Hey yo, howzit going with your new week, the rowdy bunch of the Chico Army, and of cours
if your new wassup, but your just a viewer of the tube.
My name is Tyler, the host of the crypto channel, that thinks you should stick around for the
climax, as you never know what will happen.
Get ready for our own type of mad lad, cuz it’s time for Chico Crypto!!
I’m sure you saw the thumbnail, Chainlink, Xdai..what?
Well to begin down this rabbit hole, we gotta talk about staking.
Staking within an ethereum token standard, is not possible with your typical ERC20 of
which a majority of Ethereum projects are.
But...not chainlink.
If you didn’t know, which I bet many who hold the token didn’t, Chainlink is not
an erc20.
Chainlink is an erc 677.
What???
How is this possible?
Chain Link has trading pools with Uniswap?
I thought Uniswap only handled erc20s?
Well Erc677, is the transfer and call token standard, and it is written to be backwards
& fully compatible with the erc20 standard but with the added token feature of the transfer
and call function, which the erc20 lacks.
This means, exchanges, dapps, and wallets can accept it just like an erc20 but it can’t
do much more...you can think of it like Erc20 2.0
The standard was conceived by Steve Ellis, the current CTO of Smartcontract.com aka Chainlink
and he is the co-founder along with Sergay.
As we can see from his Linked’n and Sergay’s, he also worked alongside Sergay at their prior
company, Secure Asset Exchange & they both went to NYU together at the same time.
They are 2 peas in a Chainlink POD.
Now, Steve actually spoke on the standard in github recently and this is what he said
regarding how chainlink uses the standard today…”LINK uses it and it is great for
minimizing transactions and/or inter-contract interactions, along with the potential issues
those raise example reentrancy attacks.
Basically what he means, is it’s a secure way to save GAS by reducing onchain transactions.
But the real reason for the standard is staking.
Without transfer and call functions, staking links within contracts would be impossible.
Actually many things wouldn’t be possible...like the coordinator contracts.
What are these?...going to chainlinks pivotal tracker...if you're a link fan, you should
have this bookmarked.
You can see exactly what is being worked on.
As we can see scheduled to be worked on at the end of November is the Multi word coordinator
contract.
What is this?
Well it was discussed last year in the chainlink subreddit, and user fiflars, said this “It
will be used in the future to diminish the cost of asking for an off chain event.
Right now, the Aggregator sends LINK to all oracles, which means that it has to pay a
transaction cost for each oracle that is requested.
For example, if a requester would like 10 nodes to service a request, the cost for that
would be at least the cost of 1 request+10 transactions The coordinator contract will
work a little differently.
Instead of sending that link to the Oracle contracts explicitly, it keeps the LINK in
the coordinator contract.
Only the rightful owner of the oracle can withdraw the LINK from the Coordinator.
The big difference here is that the requestor only has to pay for one transaction instead
of ten, effectively limiting the cost of a request from linear to constant with respect
to the transaction cost.
If you look at the description of staking, it looks like they plan on doing something
similar.
An oracle contract will send LINK to the coordinator contract which it makes available for staking.
This again takes away the need for sending a staked amount using a transaction every
time an oracle accepts a request.
Much cheaper this way.
So this coordinator contract is a major component to the economics of the oracles in regards
to costs and gas, but also in regards to how chainlinks staking will work...it’s the
base layer & both of these things are only possible within Ethereum with the erc677 standard.
Sooo, if Chainlink is pushing forward with this token standard...you would think others
in the industry would too right?
Well, like I mentioned the majority of projects are still stuck in the past with ERC20...but
some are moving forward, and I didn’t know this when I picked up on the projects, but
now I get it & you will too soon.
Another project using erc677?
Xdai and their token stake.
Going to their frequently asked questions, it’s asked “Why is STAKE an ERC677?
They say “ERC677 is very similar to an ERC20, but includes additional functionality.
We use the transferandCall functionality to enable easier bridge conversions, moving STAKE
from the Ethereum Mainnet to the xDai chain and back.
