zhenfei, Riad Wahby, and Rand Hindi’s galactic-class advisorship. Seriously, they are the best in the biz, and we’re pinching ourselves over just how lucky we are to be in their orbit.

Finally, joining our cap table, a truly mighty roster of angels. Including… Daniel Lubarov, John Adler, Harry Grieve, Ben Fielding, Remco Bloemen, dcbuilder, Georgios Vlachos, Nick Emmons, Brandon Da Silva, Wei Xie, Will Papper, Nicola Greco, Robert Drost, Cathie So, Don Ho, Akilesh Potti, Casey Caruso, Stuti Pandey, Spencer Noon, James Wu, Vassilis Tziokas, Santiago Santos and more.

🔮 The Who: Integrity of character was the single most important factor we prioritized in how we built Modulus.

“Do It with Joy”

When Ryan, Nick and I started Modulus just over a year ago, we had a genius plan:

“Build something really, really hard”

The heights of our strategic sophistication is nothing short of awe-inspiring! But there is a method to our madness.

The thinking was that if we worked on something people thought was nearly impossible, but do so with absolute sincerity and earnestness — we’d attract the most talented, nicest people in the world to work along with. All they’d ask in turn, we knew, would be to build the kind of company that was sober, spirited, and most importantly, joyous.

It’s strategy-proof!

Good news: so far so good.

Better news: it might just change the world.

🔮 The Vision: as advanced AI gets introduced to our legal, financial, medical, security and education sectors, cryptographic accountability will safeguard the backbone of our computational future.

Interested in adding AI to your dApp? Fill out this snazzy form and join our community! And hey, for more ZKML projects, papers, and announcements, you’re already in the right place.

”Welcome to a world of pure imagination…

This investment will enable us to quicken our pace, making us even more of a contender in the LSDfi arena. Our focus will now turn to building our team, broadening the range of collateral among liquid staking providers, and strengthening our capabilities for multi-chain expansion in the future.

These actions are aimed at ensuring that Helio, along with Synclub, provides a strong, safe, and multifaceted platform for the LSDfi sector. Furthermore, the team is preparing to roll out a detailed development path for our community and update the project’s image to reflect this exciting new phase of development and creativity.

Read the full press release here.

Follow our socials for the latest updates on Synclub & Helio Protocol

🔸Twitter: https://twitter.com/Helio_Money🔸Helio Website: https://helio.money🔸Synclub Website: https://Synclub.io🔸Discord: https://discord.gg/heliomoney🔸Announcements: https://t.me/helio_money_ann🔸Telegram EN: https://t.me/helio_money🔸Telegram CN: https://t.me/HeliomoneyCN

8

Security is paramount at LayerZero Labs and we are unwavering in our commitment to finding the most practical, elegant, and secure designs for every protocol we develop. The following provides a largely chronological overview of our design exploration, offering insights into various details of ColorTrace that were omitted from the paper for the sake of brevity.

Defining the problem Before we begin, we would like to briefly introduce the problem as we define it.

We define the token coloring problem to be the problem of (1) tracking which minter minted a token for fair burning, and (2) tracking the attribution of how many colored tokens have been minted by a given minter (i.e., a minter’s mint) in proportion to the global supply of tokens. The mint is stored on a primary chain, which can be thought of as a snapshot of the instantaneous circulation across all of the chains, including the primary and a collection of secondary chains. For literary purposes, we refer to the unique ID of a minter as its color, and refer to these colors using color names such as red, green, and blue. These colors will invariably be numeric identifiers in practice.

The most impactful part of this problem is the color tracking for fair token burning: if a user redeems a token, how do we identify which minter originally minted it? This problem seems incredibly simple at first glance, but is actually the well known and difficult Colored Coins problem. Applying the Colored Coins protocol to this problem would result in O(N) storage and O(N) compute for a system of N minters, and thus runs into scaling problems on blockchain. We not only present an O(1) solution to this problem, but also design a practical O(1) mechanism to allow crosschain transfers as well.

The two operations demanding meticulous implementation are transfer and remint. Transfer, a straightforward operation, entails sending tokens from one wallet to another within and between blockchains. Both operations are inherently O(N), and we present the first solution (lossy coloring) to the token coloring problem. Lossy coloring serves as the basis for the four algorithms we designed to solve token coloring: ColorFloat, ColorTrace, rho, and ColorAge. All four of these algorithms are complete and pareto-optimal and we believe that there is potential for all four algorithms to be used in future Web3 ecosystems. However, the Verified USD Foundation deemed ColorTrace to have the most desirable properties for USDV in particular.

On top of this, there are several intricacies of crosschain transfers caused by the asynchrony between source debit and destination credit that we also solve in order to design a complete omnichain solution.

Remint is more specific to the token coloring problem. Synchronously updating the mint across a network of multiple independent blockchains is impractical due to the prohibitive cost of crosschain messaging. Consequently, it becomes necessary to allow minters to make the decision of when changes in their color’s circulation are synchronized to the vault on the primary chain. The primary challenge of the remint operation is two-fold: firstly, the economic infeasibility of reminting every time the mint is updated, and secondly, the absence of ordering between remint requests due to the asynchrony inherent in the underlying crosschain network.

Laying the foundation: ColorFloat In our initial approach, we introduced the concept of a float token, which can be conceptualized as a colored token that has been transformed into a colorless token (refer to the whitepaper for further details). These colorless tokens, in turn, are fungible and can coexist in the same balance as any other colored token. Each wallet is permitted to hold tokens of one color (lossy coloring) along with a quantity of float tokens. This allows for lossless encoding of one color, while the remainder is lossily encoded as float tokens. Beautiful in simplicity, lossy coloring is the baseline solution to the token coloring problem that we use as a foundation for both ColorFloat and all subsequent solutions.

In this algorithm, when blue tokens are sent to a wallet with a green balance, these blue tokens (or green tokens) can be encapsulated into float tokens before being amalgamated with the colored balance. Each token contract maintains a record of the number of tokens of each color that have been wrapped into float (referred to as the deficit list). Float tokens can be unwrapped into colors up to the deficit stored in the deficit list. This mechanism facilitates O(1) local transfers, although reminting and crosschain transfers become intricate.

ColorFloat exhibits several properties that may render it more advantageous than ColorTrace in certain applications. Primarily, the float token provides a distinct delineation in the attribution of tokens within a specific balance. This characteristic could prove valuable in a system that employs intricate (re)coloring rules to effectively encode domain-specific knowledge concerning the historical movement of a token. For instance, it could be useful in scenarios involving global color priority or determining whether a token has interacted with a specific application in the past.

Another advantageous characteristic of ColorFloat is that wallet balances can contain an arbitrary number (K) of colored balances in conjunction with a float token balance. As K approaches infinity, the algorithm approaches losslessness; this flexibility in controlling the degree of losslessness is a characteristic that is not particularly useful for USDV, but could be incredibly powerful in other applications.

Reminting entails the process of unwrapping float tokens into the minter’s designated color. This approach provides some limitations on minter behavior in that they can only remint at the time they are holding float tokens. For USDV in particular, the Verified USD Foundation deemed it a better minter experience to allow minters to accrue remint potential over time and remint large batches of tokens without having to hold all of them at once.

