PANews_

Original Title: "Wait, Why Do We Need Consensus Again?"

Author: Shresth Agrawal, Dionysis Zindros, k4m4, pod.network

Compiled by TIA, Techub News

The misconception that the Earth is the center of the universe persisted for centuries. People at that time believed that the Sun, XLM, and planets all revolved around the Earth. It wasn't until brave thinkers revealed the truth of heliocentrism that astronomy was completely transformed, breaking the model of geocentrism.

Just like the world of astronomy, the blockchain world also has a long-standing misconception that consensus is a necessary condition for establishing decentralized payments. We are bound by BTC and ETH.

Decentralization currency requires a Decentralization Consensus solution. - Ethereum White Paper, 2014

Consensus* is actually the enemy. By eliminating Consensus, we can complete transactions as quickly as Google searches.

Consensus Challenge

Eve saved Bitcoin to buy her first TSL. Bob and Charlie are TSL dealership operators.

Eve signs a message to indicate that she is transferring money to Bob. Bob received the payment signed by Eve, but he is not yet comfortable handing over the car keys to her. This is because Bob needs to ensure that Eve did not simultaneously sign a payment transaction to Charlie (double spending).

Figure 1: Eve attempts Double Spending in order to transfer the same Token to Bob and Charlie.

Usually, blockchain Consensus is used to solve the Double Spending problem. Consensus takes transactions as inputs and outputs them according to some global order agreed upon by the majority of Nodes.

Figure 2: Consensus acts as a black box, taking unordered 'mempool' transactions as input and outputting them in an order agreed upon by everyone.

Back to Eve. The transaction that pays Eve to Bob is called tx1, and the transaction that pays Eve to Charlie is called tx2. The BlockChain ensures the order of transactions through Consensus, and when double spending occurs, the transaction that is first packaged into a block is considered valid.

In a network with only one participant, reaching Consensus is simple: the participant just needs to output the transactions in the order they are received. However, in a network with two or more participants, differences in network conditions will cause transactions to be received in different orders. In addition, malicious parties can deliberately present conflicting views or introduce network latency. So, how do we achieve global Consensus?

We can use centralized banks to manage all transactions. But since we don't want to rely on any trusted intermediary, we choose a group of participants called validators and assume that two-thirds or more of them are honest.

validators reach Consensus through multiple rounds of communication. Every once in a while, a leader is randomly selected to propose a global order by putting the pending transactions into a Block that they sign. The rest of the validators vote on the leader's Block. A Block with signatures from two-thirds of the validators is considered notarized. Malicious leaders may selectively review transactions or even fail to create a Block, forcing the process to start over. Repeating this iterative process multiple times allows everyone to eventually reach the same order. The process of reaching Consensus is slow.

In contrast, web applications are fast, requiring only one round trip - the client sends an HTTP request and the server returns an HTTP response.

Do we need complete sorting?

Let's reconsider: does every transaction need to be part of the global state?

Suppose there are two payment transactions: Alice pays Bob, and Charlie pays Dave. Since these two payments are independent, they can actually be executed in any order. That is, no matter how they are executed, the result state remains unchanged.

Figure 3: The payment from Alice to Bob is independent from the payment from Charlie to Dave. Regardless of the settlement order of these transactions, the result remains the same.

Consensus can solve the Double Spending issue - but can we avoid the resulting latency cost?

The method is as follows. Similar to Consensus, a group of validators is still needed, assuming that more than two-thirds of them are honest. Validators do not achieve global consensus in sequential order, but ensure that the transactions they receive are valid (based on their local view) through signatures. As long as a transaction is confirmed by more than two-thirds of the validators, it is considered a valid transaction.

Eve sent two double spending transactions to validators. First, a group of dishonest validators simultaneously signed both transactions. Then, she divided the honest validators into two groups (assuming each group accounts for one-third of the total number of validators) and sent different transactions to different groups (e.g., sending the transaction for Bob to the first group and the transaction for Charlie to the second group). However, Eve still could not collect enough signatures for these two transactions to execute the Double Spending attack.

To further visualize this distributed network, assume the network has N validators, with less than one-third being malicious.

Honest user: Broadcast new transactions to all validators, and after receiving signatures from two-thirds or more validators, consider the transaction completed and obtain a certificate.

Honest validators: Maintain a list of local unspent Tokens and only sign the first valid transaction of the Token.

