Omni Network Explained: Rollup Fragmentation Unification

Project Overview

Omni is an interoperability layer for Ethereum, serving as an L1 solution designed to connect various Roll-ups such as Optimism, Arbitrum, zkSync, and Starkware. It provides developers with a straightforward way to scale their applications while maintaining Ethereum’s security properties by leveraging innovations in blockchain technology, such as re-collateralization with Eigenlayer, Cosmos SDK, and Tendermint consensus. Omni enables developers to manage the global application state across all integrated domains and aggregate liquidity, creating seamless product experiences for users.

The Ethereum Fragmentation Issue

With the increasing popularity of Rollups such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and others, the biggest existential threat facing Ethereum is fragmentation caused by Rollups.

More and more Ethereum users and their capital are becoming increasingly dispersed across isolated ecosystems, thereby reducing the global network effect. Omni addresses this issue by integrating all Rollups into a cohesive, interoperable network.

Optimizations for Ethereum Fragmentation

Cross Rollup Communication

Omni enables users and applications to interact across various Rollups as if they were a single, cohesive network.

Unified Liquidity Pool

By facilitating cross-aggregation transactions, Omni helps aggregate liquidity, improve capital efficiency, and reduce user slippage.

Simplified User Processes

Users can enjoy smoother experiences, being able to move assets or execute operations across rollups without complex procedures or multiple steps.

Developer-Friendly Platform

With Omni’s standardized communication protocols, developers can confidently build applications that work across the entire Rollup ecosystem.

Universal Gas

Whether users hold funds on Ethereum, Optimistic Rollup, ZK-Rollup, or any other connected network, they can seamlessly transact without worrying about specific Gas tokens for each network.

Project Highlights

Omni introduces a novel network architecture tailored specifically for low-latency cross-Rollup communication and global compatibility with the entire Rollup ecosystem of Ethereum, built on the cryptographic security of re-staked $ETH. Combining technologies such as CometBFT, ABCI++, and Engine API, it achieves sub-second verification of cross-aggregation messages while leveraging Ethereum’s leading cryptographic security budget. Additionally, Omni is designed for easy integration with any Rollup architecture and native Rollup applications, providing a programmable state layer for managing cross-Rollup application deployments.

Summarized as follows:

Dual Staking Model:

Omni operates as a proof-of-stake network protected by the combined value of re-staked ETH and staked OMNI tokens.

Sub-second Verification:

Omni nodes utilize CometBFT consensus to process cross-aggregation messages and Omni EVM transactions within a second. By employing alternative finality mechanisms such as pre-commitment and transaction insurance, Omni achieves sub-second finality for cross-aggregation messages.

Diverse Aggregation Support:

Omni’s design features minimal integration requirements to ensure compatibility with any aggregation virtual machine, programming language, and data availability architecture.

Backward Compatibility:

Applications can integrate with Omni without modifying existing smart contracts. Instead, applications can use modified front-end instructions to send cross-aggregation messages via Omni.

Three Main Cores of OMNI

Ethereum Restake:

The Omni Network is comprised of validators who restake ETH and validate aggregated state updates to facilitate global interoperability. These ETH-based validators serve as the backbone of the network.

Tendermint Speed and CometBFT:

By leveraging Tendermint PoS consensus, our validators can achieve consensus on aggregated states, with speeds nearly an order of magnitude faster than Layer 1 Ethereum.

CometBFT is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism designed to ensure the resilience and efficiency of network protocols in distributed systems, making it an ideal choice for Omni even in the presence of faults or malicious nodes.

EVM Compatibility:

Omni’s execution layer is EVM compatible, enabled by Ethermint (an EVM module on Cosmos), allowing developers to work in Solidity using their familiar tools. The execution layer includes built-in functionalities for accessing state, messages, and applications from integrated aggregations, thereby creating a seamless experience for users and liquidity across these aggregations.

What OMNI Can Do

Message Propagation:

Applications can simply request messages to be delivered to targets like Arbitrum, and Omni will securely relay the messages to the targets to trigger the corresponding application logic. Omni provides superior security, offering more than just simple message propagation.

Multiple Message Propagation:

Since Omni can create various applications, a single transaction on a Rollup may trigger multiple outbound messages. For instance, when a user deposits funds into an automated protocol, Omni can automatically send messages to other Rollups to complete the corresponding operations.