Concerning the first point, minters who generate a substantial volume of token movement but maintain a relatively small quantity of tokens at any given time are compelled to remint frequently. This scenario diminishes their capital efficiency, as the reduced ability to amortize transaction costs (including crosschain messaging) becomes a significant factor.

Expanding on the second point, minters face challenges in “protecting” their mint by simply holding a certain quantity of tokens. To prevent their mint from dropping below a specific threshold, minters must hold tokens of their own color. However, holding float tokens, despite having the same intrinsic value as a colored token, does not immediately contribute to reducing one’s deficit. This inherent contradiction in the nature of float tokens hints at a more fundamental shortcoming of the float token model — the fungible colored token, within this design, is not fully fungible from the minter’s perspective. This property, while unimportant in many applications, turned out to be somewhat important for USDV.

Crosschain transfers encounter similar limitations, as it is unsafe to transfer float tokens as-is between blockchains. Float tokens must be transferred along with a corresponding quantity of deficits, essentially necessitating the unwrapping of all float tokens before their transfer. This gives rise to two issues: nondeterministic gas and artificial transfer caps.

In this paradigm, the gas cost of sending tokens from chain A to chain B becomes nondeterministic. In the best case, 10 float tokens may be unwrapped into 1 color, while in the worst case, they may unwrap into 10 colors. This unpredictability in gas cost is arguably more problematic than the issues with reminting, as it directly impacts the user experience.

Additionally, constraints on crosschain message packet size impose a limit on the maximum number of colors that can be transferred crosschain. Consequently, the success of a transfer of, for instance, 1 million tokens from chain A to chain B is partially contingent on luck. In a fortunate scenario, the tokens may unwrap into a single color, enabling a successful transfer. However, in an unfortunate situation where the maximum number of colors per packet is, for example, 100, the transfer might be constrained to only 100 tokens. This not only adversely affects the user experience but can also severely curtail composability, as the number of transactions required to send tokens crosschain becomes practically unbounded.

Local and Global Mint In an effort to address the lack of fungibility in the float token model, our subsequent evolution of the algorithm involved shifting the float token from a per-wallet quantity to a per-token contract quantity. We embraced a design where implicit float token wrapping and unwrapping are aggregated for minters to handle asynchronously. This adjustment not only improves the user experience but also offers a more efficient and streamlined approach for minters in the context of USDV. In essence, we increased the lossiness of the system in a way we deemed would provide a better user and minter experience. Taking the leap of faith to accept increased lossiness was one of the most important parts of this project, as it helped us broaden our vision of the problem as a whole and more fully explore the design space.

Each token contract stores two quantities: localMint and globalMint (referred to as colored and minted in the code). LocalMint is the instantaneous circulation of a given color within the local blockchain, and globalMint is the last value that was synchronized from the local chain to the primary chain vault.

In contrast to the previous approach of wrapping colored tokens into float tokens held in individual wallets, the refined strategy involves directly recoloring colored tokens during transfers. In this model, each wallet holds tokens of precisely one color. The recolorings are encoded as changes in localMint, with the variance between localMint and globalMint signifying either a deficit, subject to slashing during reminting, or a surplus, available for reminting against an opposing and equivalent magnitude of deficits. This adjustment streamlines the process, making it more direct and efficient.

This solves the problems with reminting, as surpluses can be globally accumulated over an unbounded period of time before the minter synchronizes them to the vault, and a minter holding a certain quantity of tokens guarantees that colored will never fall below that quantity. This limits the magnitude of the deficit on the local chain.

This solution effectively addresses the challenges associated with reminting. Surpluses can be globally accumulated over an unbounded period of time before the minter synchronizes them to the vault. Moreover, a minter holding a specific quantity of minted tokens ensures that the globalMint will never fall below that quantity, thereby limiting the magnitude of the deficit on the local chain. Consequently, the local and global mint model represents our first fully minter-fungible solution to the fungible token coloring problem.

DeltaZero Continuing our exploration of colored and minted tokens, we came to the realization that, in practice, the only necessary bookkeeping for secure recolorings and crosschain transfers is the per-color difference between localMint and globalMint, referred to as delta. Theoretically, tracking per-color delta along with a mechanism to observe the sum of all deltas in a chain can establish a mathematically sound system for crosschain token coloring. However, it is typically preferable to store at least colored or minted to enable minters to swiftly determine the circulation of their tokens on each blockchain.

Pain point: deficit list All the previously discussed models share a critical limitation: the deficit list. Maintaining this list not only incurs a substantial gas cost but, more significantly, leads to an unpredictable gas cost per token transaction. In fortunate scenarios, crosschain transfers may involve storing one positive delta and one negative delta. However, in the worst case, crosschain transfers could result in storing one positive delta alongside hundreds or even thousands of negative deltas (though in practice the probability of this is close to zero). To exacerbate matters, the packet size limit imposes a nondeterministic upper bound on the number of tokens that can be sent from one blockchain to another. This unpredictability in user experience can be characterized, to put it politely, as suboptimal.

We burned many hours and weekends musing over how to optimize or eliminate the deficit list, and the potential security surfaces that are introduced. We eventually came to the consensus that the user experience cannot be compromised under any circumstances, which meant that whatever solution we came up with should provide well-defined, simple semantics with at least a predictable upper bound on transaction gas consumption as a function of the number of tokens.

Eliminating the deficit list introduces a significant challenge as the system is no longer easily composable without it. While it might be straightforward to address this issue by requiring offchain input for choosing or optimizing deficits to balance the transfer, purely onchain applications that integrate with USDV cannot rely on this interface. The need for maintaining composability poses a nuanced challenge in the design considerations.

Our next thought was that we could somehow optimize the deficit list to limit the gas to a reasonable degree. Many ideas floated around, such as allowing pseudorandom seeding into a random point on the deficit list, a “tiered” sorting model of ordered unsorted buckets, and just maintaining the top N largest deficits.

However, we were not yet convinced that there was no way to provide a consistent, hard bound on the variance in user-facing gas consumption. Our solution at this point was essentially complete, but we did not move on until we are convinced the solution is both complete and there exists no better solution. Consequently, our focus shifted towards identifying a bookkeeping mechanism that provides tighter bounds on cost and storage for crosschain transfers.

DeltaTheta, DeltaSigma, Debt, and ColorTrace The final idea we eventually settled on for this bookkeeping mechanism was DeltaTheta; our Chief Architect and our CTO independently came to the same solution, with the former calling it ΔΣ and the latter calling it Debt. The final naming was a point of contention, and we eventually settled on DeltaTheta (Δθ).

DeltaTheta can be conceptualized as the per-chain global aggregation of float, or as a sort of “uncolored crosschain delta”. When a surplus is transferred from chain A to chain B, that surplus is replaced by an equivalent increase of DeltaTheta on the source chain, and balanced by an equal magnitude negative change in DeltaTheta on the destination chain. Thus, we sort of “cheat” by punting the problem of matching surpluses to deficits down the line to what we call the synchronization layer.

The obvious problem with DeltaTheta is that it cannot be used to remint surpluses (whose mint would you slash to remint the surplus?), but at the same time a negative DeltaTheta implies there are more colored surpluses than colored deficits on the local chain. Thus, if DeltaTheta is negative, there exist local surpluses that cannot be reminted due to lack of colored deficit; the job of balancing DeltaTheta across blockchains is delegated to the synchronization layer.