In order to complete double spending, both double spending transactions need to be certified, which means more than one-third of the validators are dishonest.

This type of non-Consensusprotocol does not require communication between validators, only one round trip on the network! Moreover, this architecture has been thoroughly researched in the Block chain literature, and in the literature, its academic term is consensus broadcast.

Will there be potential risks? When Eve attempts to perform Double Spending, Consensus will globally order her transactions, and only the first of the two transactions will be accepted. However, in the protocol we described, the protocol cannot guarantee that every transaction of Eve will ultimately complete. Eve's account may even be permanently blocked, as we do not have to provide any guarantee to the opposing party.

So, why do we need to reach Consensus again?

There is no such thing as reaching Consensus for us.

In addition to payments, 'bag' or common subset protocol (e.g., on-chain auctions, voting, limit orders), only additional information flows (Decentralized Finance social, notarization) and protocols that can be represented as conflict-free replicated data types (social graphs, reputation systems, games) can operate without global ordering. Many currently running order-dependent Decentralized Finance protocols can also operate without the need for global ordering.

Pod eliminates Consensus, achieving a Decentralization system as fast as Google search and as secure as BTC.

Author: Yooma

Image source:

Encountered Problems

PopCraft is a full-chain elimination game, with each game lasting 4 minutes. Players who eliminate all elements on the board within the specified time will receive Token rewards.

Due to the nature of the entire chain, players need to interact with the Block chain for every operation in the game. The Block time on the ETH layer 2 is usually 2 seconds, which means players need to wait at least 2 seconds for each operation in the game to be completed, far exceeding the waiting time in similar Web2 games, resulting in a poor gaming experience for PopCraft.

PopCraft Game Main Interface

Imagined Plan

We envision using Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP for short) technology in PopCraft to reduce the frequency of player interaction with the blockchain during the game process.

The expected way is: the game process is not on the chain, but there is a mechanism to ensure no cheating risk. Each step of the player's operation in the game will generate a ZKP. The ZKP of the next step is generated based on the previous ZKP, forming a self-contained ZKP structure similar to a blockchain. When the game is over, the ZKP of the last step operation is sent to the chain for Smart Contract to verify its result.

Research and Derivation of Solutions

1. Anti-cheating measures for game process and results: generating ZKP only for game results is not enough, because cheating is also possible during the game process. Therefore, it is necessary to generate ZKP for both game results and game process verification.

2. Technical challenges in generating ZKPs step by step: In order to prevent cheating, it is necessary to generate a Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) for every action taken by the player in the game, and verify the last ZKP on the chain when the game ends. In this process, each step's ZKP depends on the previous step's ZKP, until the game ends.

But the difficulty is:

1> The generation of new ZKPs depends on the previous step of ZKP, which makes the verification process complex and uncertain. In addition, ZKP verification is done through Smart Contracts (on-chain), so how to verify that the previous step of ZKP is correct when generating the next step of ZKP.

2> When verifying each step of the ZKP through Smart Contract to ensure its correctness, it is uncertain whether there is a solution to ensure the coherence between each ZKP and the previous one.

3. The problem of public game data: PopCraft's game data is public, so it is not necessary to do information hiding through ZKP. If the above verification steps can be achieved, the next step is to consider storing game data on the contract side. However, the problem is that the nature of ZKP cannot solve the specific game data. At this point, the game result data passed to the smart contract by the client cannot be directly trusted, which means that the smart contract cannot directly store this data.

4. The issue of consuming game items (consuming Token) in PopCraft: When the game process involves the elimination of isolated elements through game items, it essentially corresponds to Token consumption, requiring the transfer of the corresponding Token in the user's wallet. How to handle this step of ZKP generation and verification is also a problem.

1> One possible solution is to continue generating ZKP according to the previous process, verify the amount of Tokens consumed, and finally send them to the Smart Contract. However, since the Smart Contract cannot obtain specific game data through ZKP, it cannot determine the amount of Tokens to be transferred.

In addition, assuming the player has 3 TOKEN A, but tries to consume 4 TOKEN A in the game, this error will be discovered only at the end of the game, rather than in real time during user operation.

2> Another possible solution is to interact directly with the Smart Contract to eliminate isolated elements using Token, and then update the player's Token balance. The generated ZKP is only responsible for storing the proof of the game operation and state at this time.