For example, Alice deposits 10 $ETH into an automated protocol responsible for ensuring her DeFi positions across all Rollups maintain a collateralization ratio of at least 200%. The Omni network might observe this transaction and automatically send messages to Polygon’s zkEVM and Starknet to increase Alice’s position. Alternatively, if all her current positions exceed the specified 200% collateralization ratio, no outbound messages may be transmitted temporarily. However, as her positions fall below the 200% threshold, the automated protocol will start sending messages over several weeks to increase her accounts on each Rollup.

This is the fundamental difference between Omni and projects that only provide interoperability—Omni can facilitate interoperability between Rollups, but given it is a general-purpose programmable EVM, it can do much more.

Updating States within Omni:

Users can purchase tokens or NFTs in any Rollup within the Ethereum ecosystem by interacting with portal contracts and directly receive the purchased tokens or NFTs on the original Rollup, without having to consider Omni.

Cross-Chain DeFi Fund Interoperability:

For example, creating a collateral account on Omni, collateralizing on Chain A, and then borrowing on Chain B, sharing collateral account funds.

NFT Interoperability across Chains:

Projects deployed on the Omni Network, with the help of Omni, will allow users on any chain to mint NFTs, which can also be “teleported” or moved between chains.

Project Team

Omni, formerly known as Rift Finance, is a DeFi protocol that provides financial services for Web3 projects.

Austin King—Co-founder and CEO of OmniNetwork, founded his first company, Strata Labs, while studying computer science at Harvard University. Strata Labs extended high-performance payment networks to process over 10 billion transactions. He later accepted an acquisition offer from Ripple, where he previously served as a software engineer. Omni is the second crypto network he has built.

Tyler Tarsi—Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of OmniNetwork. He previously worked as a quantitative trading strategist at Stovell AI Systems. Tyler Tarsi is a Harvard University graduate.

Funding Situation

On February 8, 2022, raised $18 million in funding, led by Pantera Capital. Other investors include Two Sigma Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Spartan Group, Defiance Capital, Hashed, Jump Capital, Vessel Capital, and Morningstar Ventures. Angel investors include Do Kwon from Terra, Stani Kulechov from Aave, Sandeep Nailwal from Polygon, and Joseph Naggar from Goldentree Asset Management.

Project Progress

• Q1 2022 - Omni completed a $18 million funding round led by Pantera Capital.
• Q2 2023 - Omni Network released its first technical architecture document.
• Q3 2023 - Testnet 1: Omni Origins completed.
• Q4 2023 - Testnet 2: Omni Overdrive completed.
• Q1 2024 - Omni became the first active validation service (AVS) to secure $1 billion in re-staked ETH commitments from industry-leading liquidity re-staking protocols (such as EtherFi, Renzo, Puffer, Kelp, Swell, EigenPie, BedRock, and Rio).
• Q2 2024 - Mainnet launch.

Ecosystem

AutoFarm - the first DApp released on the Omni Network testnet, allowing users to automatically move funds to pools with the highest yields across any chain, redefining liquidity mining. This is achieved through the functionality of Autonomy, optimizing users’ APYs. Since the Omni mainnet has not yet launched, the ecosystem primarily consists of announcements, collaborations with various projects, and deployments on the testnet.

Tokenomics

$OMNI is the native token of the Omni Network, primarily used for:

• Universal Gas: OMNI serves as a payment mechanism to compensate relayers for submitting transactions to target rollups.
• Gas for Omni EVM: OMNI is the native currency used for processing transactions on the Omni EVM.
• Governance: OMNI stakeholders are responsible for various governance decisions, such as protocol upgrades and other developer features.
• Staking: The Omni protocol implements a dual-staking model to ensure economic security. Security is a function of staking OMNI and re-staking the total value of ETH.

Token Distribution

• Total Supply: 100,000,000
• Initial Circulating Supply: 10,391,492 (10.39% of total supply)
• Private Sale: 20.06%
• Ecosystem: 29.5%
• Team Allocation: 25.25%
• Community Allocation: 12.67%
• Advisor Allocation: 3.25%
• Public Sale: 5.77%
• Binance Launchpool: 3.5%

Token Release

Genesis Airdrop

The Omni Foundation is set to launch $OMNI as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, with a total supply of 100,000,000 tokens; of which 3,000,000 ($OMNI 3% of total supply) will be distributed as part of an airdrop.