The synchronization layer can be implemented in many different ways, and we’ll focus on presenting the way we ultimately settled on

The first alternative, which we ultimately adopted, involves freely synchronizing positive DeltaTheta with negative colored delta (deficits) between secondary chains. If a blockchain has a positive DeltaTheta, the equivalent magnitude of colored deficit can be transferred to any remote blockchain. This approach operates under the optimistic assumption that DeltaTheta will eventually converge to zero on all blockchains.

While this approach carries some disadvantages, notably the absence of a hard guarantee of system convergence, it is the most practical solution to delta synchronization within the constraints of existing blockchain networks.

Firstly, reminting still takes place directly from secondary blockchains and is susceptible to color fragmentation. In situations where many small deficits cumulatively sum to match a large surplus, packet size limitations can result in a significant cost for reminting. This highlights a potential challenge in terms of efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Second, the lack of convergence guarantee allows malicious actors to potentially hide their deficits in a packet indefinitely by ping ponging it between two blockchains. Supposing the DeltaTheta on chain 1 is positive K, the attacker can synchronize K of their own color deficit from chain 1 to chain 2 with DeltaTheta=0, then compose the destination chain synchronization transaction with another synchronization back to chain 1. An attacker with sufficient liquidity can identify chains with less liquidity to attack using this ping pong attack and indefinitely hide their deficits.

Third, it is possible to create unremintable remint requests under this synchronization mechanism, as mentioned in the whitepaper. The example from the whitepaper is reproduced below.

If remint R3 is executed before R1, both R1 and R2 are independently un-executable, but cancel each other out. This necessitates a delta pool that allows the accumulation and merging of remint requests without applying them to the vault. The contents of this delta pool are piecewise synchronized with the vault when the state of the vault and delta pool are consistent.

At this point we would like to briefly pause to illustrate the final design of ColorTrace as we implemented it and presented it in the whitepaper, shown in the above figure.

Transfer (TransferSend & TransferReceive), at the top, illustrates the transfer of a surplus of color C from chain Source to chain Destination. The actual tokens are deducted from the source wallet, and the surplus is deducted from the source ΔC. This change in ΔC is balanced by an equal and opposite movement in Δθ on the source chain, maintaining the delta-zero invariant. We then move the tokens, change in ΔC, and change in Δθ from the source chain into the packet. On the destination chain, a similar operation is performed by TransferReceive, removing these values from the packet and crediting (adding) them to the destination token contract. We only illustrate the case where ΔC > 0 on source, as all other cases can simply send tokens without changing ΔC or Δθ.

Sync (SyncSend & SyncReceive) is similar to the Transfer operation, except it does not move actual tokens and the colored delta must be negative.

Recolor simply increases one delta and decreases another by the same amount on the source chain.

Remint (RemintSend & RemintReceive) finds a positive K such that ΔM (the reminting color) is greater than or equal to K and another ΔV (the victim color to be slashed) is greater than or equal to -K. ΔV and ΔM are then reduced in magnitude (converges towards zero) by K.

Delta Pool Given that the worst-case scenario involves aggregating remint requests in the delta pool, a more elegant design was proposed: directly aggregating all deltas in the delta pool before initiating the reminting process from the delta pool to the vault. This investigation also considered the concept of one-sided (non-deltazero) synchronization, allowing a surplus to be sent to the vault without a matching deficit and vice versa. This refined approach aims to streamline the reminting process and enhance overall system efficiency.

The delta pool boasts several favorable properties, primarily arising from the unidirectional flow of deltas into the pool. This configuration offers stronger convergence guarantees, reduces attack surfaces, and simplifies the minter experience by automating the merging and canceling of deltas in the delta pool. However, this approach does necessitate the involvement of an external entity (e.g., token foundation) to altruistically cover the costs of synchronization to the delta pool on Ethereum. This opens up some potential griefing surfaces, as users may attempt to spuriously create extra synchronization costs. Striking a balance between system integrity and user experience becomes a crucial consideration in this context.

In this form of the delta pool, reminting occurs exclusively using deltas stored in the pool, and both colored surpluses and deficits must be synchronized to the delta pool to facilitate reminting. However, several reasons led to the decision not to adopt this version of the delta pool. First, there is a race condition where a minter synchronizes a deficit to the delta pool, but another minter frontruns the remint transaction to consume the deficit. Secondly, this design relies on the assumption of an actor motivated to pay fees to reduce system entropy (e.g., token foundation) covering the costs to synchronize the deltas to the delta pool. The semantics of this altruistic synchronization are challenging to define, as minters may have different optimization functions for cost versus benefit with synchronization. These considerations underscore the complexity and potential drawbacks associated with this form of the delta pool.

One-sided Synchronization, Donuts, and Rho The delta pool model opens the opportunity for one-sided synchronization, or non-deltazero synchronization from secondary chains to the delta pool. For example, a minter can synchronize only their own surplus, and depend on some other entity to synchronize a matching quantity of deficits to facilitate reminting. This can theoretically be enhanced by a fee and reward model, where a net-positive (net surplus) synchronization incurs a fee, whereas a net-negative (net deficit) synchronization receives a reward to incentivize both sides of the synchronization.

This introduces a potential issue known as the “donut attack.” Addressing this donut problem marked the final phase of our investigation, ultimately convincing us that our exploration of the design space was comprehensive and concluded.

The donut attack unfolds as follows:

The attacker controls two colors, Red and Blue, initially holding K red tokens, and all deltas are zero on chain 1. The attacker recolors Red|K to Blue|K, synchronizes deltaBlue = +K, then transfers Blue|K to chain 2. On chain 2, the attacker recolors Blue|K to Red|K, then transfers Red|K to chain 1. On chain 1, the attacker recolors Red|K to Blue|K, then synchronizes deltaBlue = +K. This cycle repeats indefinitely, creating deltaBlue infinity on the delta pool, deltaBlue minus infinity on chain 2, and deltaRed minus infinity on chain 1. The donut attack illustrates a perpetual loop that results in unbounded delta values, presenting a significant vulnerability in the system.

This problem does have a proper solution in constant time, but it introduces rather large overheads. Initially, we present this solution in an intuitive but inefficient way, then detail how it can be optimized. The solution involves defining special “lock” and “key” fungible colored tokens generated upon the crosschain transfer of a surplus. Specifically, if K surplus tokens are sent from chain 1 to chain 2, K lock tokens are generated on chain 1, and K key tokens are transferred to chain 2.

When a surplus is synchronized to the delta pool, it is accompanied by any lock tokens present on the local chain up to the amount of the synchronized surplus value. Simultaneously, if a deficit is synchronized, it is accompanied by any key tokens present on the local chain up to the amount of the synchronized deficit value. In the delta pool, lock tokens prevent the reminting of a corresponding surplus, and key tokens correspondingly prevent the slashing of deficits. If lock tokens are present in the delta pool when key tokens are synchronized, or vice versa, an equivalent quantity of lock and key tokens is canceled out. This mechanism provides a way to manage and balance surplus and deficit tokens in the delta pool efficiently.