So after the successful transfer of TOKEN, it is still necessary to continue generating ZKP as in the previous operation. If not generated, there will be an additional step of interacting with the Smart Contract between the ZKP generated in the previous step of transferring TOKEN and the next ZKP. This will cause conflicts in the game state in ZKP, and whether the ZKP generated at the end of the game is valid or not will be a pending question.

5. The data hiding problem of ZKP: For scenarios like PopCraft that do not require hiding game data, using ZKP for data hiding is redundant and increases the difficulty of obtaining game data and the uncertainty of engineering implementation solutions. PopCraft only needs to ensure that there is no cheating risk in the game process and results, and does not need to hide the game process data.

Conclusion

In games like PopCraft, game data does not need to be hidden, so it is not necessary to use ZKP for information hiding. In order to improve the gaming experience by shortening the response time, it is possible to consider not putting the game process on the chain, only the final result on the chain. The key is to find a way to ensure that there is no possibility of cheating from the first step to the last step of playing the game, and finally verify the correct result on the chain.

If information hiding is done through ZKP, it actually increases the difficulty of engineering implementation. Secondly, how to ensure that there is no cheating risk during the game process. Using ZKP can ensure that individual game operations have no cheating risk, but in order to reduce the interaction frequency with the blockchain, a ZKP cannot be generated and submitted every time. So, from the first step of the game to the end of the game, how to ensure that there is no cheating risk, it seems that ZKP cannot solve this problem at present.

From our research, ZKP in the gaming field is suitable for two things:

Information hiding in non-perfect information game genres, such as Dark Forest, Texas Hold'em, Werewolf, Hearthstone, etc.

The game process is a step-by-step game result proof, such as: lottery, guessing numbers, rock-paper-scissors, dice games, etc.

Due to our limited reserves in Zero-Knowledge Proof technology, there may be factual errors or unreasonable engineering ideas in this article. We sincerely request experts with rich experience in the Zero-Knowledge Proof field to criticize and correct them.

Authors: Advait Jayant, Matthew Sheldon, Sungjung Kim and Swastik Shrivastava

Compile: BeWater

With the recent launch of the lightweight Llama 1B and 3B parameter models optimized for device-side application scenarios by Meta, and the upcoming release of its new products by Apple Intelligence at the end of October, we believe that edge AI and device-side AI will become the biggest topics of 2025.

Peri Labs and BeWater have collaborated to release a report of approximately 250 pages, covering:

• The necessity of Edge AI
• Core innovation in the field of edge AI
• Why edge AI needs encryption technology
• Understanding the core framework of edge AI
• The current status of Edge AI and encryption technology

BeWater has translated this report into Chinese, and the essence of the summary is as follows:

The Rise of Edge AI

Edge AI is revolutionizing the field of artificial intelligence by shifting data processing from centralized cloud servers directly to local devices. This approach addresses the limitations of traditional AI deployment, such as high latency, privacy issues, and bandwidth constraints. By enabling real-time data processing on devices like smartphones, wearables, and internet of things sensors, Edge AI reduces response time and securely stores sensitive information on the devices themselves.

Advancements in hardware and software technology have made it possible to run complex AI models on resource-constrained devices. Innovations such as dedicated edge processors and model optimization techniques make device-side computing more efficient without significantly impacting performance.

**Key point 1: The rapid rise of AI has already surpassed Moore's Law.

Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years. However, the rise of AI models has exceeded the speed of hardware improvements, resulting in a widening gap between computing demand and supply. This gap makes collaborative design of hardware and software essential.

Point 2: Major industry giants are increasing their investments in edge AI and adopting different strategies.

The major industry giants are making massive investments in edge AI, recognizing its ability to completely transform fields such as healthcare, autonomous driving, robotics, and virtual assistants by providing instant, personalized, and reliable AI experiences. For example, Meta recently released models optimized for edge devices, and Apple Intelligence will also launch its edge AI technology at the end of October.

The intersection of edge AI and encryption technology

Point 3: Blockchain provides a secure and decentralized trust mechanism for edge AI networks.

The Block chain ensures the integrity and tamper resistance of data through its immutable ledger, which is particularly critical in Decentralization networks composed of edge devices. By recording transactions and data exchanges on the Block on-chain, edge devices can securely perform identity verification and authorization operations without relying on centralized institutions.