Now that is big, as erc677 isn’t even an accepted standard with Ethereum yet, it’s
very niche and previously only used by Chainlink.
As we can see from the EIP open issue for the standard, which steve announced back in
2017...just in June of this year, Micah Zoltu, asked Steve, “Is this EIP still of interest
to you, or should we treat it as abandoned?”
That’s when Steve replied back to Michah asking “The EIP has slipped my mind recently
but is not abandoned.
He explains it’s uses, which we already covered and asks “What are the next steps
to move this forward in the EIP process?”
As we can see below, Micah Replies, the first step is to create an actual EIP.
Right now this is just an idea (GitHub issue for discussing with others whether something
is worthy of being an EIP).
So obviously not many people are using it, as it’s not even an actual EIP or standard...it’s
a risk to go with it, but it’s the smart risk in my opinion as it’s the evolution
of erc20.
So connections to Chainlink and xdai?
Has to be some right?
Xdai’s one of the only ones using Chainlinks token standard???
Well this takes me to a Chain Link tech, called Threshold signatures...what are these?
They are being implemented to allow nodes to batch their responses off-chain substantially
reducing transaction costs (gas) while minimizing the effects of blockchain network congestion.
They enable oracles to talk to each other off-chain, agree on an observation, aggregate
a single signature proving group observation and then respond to the original data request
using only a single on-chain transaction.
Obviously possible only with erc677...but xdai are they working on threshold signatures
too?
Well from their randomness FAQ the question is asked “Will on-chain, unpredictable random
numbers per block be available in the future?
And they respond “When we move to HoneyBadger BFT, reliable random numbers will be produced
per block via threshold signatures”
So the similarities are there that’s for sure & guess what?
Xdai already has the erc677 bridge built, between their chain and the ethereum mainnet,
as we can see from their token bridge..
ERC677 to ERC677 AMB bridge extension & the code to deploy below.
So ERC677 it’s not even an accepted standard or EIP, yet xdai has built a bridge for the
standard from the ethereum mainnet to their chain, and back.
Why?
Well remember from the xdai FAQ they said “they use the transferandCall functionality
to enable easier bridge conversions, moving STAKE from the Ethereum Mainnet to the xDai
chain and back.
Now this is one of the biggest issues with xdai, the bridge back to the ethereum mainnet.
As we can see from their reddit submission on costs, everything was cheap or free, except
that damn bridge, as we can see they say “There are some user-based costs associated with
bridging tokens to and from the Ethereum Mainnet.
Bridging will not be necessary to access everyday token functionality (transfers, subscriptions,
etc), but only to access additional functionality or liquidity on Ethereum (or other connected
chains)”
That’s because you have to do a transaction on the ethereum mainnet.
And the costs of this relate to which token standard you are using.
Erc20 to erc20...the most expensive as the transfer and call function isn’t there,
resulting in many bridge transactions.
Erc77 to erc20 and vice versa?
Cheaper and easier than erc20 to erc20...but the granddaddy of them all, is the erc677
to erc677, the cheapest and easiest of all as both sides can utilize transfer and call.
So that grandaddy bridge is built, and ready to go, but that is actually just a piece of
something bigger.
The Omni Bridge.
The OmniBridge multi-token extension for the Arbitrary Message Bridge between Ethereum
and the xDai chain is the simplest way to transfer ANY ERC20/ERC677/ERC827 token to
the xDai chain.
What what what?
Ya the omni bridge wraps it all up into 1 taking 3 token standards, and then bridging
them into erc677’s on the xdai chain.
So, why is this important?
Well for erc20’s...they are stuck in the past with an older outdated token standard
on the Ethereum chain, waiting for it’s next evolution and ethereum 2.0….using this
bridge, they could become an erc677, and utilize the additional functions of transfer and call
on the xdai chain, while benefiting from xdais scalability.
Xdai’s built to be fully Ethereum compatible, so when Ethereum 2.0 is ready and scalability
is there, they could easily port right back over to Ethereum, actually utilizing the bridge
again, and instead of bridging back to become an erc20, they could bridge back to 677 dropping
the erc20 standard for good.