To formalize and optimize this model further, we introduce a new colored meta-token called rho, where a negative rho corresponds to a key, and a positive rho corresponds to a lock. When synchronizing deltas to the vault, the rho values must be synchronized along with the deltas. During the transfer of K surplus from one chain to another, the source chain’s rho is increased by K, and the destination chain’s rho is decreased by K. This solution provides a mathematically sound mechanism for allowing one-sided synchronization in a way that is resistant to donut attacks. In the case of a donut attack creating an unbounded surplus, that surplus is locked up and unremintable. Another perspective on rho is as a per-color DeltaTheta, facilitating safe one-sided delta synchronization. The Rho model does incur overheads on every operation in exchange for a very marginal increase in system-wide consistency.

ColorTrace is ultimately the solution the Verified USD Foundation chose for USDV, but we still wanted to carefully analyze the weaknesses of ColorTrace and understand the tradeoffs involved in solving these weaknesses. The first weakness is the susceptibility to flash reminting and other timing-based attacks. The second weakness is the complex offchain deltaTheta synchronization logic. Given these challenges, the subsequent question arises: Is there a way to completely eliminate the difference between local and global mint? Can we track the granular, precise history of circulation updates and leverage this information to calculate yield shares? And if so, what desirable properties of ColorTrace do we lose as a result?

ColorAge An entirely different approach to the aforementioned synchronization models involves making a small compromise on the user experience and decentralizing the vault. In both ColorTrace and the rho model, the worst-case gas overhead for token transfers is updating deltas for recoloring or DeltaTheta, and both of these overheads can be reasonably predicted in a deterministic manner. In the next approach we will talk about, ColorAge, the gas cost variance for transfers is theoretically unbounded (though in practice the vast majority of transfers will have the exact same gas cost), and depend on wall-clock time which is much harder to reason about deterministically.

In ColorAge, we define age as the product of circulation and elapsed time. For instance, if the circulation of a token is 100 and remains unchanged for 10 seconds, the token age is calculated as 100 * 10 = 1000. Age can be accumulated over time. For example, if the circulation is 100 for 10 seconds and then increases to 200 for the next 10 seconds, the total age is computed as 100 * 10 + 200 * 10 = 3000. This age calculation provides a measure of the token’s activity and duration in circulation.

We further define ColorAge, a tuple consisting of age and all other information necessary to calculate age.

Given the ColorAge of a given token, the age of the token over a given period of time can be interpolated from the data stored in the ColorAge struct.

ColorAge is tracked (1) for each color in the system and (2) for the total circulation of tokens within a given blockchain. This tracking allows for a comprehensive understanding of the age dynamics at both the individual color level and the overall token circulation within a specific blockchain.

Time is divided into epochs, with each epoch defined as a system-wide constant span of time. This time can be either local wall clock time or some other logical time construct. Yield distribution takes place on epoch granularity, meaning that yields are distributed from the managing entity to minters at the conclusion of each epoch. This approach provides a structured and predictable schedule for yield distribution, enhancing the system’s transparency and reliability.

Every time tokens are recolored, ColorAge is updated for the source and destination colors. In addition, every time tokens are moved between blockchains, minted, or burned, ColorAge is updated for the relevant colors and total circulation on all blockchains involved. We denote ColorAge for a given color C to be ColorAgeC, and the ColorAge for the local blockchain to be ColorAgeΣ.

For each chain in the network, the invariant is maintained that Σ ColorAgeC = ColorAgeΣ

Each CheckpointRoot is the hash of the ColorAge at a certain point in time concatenated with the previous CheckpointRoot. This creates a chain-like structure where the CheckpointRoot (a compact hash or similar) can be used to validate the authenticity of a given sequence of ColorAges. More formally,

CheckpointRoot 0 (CPR0) = keccak256(abi.encode(ColorAge0, 0)),

CPR1 = keccak256(abi.encode(CPR0, ColorAge1)) and so on and so forth.

This design allows the verification of ColorAge sequences on a remote blockchain while only using one storage slot for CheckpointRoot.

Note that if CheckpointRootT-2 was stored in the vault, the local blockchain would have to send CheckpointRootT, ColorAgeT-1, and ColorAgeT to verifiably recreate the chain all the way to CheckpointRootT.

Distribution layer Given the ColorAge tracked locally on each chain, we define three potential distribution models.

1. Distribution occurs in the vault. For a color C and epoch T, yield distribution can occur if (1) ColorAgeC and (2) ColorAgeΣ for a given secondary blockchain B are received on the vault. The minter for color C can receive their entire yield for epoch T only after ColorAgeC and ColorAgeΣ are received at the vault from every blockchain in the network. Alternatively, if ColorAgeC for every color on blockchain B is received at the vault, ColorAgeΣ can be calculated as the sum Σ ColorAgeC, meaning ColorAgeΣ does not necessarily have to be explicitly sent from blockchain B to the vault

2. Distribution occurs on the secondary chains ColorAgeΣ is used to determine the yield distribution from the vault to secondary blockchains. A secondary blockchain’s proportional share of the yield is given to be its ColorAgeΣ divided by the sum of ColorAgeΣ across all secondary blockchains. This model only requires ColorAgeΣ to be synchronized from secondary blockchains to the vault, thus resulting in messaging complexity scaling in proportion to the size of the network rather than the number of minters. Yields are distributed to the local blockchain and stored in a mapping epoch => yield Each minter claims a portion of the yield for a given epoch based on their ColorAge

3. Distribution occurs offchain Distribution can use the checkpointRoot and history of age updates as a sort of proof for minters to provide verifiable attestations to their ColorAge over a given epoch. This ColorAge can then be used to calculate a yield distribution which can occur offchain. Offchain distribution is the most efficient method of distributing yields, and theoretically can be done with zero crosschain messages. However, offchain distribution does require minters to place a degree of trust into the distribution infrastructure and token foundation.

It’s technically possible, but with unclear benefits, to define distribution topologies that combine the above. For example, having multiple vaults, or a tiered/tree structured vault where yields trickle down from a set of root nodes towards the leaf nodes.

ColorAge has several advantages over ColorTrace, but also comes with several drawbacks. ColorAge simplifies the consistency model by removing almost all asynchrony from safety-critical operations (i.e., no delta, delta synchronization, reminting), and provides second-granularity tracking of attribution changes, eliminates remint-based timing attacks (flash loan, etc.). Unfortunately, ColorAge does have some drawbacks, which we address below.

The first drawback is the nondeterministic and potentially incredibly expensive transfer cost. If a color has not been recolored for many epochs and no entity has run a manual checkpoint of the ColorAge, the first recoloring or crosschain transfer will have to calculate and store many checkpoints. This can be fixed by making epochs very long and the token foundation actively running checkpoints. There are also options to reduce the fidelity of tracking in exchange for reduced nondeterminism, but the problem is impossible to completely eliminate.

Another disadvantage is that non-centralized distribution can be inconvenient for minters, as yield will be fragmented across every chain in the network. However, centralized distribution also has the disadvantage that at least one crosschain message per epoch is required to collect yield (in ColorTrace, this is zero if no reminting happens).