Airdrop eligibility will be retroactively determined starting from April 3, 2024. Users will have 45 days to claim their $OMNI rewards, after which any unclaimed tokens will be returned to the Omni Foundation for future community activities.

The following roles are eligible to receive the Genesis Airdrop:

Omni Community Members: Contributors, early testers, builders, and key participants within the Omni community.

EigenLayer Stakers: The first 10,000 participants in EigenLayer staking will qualify for the $OMNI Genesis rewards.

Beacon Chain Solo Stakers: Rewards for 5,000 solo stakers on the Beacon Chain will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis — the first 5,000 addresses to claim the airdrop will each receive 60 $OMNI.

Milady Maker and Redacted Remilio Babies NFT Holders: Addresses holding Milady Maker NFTs (3,682) and Redacted Remilio Babies NFTs (2,865) will qualify for the $OMNI Genesis rewards.

Pudgy Penguin NFT Holders: Addresses holding Pudgy Penguin NFTs (4,609) will qualify for the $OMNI Genesis rewards.

Ninjas NFT Holders: Addresses holding Ninja NFTs (1,585) will qualify for the $OMNI Genesis rewards.

Strategic Partnership Agreements: 25 protocol organizations that have collaborated with Omni and contributed to its early development, such as Ether.Fi, Monad, Berachain, and EigenLayer, are eligible for $OMNI rewards.

Token Listing Status

$OMNI will be listed on Binance Spot at 20:00 on April 17, 2024 (GMT+8). Currently, users can participate in mining on Binance Launchpool. The mining period lasts for 4 days, and the total amount of BNB contributed has reached 18,486,900 BNB. Early participants have made substantial gains.

The project raised $18.1 million through two rounds of private token sales. In the seed round, 9.1% of the total token supply was sold at $0.18/OMNI, while in round A, 11% of the total token supply was sold at $1.50/OMNI. In total, the private sale rounds accounted for 20.1% of the total token supply.

On the whales’ OTC market, the price reached $40, but the depth is not sufficient, so its reference value is not very strong. Generally, the deeper the depth, the greater the reference significance. The initial circulation supply of the project is 10,391,492 (10.39% of the total supply), and the total supply is 1 billion.

Considering various fundamentals of the project (investment institutions, founding team, social media data, etc.), I believe that OMNI will be stronger than the previous Binance Launchpool project, SAGA, which currently (as of April 25, 2024) has a circulating market capitalization of $369 million, after a recent correction in the past two days. Considering the recent instability in the market and the dampened public sentiment, this negative factor needs to be adjusted downward. I think the initial market capitalization of OMNI at the opening will be around $300-400 million. Of course, this is only a reference range, as the fluctuation of new coins at the opening is generally significant. Please make sure to Do Your Own Research (DYOR)!

Project Summary

OMNI Network is an interoperability protocol across various Rollups, serving as a Layer 1 public chain and the first Autonomous Validation Service (AVS) on Eigenlayer. Leveraging Eigenlayer’s heavy staking, OMNI shares Ethereum’s security while utilizing a Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanism to handle high transaction volumes with low latency. The founding team comprises Harvard graduates with backgrounds in the blockchain industry. With Pantera Capital leading the investment and participation from Jump and Coinbase, the project boasts a prestigious investor lineup.

As the project progresses with improvements in account abstraction, chain abstraction, and intent-driven development, it occupies a promising niche in the market. By aggregating liquidity from major Rollups and simplifying user interactions to address fragmentation issues, the project’s fundamentals appear solid.

However, with the project yet to launch on the mainnet, users can only experience a portion of its ecosystem through earlier testnets. Therefore, many aspects of its vision, such as sub-second verification, will need validation upon mainnet launch. Currently, $OMNI has also been listed on Binance Launchpool, bringing additional liquidity and attention to the project.

In conclusion, the project shows promise in its fundamentals. The future development and adoption depend on the team’s ongoing operations and the completion of its products. Continued monitoring is advised to assess its progress.

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