Now here is the crazy thing to me.
Chainlink & xdai are the only two projects out there using the standard...xdai is an
Ethereum sister chain, whose main goal is to help ease the load on Ethereum and provide
a scaling solution.
Why is that important?
Well there is one more project using the standard, and that is one that has been around for a
good while, and is creating the smart contract, DeFi sidechain for Bitcoin, helping it scale.
That project is the Rootstock sidechain and RIF..
Going to their FAQ..it’s asked “Why is RIF Token an ERC20 / ERC677 Token?
They say...RIF Token is actually an RRC677 Token.
We called it RRC677 in order to avoid confusion with the ERC677 standard.
All the ERC programming interface standards deployed on the RSK Live Mainnet are renamed
to RRC for the sake of clarity.
In turn RRC677 is an improved version of the RRC20 standard which is fully compatible with
the widely used ERC20 standard so all ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum Network can be ported
to the RSK Network seamlessly”
So they are using Chain Links standard, and guess who just recently announced a partnership
together & presented at Chainlinks smart contract Summit just last week?...RIF and RSK, and
as we can see….at about 8:50, they are speaking about the RSK to Ethereum Token Bridge..
Like a bridge xdai has created?
Well let’s just go into their github, Rootstocks, for the token bridge...and down in usage they
say...You can use the 'Token Bridge Dapp' together with Nifty Wallet or Metamask with
a custom network to move tokens between networks.
Nifty?
Wait I know Nifty, isn’t that from POA proof of authority, AKA xdai?
Oh it sure is...so my friends, RSK is using POA and thus xdai tech, there is no doubt
about it...as we can see, RSK support was added all the way back at the end of 2018.
So, there is a basket of connections between the 3 projects...direct links with RSK and
RIF with chain link, all 3 using a version of 677, and xdai and RSK are and have been
previously connected...they only missing link, get the pun, is that direct one with xdai
and chainlink.
ANd I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but I don’t have it...there isn’t one.
But I would like to finish today’s episode off, with the indirect ones.
So let’s begin with, the founders.
Xdai founder is Igor Barinov...Chainlink founder is Sergay Nazarov...they are both obviously
of Russian decent, and where actually in Russia at the same time...Segay’s linked in show’s
he was working at his venture FUND QED capital, with offices in Moscow from 2011 to 2014..and
then Igor’s linked in shows he was working for companies in Moscow during that time.
Hmmmm, both these guys were into crypto, and back then it was like a really really small
world.
They had to of know of eachother...and here is where things get even more interesting
to me.
Ethereum, was launched in 2015, and the second ever Consensys hackathon went down in 2016...put
on by some big people, Microsoft, Deloitte and IBM...well, guess who submitted a solution
to the hackathon?
Igor had a solution and Sergay had a solution, with Steve Ellis.
As we can see Igors was the proof of phone, KYC oracle..while Sergay and Steve’s was
a Cyber Security Insurance smart contract using oracles.
Although, as we can see Igor’s KYC oracle did win and Sergay and Steve didn’t...
But, this shows the two knew each other, and were a part of a very close group of developers
who have been working on Ethereum for a good amount of time.
These groups, will and have been sharing ideas, and tech...and you wann know another interesting
tidbit?
What was IGOR’s POA originally called?
Actually Oracles Network….so, if these two are connected, they have to be keeping it
a major, hidden secret.
Keeping the name Oracles network for POA, would have gave it away.
Although, you would be letting your fellow country men in on the secret right?
And guess who had a DeFi Moscow meetup together in September of last year, before all of this
world’s craziness?
Well Sasha Shillina on twitter covered it...of course xdai & chainlink.
There is Igor presenting & guess who is presenting for link?
Renat Khasanshin, chainlink lead for special projects, and of course he is Russian…
So this is all I have, the connections between the two...I may be so far off, and the two
may be in competition.
As some out there already think this...But where else are you gonna find research like
this?
Cheers I’ll see you next time!