Finally, ColorAge makes it difficult to incentivize minting at the protocol level. Tokens are never burned or reminted, so there is no way to set or collect a reminting fee. This may be possible to incentivize externally to the protocol, but someone would be paying out-of-pocket for these incentives. Without these incentives, however, it becomes a zero-sum game where existing minters fight for a fixed pool of yield, as there is no incentive to introduce new mint into a system where other minters can so easily steal yield share.

Our final conclusion The safety difference between rho and DeltaTheta is minimal in practice. Consequently, the decision was made to settle on using the DeltaTheta model with a small, infrequently-used delta pool, as mentioned in our whitepaper. This approach strikes a balance between mathematical completeness and practical usability.

ColorAge, on the other hand, appears at first glance to be a very practical and efficient solution that competes with ColorTrace. However, ColorAge has a fatal weakness in that minting new tokens is not incentivized; this property by itself prevents any stablecoin from gaining traction. ColorTrace provides a knob to tune and control the relative advantage of TVL (Total Value Locked) vs. volume/throughput: remint fees. Setting a remint fee of 0 would yield financial characteristics nearly identical to ColorAge, whereas setting a remint fee of 100% would direct all the financial incentive purely to freshly minted tokens. ColorAge can be viewed as a gas-efficient protocol to implement the financial characteristics of ColorTrace with no remint fees, but loses all flexibility in exchange. This nuanced approach allows for flexibility in adjusting the protocol’s behavior based on the desired balance between freshly minted tokens, TVL, and transaction volume.

We hypothesize that a remint fee that is greater than zero, but not excessively high, creates the best ecosystem for DeFi applications, and thus chose not to commit to the zero remint fee model unless we find evidence that our hypothesis is false. We find it highly unlikely that any stablecoin ecosystem can grow without minting incentives, and thus believe ColorAge may be better suited to different applications and ecosystems.

Other theoretical “attacks” One theoretical “attack” that we did not delve into in the whitepaper is known as the deficit sponge. In this scenario, the adversary has control over two colors, Red and Blue. The attack commences with holdings and surplus of Blue|K tokens on the home chain.

The assailant executes this strategy by transferring the surplus to a targeted chain, changing its color to Red, and subsequently reissuing the surplus against a different color that currently exhibits a deficit on the chosen chain. The attacker then transmits the Red|K tokens back to the home chain, converts them to Blue|K, and repeats this process for each chain in the network, potentially up to once per chain. As a consequence of this attack, in a network consisting of N chains, the adversary utilizes K tokens to accumulate N * K mint with a deficit of (N-1) * K on the home chain. Conceivably, the deficit on the home chain can be concealed using the fugitive deficit attack.

We don’t consider the deficit sponge to be a real attack because the reward earned does not justify the risk. The deficit of (N-1) * K on the home chain can easily be slashed by any verified minter, and in all realistic scenarios it will be slashed long before the “attacker” can recoup the reminting fees. Thus, the deficit sponge is just a fancy way to pay extra fees to your “victims”, or put differently a way to attack yourself. Unfortunately, we do not have much sympathy for malicious parties and do not build any protocol-level protections against self-destruction via deficit sponge.

The ColorTrace whitepaper doesn’t delve into the decentralization of delta synchronization. While theoretically possible, achieving decentralization would demand meticulous management of pricing and a well-defined framework of risks and rewards. The ultimate goal is to incentivize individuals for converging DeltaTheta towards zero on the destination chain during synchronization, without imposing penalties for causing DeltaTheta divergence.

In theory, a reward could be provided on the destination chain if DeltaTheta converges as a result of a synchronization operation. However, the pricing for this reward needs to be carefully calibrated — it should be greater than the fee for a single crosschain message but less than the fee for two crosschain messages. This nuanced approach is crucial. If the reward matches the cost of two crosschain messages, there’s a risk that network operators might be incentivized to intentionally create divergence using a crosschain transaction, followed by synchronization to resolve that divergence. This could enable them to pocket network fees at the expense of the token foundation.

Given these considerations, the Verified USD Foundation decided to implement non-incentivized delta synchronization in version 1 of USDV. Any move towards decentralization in this aspect would necessitate a thorough threat analysis to carefully assess the potential risks and devise appropriate safeguards before implementation.

Conclusion Thank you for making it to the end of this long and very technical post. Ultimately, the message we wanted to get across is that we here at LayerZero spend an incredible amount of time and effort to exhaustively explore the design space of every problem we solve, and token coloring is no exception. We started with ColorFloat, and broke the problem down into layers until we were unable to further subdivide. We enumerated the polar extremes of the design space of each layer, considered the spectrum of designs between these extremes, and came up with ColorTrace, ColorAge, and ColorFloat. After we convinced ourselves that the design space was fully explored, we carefully chose the one that would provide the most positive impact to the Web3 space, and released it to the world.

Written by Thomas Kim, Isaac Zhang and Ryan Zarick and brought to you by the LayerZero engineering team.

Hi friends, wishing everyone a productive fall, the second part of the October ambassador programs is here, good luck!

In this topic:

• GameSwift Ambassador Program

• Polyhedra Community Ambassador⭐

• AirDAO AirSearcher Ambassador Program (DYOR)

• Dmail Ambassador Program⭐

GameSwift Ambassador Program

About

Become a part of the elite web3 gaming community by joining the GameSwift Ambassador Program, managed by GameSwiftDAO. This program offers exclusive benefits and the opportunity to compete on the leaderboard. GameSwiftDAO, an independent community centered around GameSwift, is excited to introduce this Ambassador Program.

Program Details

Becoming a GameSwift Ambassador is more than just gaining access to exclusive benefits and rewards; it’s a chance to play a pivotal role in GameSwift’s global expansion and shape the future of the web3 gaming industry. As a GameSwift Ambassador, you’ll have the opportunity to collaborate with us on creating innovative content, establishing relationships with industry leaders, and inspiring others to explore the exciting world of blockchain-based gaming.

Tasks

The team is looking for content creators. Your task will be to:

• Writing Twitter threads

• Creating videos

• Creating infographics, informational materials, graphics

Rewards

• Unique leaderboardClimb the leaderboard to win from a sweet $ prize pool.

• Gameswift merchGrab unique GameSwift merch.

• Network with leadersGet a chance to network with industry leaders.

• Web3 gamesAccess the latest Web3 games.

How to apply

To join the GameSwift ambassador program, fill out the application form below.

About

Polyhedra Network is building the next generation of infrastructure for Web3 interoperability, scalability, and privacy through advanced Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology. Polyhedra Network provides trustless and highly-efficient interoperability solutions for asset transfers, message passing, and data sharing between various Web2 and Web3 systems.

Program Details

Polyhedra is excited to reopen applications for its Community Ambassador Program. If you’re passionate about Polyhedra and enjoy engaging with a vibrant community, this opportunity is ideal for you. They are seeking enthusiastic individuals to join as Community Ambassadors and assist and guide members within language channels on Discord. Proficiency in both English and a specific language is required, along with belief in Polyhedra’s products, good communication skills, and patience.

Responsibilities

• Address frequently asked questions in Discord.

• Gather feedback and bug reports from users.

• Manage users and messages violating community guidelines.

• Assist with various community-related tasks and issues while maintaining a friendly communication atmosphere in the respective channel.

• Create guides to enhance the user experience.

Senior Ambassador and Moderator Positions:

• Exceptional Senior Ambassadors have the opportunity to become Senior Ambassadors and Moderators with increased responsibilities and influence within the community.

Rewards

Senior Ambassadors and Moderators will receive monthly USDT rewards as a token of gratitude for their ongoing support.

How to Apply

If you’re interested in becoming a part of the Community Ambassador Program, complete the application form linked below before the deadline, which is 23:59 on 13th Oct, UTC +0. The list of new ambassador program group members will be announced within 3 working days after the application period ends.

Squeezing Out the Details: Alpha Testnet Launch

Our closed Alpha Testnet is about to see the light of day! And guess when? Yup, mid of this week! It’s launching on the Arbitrum Sepolia testnet, and we can’t contain our excitement. So, if you’ve got a thing for being early, you might wanna read on.

How Did You Get In? And Who Got the Golden Ticket?

Firstly, a big cheers to everyone who already earned themselves a spot on our coveted Juice List! Y’all have VIP seats to this juicy event and secured yourself guaranteed access to our closed alpha. We also had an application process going on in our Discord, giving out an additional 25 access keys to big brain individuals, ensuring we have some top-notch gladiators in our NFT battles arena.

Speaking of which…

NFT Battles? Tell Me More!

Alright, for those who’ve been living under a rock (or maybe just missed our memos), here’s the scoop:

Alpha testooors will be able to enter NFT battles — which utilize a mechanic comparable to binary options with a 24h expiration date and a fixed strike price. Battles will be available on 4 blue-chip collections (Miladys, BAYC, Azukis, and Pudgy Penguins).

During a 1h pay-in period players can decide whether the floor price of those collections will move up or down within the next 24h.

Upon expiration the winners’ side can claim their share of the entire other side of the battle, potentially multiplying their juicy position sizes just within a day!

Battle pools will open every hour — 24/7.

The Juicy Rewards and Why You Should Care

For our Alpha Testnet crew, it’s not just about bragging rights (though those are pretty sweet too) and being among the first to try out our protocol. They’ll also get the earliest opportunities to start farming those juicy points (XP). Moreover, they can etch their names in history… or at least on our leaderboard. And guess what? Those points they earn? They’ll journey with them even beyond the testnet as we’ll venture into the main-net!

Phew… those benefits of getting on that Juice List… (still some spots left btw!)

Missed the First Sip? — How to Still Farm those Juicy Points ASAP?

Fret not, thirsting soul! We’re just gearing up for the BETA phase of our testnet. And whispers around the juicer say it’s packed with even more features than the ones highlighted in our Lightest-Paper.

So, make sure to follow our socials closely!

Applications for BETA-testnet opening soon.

Stay juicy. Cheers.

Presenting the second release of the most interesting and helpful content — it’s here! (October 2–8)

Important*: The selection is based on the opinion of the blog author. If you believe other works should be added, please write to me in private messages on Discord (anastalita) or leave a comment under this blog. Thank you!*

Let’s start with bagbekoff and his tweet about Omni Network and Manta collaboration. Enjoy!

And most importantly — if we look at Dune, the number of users in LayerZero is already catching up with the number of users that was at the time of the snapshot in Arbitrum.

Based on this data, the BlockFiTo team identified the most important criteria and multipliers for the LayerZero AirDrop:

• Number of transactions: from 4, from 10, from 25, from 100

• Number of active months: from 2, from 6, from 9

• Number of used bridges: from 2, from 4, from 8

• Transaction volume: from $1,000, from $10,000, from $50,000

• Number of networks: from 3, from 5, from 8

• STG staking + voting: from 3, from 6, from 10, from 20

If a snapshot is not taken and the number of protocol users grows, then the data in our table will also grow accordingly.

Number of transactions: This is the most basic and cheapest criterion for most airdrops, so we recommend paying attention to this criterion. You can make transactions for small amounts, even for $0.10.

Read this story from BlockFiTo — and all the best

These are by far the most important moments dictating the success of our portfolios. Control your emotions, make clear goals and targets, sell the euphoria and buy the fear. Now is the time to research hard and find the conviction plays that you can hold well into the coming bull market and reap 30X, 50X or even 100X returns.

This article will review my current Altcoin portfolio, my hot prospects, and overall thesis for the next couple years. Keep in mind, we are likely in for a rollercoaster over the next 9–12 months, and you should keep dry powder for opportunities, and go hard into your strong conviction plays with a mind to hold for 18–24 months. NFA.

Investment Thesis

My approach is built on a few simple well researched assumptions.

1. The next bull run will likely take place starting Q1/Q2 2024, and fizzle out in Q3/Q4 2025.

2. Major themes in the next bull run will likely include Gaming, Wallets, all-in-one DEX’s, high quality launchpads, and some as yet unknown narrative we have not even considered.

3. Main goal is to buy and hold undervalued, high conviction plays within these narratives.

4. Break portfolio into 3 main categories. Adjust according to your risk profile. This will change naturally as prices move, likely skewing towards alts more in the bull, and ideally more to wealth protection at the tail end of the bull.

• Speculative Alts (1/3rd)

• Blue Chip Alts (1/3rd)

• Wealth/Profit Protection (1/3rd)

• Blue Chip Altcoins:

  • Chainlink — $LINK ($6.50, M/C $3.35B): Likely the top crypto infrastructure coin, and most integrated non-L1 protocol. If tokenomics are improved as planned, LINK could skyrocket in the next run. Look for LINK to be an early indicator of the coming bull run. (Expectation 15–20X)

  • Polygon — $MATIC ($0.87, M/C $8B) Top Layer 2 to ETH by TVL, looking to integrate a new ZK L2 along with IMX targeting gaming, currently in testnet. Best BisDev team in the space, incredible tech innovation. (Expectation 15–20X)

  • Solana — $SOL ($20.39, M/C $8B) Top NFT Layer 1 chain by daily active users(DAU). Despite the FUD and technical issues, Solana has retained impressive DAU and Developer numbers, and is a top contender for low cost high speed transaction chains. (Expectation 35–40X)

  • Fantom — $FTM ($0.37, M/C $1B) IMO the best EVM tech stack out there. Responsible spending by the foundation is huge for sustainability, not great for pumpamentals. FTM is on the border between speculative and blue chip, but the huge reserve runway tips the risk scales in favour of blue chip ( Expectation 20–25X)

  • Immutable X — $IMX ($0.76, M/C $760M) The best infrastructure play for gaming and GameFi. They have partnered with Polygon for a ZK EVM chain that will be the go-to solution for plug and play gaming. Tokenomics are fairly good with revenue share and gas fees to come on new ZK EVM chain with Polygon. (Expectation 20–25X)

  • Honourable mention $DOT and $ATOM. I do have bags of both, but will not be accumulating until certain issues are resolved. Cosmos tokenomics need a complete rework in order to properly accrue value from the amazing tech stack. Polkadot needs significantly better UI and UX, yet has a great developer base.

  Speculative Altcoins:

  • Radix($RDX — $0.07, $750M M/C) and Near ($NEAR — $1.67, $1/5B M/C): Both coins are very early stage Layer 1s with interesting tech stacks, and very high potential TPS. Both have built-in sharding for scaling, but also need to gain adoption for real token price appreciation. High risk, high reward. (Expectation 25–30X)

  • PancakeSwap ($CAKE $1.83, $360M M/C): 2nd largest DEX by TVL and volume, significant price drop due to long term staking unlocks, highly undervalued if BNB adoption continues. Expect a big push towards DEX’s, especially ones with cheap fees and great UIs. (Expectation 40–45X)

  • TrustSwap ($SWAP $0.23, $23M M/C): Highest quality launchpad platform prioritizing quality over quantity. Operates a token lock, vesting and minting infrastructure service yielding real yield, while granting access to IDO’s and private sales. Value proposition is more weighted towards sales proceeds and real yield, with token price appreciation secondary (Expectation yield/sales: 20–25x, Token 40–45X, Total 60–70X)

  • XBorg (Token TBD, Genesis Prometheus NFT 0.9 ETH): THE best GameFi infrastructure project with innovative products like ITOs (Initial Team Offerings for Esports), Seed & Private GameFi sales, NFT whitelist access, Xborg token airdrop to NFTs, and a lot more. Big team with Swissborg backing, currently raising for their seed sale. Look for huge innovation from these guys, with big hype once all the pieces fall into place. (Expectation 100–110X, plus yield from Sales/ITO’s) Note: There is approx 1 week left to join their seed presale. Prometheus NFTs give you up to $3K allocation per NFT … available on Opensea here.

  • Zerion Genesis NFT’s (0.16 ETH): These are a phenomenal value, but do not buy until they are merged. Zerion Genesis collection rare and legendary cards will give you free platform access for life. Zerion is the premier all-in-one wallet out there, with built-in cross chain swaps, bridge aggregator, NFT and portfolio tracker, and a new dynamic DNA NFT system. These NFTs are also about to get far more scarce. As of May 18th, the Genesis NFT’s will need to be merged with your Zerion DNA. Many will not perform this, and my expectation is a reduction in available supply of approx 25–30%, and no more will ever be created. Once they are merged, you can buy them on OpenSea. When they implement smart contract wallets, and add all kinds of addtional perks as intimated, these will be very scarce and sought after. (Expectation 25X + utility)

  • Honourable Mentions: These are coins I am currently following or have just started to accumulate. Higher risk, but lots of potential.

  i) Rocket Exchange ($RVF) — Cross Chain Atomic Swaps with DEX and CEX, anonymously.

  ii) BSCPad — ($BSCPAD) IDO launchpad on BSC. No one does hype better than Bluezilla, the marketers behind BSCpad.

  iii) Osmosis — ($OSMO) The main DEX on Cosmos ecosystem. Amazing UI and tech allowing cross chain transactions.

  iv) Duck Dao ($DDIM) Presale and IDO platform with some incredible 1400X sales last year. Sales are more frequent, but at times you end up with some lower quality coins as well.

  v) NASDEX — ($NSDX) Real word asset tokenization with a huge team, and big partnerships. Very early stage.

  vi) Mummy Finance ($MMY) Fantom based perpetual DEX that just expanded to Optimism. Generates fairly good yield via revenue share, needs to attract more TVL & users.

  vii) Swissborg ($CHSB) CEX utility token. They are adding quite a few features, including thematics (funds), credit cards, amazing UI, fairly good prices, and soon their Alpha program (presale and NFT access)

  This list is by no means exhaustive, and includes only a highlight reel of some of my top picks and larger bags. A great place to start some due diligence.

  Wealth & Profit Protection: (BTC, ETH & USD)

  One of the most important components of successfully navigating the crypto markets is an ironclad plan to bank profits. This is far more difficult to implement than it sounds.

  As the bull run ages, my plan is to sell profitable altcoins and bank profits as follows. Gradually this will shift from investing into new sales into the other three components:

  25% into BTC

  25% into ETH

  25% into USDC

  25% Into new sales and new alts.

  Conclusion:

  To be clear, none of this should be construed as financial advice. Everyone’s financial situations are different, and each should act accordingly. That said, this bear market is the type of opportunity that comes around once or twice in a lifetime. Coupled with the revolutionary concept of permissionless money and bankless finance (crypto), and the monetary crises that looms worldwide, this truly is a perfect storm and the best chance for financial independence we are likely to see for generations.

  Good luck out there and see you on the next one!

  Sovereign Crypto

  Disclosures:

  • I either own or am looking to buy the above mentioned crypto

  • Not financial advice.

  • I am on the content council at XBorg.

On sale!

Because of end-of-season clearance, I was able to get the tool, two batteries and a charger for about $250. The trimmer was $50, the charger $25, and the batteries on sale for $85 each. This puts me in similar price range with other battery systems, but allows me to swap out my 48v 5Ah (240Wh) batteries as needed. I’ve wanted to build this system for a while using the batteries I use in my electric mower and chainsaw, so I figured this sale was a good opportunity to try building a back up system.

How would this work for appliance battery power?

I currently have five of these, meaning I can run 1kW with downtime to swap out cells. In a power outage a year or so ago, I was able to run our fridge for ~12h on a 48v 10Ah eBike battery without any problems. Using a Kill-a-Watt, I was able to determine our fridge could burn about 1kWh in a 24 hour period. Honestly, if you’re not opening and closing it, it uses far less. Hooking up some emergency solar panels I have, I could probably charge one or two of the 5.0Ah batteries per day. Not ideal, but it’s a start.

Weasel Words and Disclaimers!

This is all very stupid, likely a fire or shock hazard and definitely invalidates any warranties or responsibility of Snapper or Briggs & Stratton. I’m not a professional, but I do have a healthy respect for the amount of power involved. This project is for my own personal use, and I’m undertaking it under my Rights of Repair. Don’t try this at home, as serious loss or injury could occur.

Let’s Invalidate Some Warranties!

The initial system will essentially be a teardown of the hedge trimmers so that I can use the cradle to power a household inverter. What I’m…

Over the years, I have had many encounters with Japanese websites — be it researching visa requirements, planning trips, or simply ordering something online. And it took me a loooong while to get used to the walls of text, lavish use of bright colors & 10+ different fonts that sites like this one throw in your face:

Though there are numerous examples of sites with a more minimalistic and easy to navigate design for someone used to Western websites, it is worth examining why this more convoluted style remains prevalent in Japan.

And just to be clear, these are not remnants from the past, but maintained sites that — in many cases — were last updated in 2023.

There are several angles from which we can analyze this design approach:

• Fonts & Front-End Website Development Constraints

• Technological Development & Stagnation

• Institutional Digital Literacy (or the lack thereof)

• Cultural Influence

As with most topics, it is likely that there is no one right answer, but rather that this website design is the result of various factors interplaying over time.

Fonts & Front-End Website Development Constraints

Whereas creating new fonts for romanized languages can be an enjoyable challenge everyone with a basic understanding of typography, an appropriate program & some time on their hands, can take on, doing the same for Japanese is an endeavour on a whole other level.

To create a font from scratch in English you’ll be looking at around 230 glyphs — a glyph being a single representation of a given letter (A a a counting as 3 glyphs) — or 840 glyphs if you want to cover all languages based on the Latin alphabet. For Japanese, as a result of the three different writing systems and countless Kanji, you will be easily looking at 7,000–16,000 glyphs or even more. So, creating a new font in Japanese requires both an organized team effort and a lot more time than its Latin counterparts.

It won’t come as a surprise then that similar workloads ensue for Chinese and (Hanja) Korean fonts, leading to these languages being often covered in what are called CJK fonts.

And with less designers rising to this particular challenge, there are less fonts to choose from when building a website. Add this to the lack of capitalization and Japanese fonts being accompanied by longer loading times due to referencing larger libraries, and you end up with having to use different means in order to create visual hierarchy.

Let’s take the American & Japanese versions of the Starbucks homepage as an example:

1. Input the amount of USDT or the quantity of TIC you wish to exchange.

2. Return to the wallet homepage to check your TIC balance.

Step 2: Log in to the Tribal Island Game Open your TP wallet. Log in to the following address in your wallet: https://dapp.tribalisland.io/ Before logging in, ensure that you have purchased character NFTs, pet NFTs, and unlocked the mystery box. Mint HERE

Step 3: Build an Animal Pen on Tribal Island Log into the Tribal Island game. https://dapp.tribalisland.io/ Open the build menu and select an animal pen that matches the attributes of your battle pets. This will require spending $TIC. A friendly tip: It’s recommended to choose the highest-level battle pets first, ranked from highest to lowest rarity: Yellow-Legendary, Purple-Epic, Blue-Rare, Green-Elite, Grey-Common.

Step 4: Quickly Gain Experience Log in to the Tribe Island game：https://dapp.tribalisland.io/ Select a big tree on the island and start chopping. It will consume your TIC token. Wait for the chopping timer to finish, and you will receive character experience points. Gathering experience from 7 big trees can level you up to level 10.

Step 5: Build A Farm Log in to the Tribe Island game：https://dapp.tribalisland.io/ Open the Build menu and choose the farm option, which will consume your $TIC token. Friendly reminder: Farms can be upgraded, with higher-level farms having lower planting costs and allowing for more crops.

Step 6: Upgrade Your Animal Pen Log in to the Tribe Island game：https://dapp.tribalisland.io/ Friendly reminder: Upgrading the animal pen requires $TIC token and is based on the character’s level. A character at level 10 can upgrade the animal pen by 3 levels. Click on the animal pen and select the first arrow icon. Click on the upgrade option and wait for the upgrade timer to complete.

Step 7: Upgrade Your Battle Pets Log in to the Tribe Island game：https://dapp.tribalisland.io/ Friendly reminder: Upgrading battle pets requires apples, which can be obtained through the market or farming. Make sure to place the battle pet in the animal pen first. Click on the animal pen and select the second animal pen icon. Enter the pen, select the battle pet, and feed it apples to level it up.

Step 8: Place Battle Pets in The Animal Pen Log in to the Tribe Island game：https://dapp.tribalisland.io/ Open your backpack and select the animal battle pet. Choose the battle pet you want to place and put it into the appropriate animal pen based on its attributes.

Step 9: Complete Daily Tasks and Get Rewards Log in to the Tribe Island game: https://dapp.tribalisland.io/ Open the task list. Understand the tasks that need to be completed. Here are some task explanations:

• Feed your battle pets 5 times.

• Collect crystals from the animal pen 5 times.

• Challenge PVE levels 3 times.

• Plant fruits 3 times.

• Breed your battle pets 1 time.

• Hatch your battle pets 1 time.

Step 10: Access PVE Challenge Levels Log in to the Tribe Island game: https://dapp.tribalisland.io/ Open the “Challenges” option located in the lower left corner. Select three of your battle pets for the challenge. Win the challenge to receive random rewards.

Unless we’re damaging our skin microbiome with air pollution.

We usually worry about air pollution harming our lungs and organs, and that certainly is the case. Air pollution increases our risk of respiratory diseases, heart disease, and lung cancer. But along with those serious long-term issues, it may also compromise our skin microbiome, damaging the health of our body’s first line of defense.

https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-023-01564-4

Bugs on your skin

Your skin is a rough place to live; it’s constantly exposed to the outdoor elements. There are variations in temperature, when we are outdoors versus indoors. Sunlight sometimes bathes our skin in deadly UV rays. Sometimes, the skin is awash in tasty nutrients (sweat), while other times it’s bone-dry.

Nonetheless, microbes persist. The levels and types of bacteria that we find vary, depending on your skin type and where we swab. Consider:

• Damp spots, like your armpits, are going to have more bacteria and greater diversity in bacteria than dry spots, like the forearm.

• Your feet are enclosed and often damp, giving them a distinct microbiome that’s different from the rest of your body.

• Your face often has different microbes, especially if you regularly apply skincare products like moisturizers or acne treatments.

There are a lot of different individual microbes, too many for us to look at the levels of each microbe individually. This is like trying to categorize a forest by checking each individual tree!

Instead, we group microbiomes by overall similarity across all the different microbes, creating broad categories. Just as you might classify an area of nature as…

What’s even more exciting is that we have prepared rich rewards to help users better understand and experience the new features when they go live. It will greatly enrich our product line and enhance the user experience on our platform.

New Product Feature

Deposit

BRC20

Users can deposit the tokens to the Chamcha platform.

BTC NFT

Supports Ordinals NFT, as well as NFTs in BRC721 and gen BRC 721 protocol.

Withdrawal

BRC20

Provides a convenient and quick withdrawal function.

BTC NFT

Provides a convenient withdrawal function, allowing you to easily retrieve your assets.

Trade

BRC20

Allow for trading of BRC20 tokens.

BTC NFT

Provide trading functionality for BTC NFTs, allowing you to buy and sell freely.

Inscribe

Chamcha will open the Inscribe feature for users, including Files, BRC721, BRC20, gBRC721, etc. This will help users easily enter the Ordinals ecosystem, create their own NFT, and participate in early ecosystem projects to enjoy Chamcha dividends.

Rewards

To help users experience the new features more deeply, we have designed an interesting campaign. Users who complete the corresponding tasks will have the opportunity to win different levels of OG Passcards.

Complete any task and receive campaign ticket, which will provide users with additional cashback opportunities.

Challenges

Task challenges are divided into five levels. In each level, as long as you complete the specified one, you’ll have the chance to win OG Passcards and extra cashback.

Event Roadmap

July 4th 18:00 — July 12th 18:00 UTC+8

Campaign Ticket Snapshot: July 12th 18:00

Reward Namelist: July 13th

Airdrops&Cashback: July 14th

Notice:

OG Passcard Airdrop

• Deposit and trade ORDI with your Chamcha ID

• Participate in tasks to deposit and trade ORDI

• Airdrop namelist will be selected based on the records during the event

Cashback

• Participate in third-party platforms to complete tasks to obtain the campaign ticket

• Deposit the campaign ticket to your Chamcha ID (We will snap your Chamcha ID)

We believe that this series of new features and activities will further strengthen the relationship between Chamcha and the Ordinals ecosystem, enabling our users to participate more deeply in this thriving ecosystem. Whether you’re a long-time Chamcha user or a new member, we warmly invite you to experience these new features and participate in our activities to witness and participate in the growth and prosperity of the Ordinals ecosystem.