Point 4: encryption economic incentive mechanisms promote resource sharing and capital expenditure

Deploying and maintaining edge networks requires a substantial amount of resources. The encryption economic model or Token incentives can be used to provide Token rewards, encouraging individuals and organizations to contribute computing power, data, and other resources to support the construction and operation of the network.

Key Point 5: The Decentralized Finance model promotes efficient allocation of resources

By introducing concepts such as stake, lending, and liquidity pools in Decentralized Finance, the Edge AI Network can establish a market for computing resources. Participants can provide computing power through stake tokens, lend out excess resources, or contribute to a shared pool to receive corresponding rewards. Smart contracts automatically execute these processes to ensure fair and efficient allocation of resources based on supply and demand, and implement dynamic pricing mechanisms in the network.

Key Point 6: Trusted Decentralization

In a Decentralization edge device network, establishing trust without centralized supervision is a challenge. In an encryption network, trust is achieved through mathematical means; this computation and math-based trust is the key to facilitating trustless interactions, a characteristic that AI does not currently possess.

Future Outlook

Looking ahead, there are still plenty of opportunities for innovation in the field of edge AI. We will see edge AI become an indispensable part of our lives in many application scenarios, such as highly personalized learning assistants, digital twins, autonomous vehicles, collective intelligence networks, and emotional AI companions. We are excited about the future!

Author: delta official website

Compiled by Felix, PANews

On October 10th, Delta, a network aiming to create a globally shared state, announced the completion of a $11 million financing. The financing consists of two stages, including a pre-seed round led by Figment Capital and Maven 11, and a seed round led by Variant and DBA. Other investors include Reverie, Castle Island Ventures, Credibly Neutral, Ambush Capital, Robot Ventures, Delphi Ventures, Public Works, Komorebi Collective, etc.

The Delta network provides developers with a balance of sovereignty and interoperability by separating execution and data availability. The system also introduces Zero-Knowledge Proof's Settlement method to achieve seamless multi-domain interoperability.

What isdelta?

delta is a network composed of autonomous execution environments, connecting through the basic layer of Decentralization and censorship resistance. delta separates ① execution and ordering from ② data availability and Settlement. Execution and ordering occur on the domain (similar to rollup / execution Sharding), while data availability and Settlement are provided by the validator network operating the basic layer. The combination of these components forms a unified global state machine.

Although the global state is shared, domains will have full control over their Block space. They can be specific to an application or a general computing platform; they can use any existing Virtual Machine or develop their own custom programs; the operating model can be Decentralization, centralized, or even licensed. Any application, enterprise, or service provider can set up their domain without permission. Their users can pay fees with any Token through off-chain subscription, or not pay fees at all.

Users obtain the ability to resist censorship at the basic level. They decide how to use their assets and maintain the ability to self-custody - their funds are secure and have the right to exit the domain without permission. Assets exist on the basic level, so there is no need to implement each domain separately.

The base layer promotes native interoperability between domains. For users, Delta provides an instant, almost free, and bridgeless experience for transferring assets from one domain to another.

The key to achieving these features is zkSettlement. Similar to rollups, domains can take various forms, but all settle to the same underlying layer. Unlike rollups, they achieve Settlement by directly integrating Zero-Knowledge Proofs into the underlying layer through verification. This 'fixed' zkSettlement method achieves unprecedented levels of global interoperability between local networks. Domains can interact with each other, even atomically, without the need for global coordination like blockchains.

The state model of delta implements leaderless Consensusprotocol, whose performance far exceeds any blockchain. The domain in delta essentially isolates the ability to change the global state based on expenditure. Due to this restriction, full ordering of transactions is not required at the base layer. If there is no ordering, the domain can use the minimal Byzantine reliable broadcast (BRB) protocol to continuously flow out its state changes. In addition to the communication overhead of dropping each transaction, delta's leaderless and unordered Consensus is more powerful and scalable than the full ordering Consensus implemented by all blockchains so far. Unlike these systems, delta only needs to add more machines to linearly scale throughput.

Solving the Biggest Problem of Cryptocurrency

Platforms and applications have as many options as Web2, and can be combined with Smart Contracts on the same blockchain. However, application chains and rollups require complex interoperability solutions to 'glue' independent blockchains together. The drawbacks of this approach currently far outweigh the benefits of sovereignty.

For example, consider the challenges faced by the new chain in guiding users.

All on-chain applications should provide a seamless experience for new users to deposit stablecoins and other assets. However, to achieve this experience, new chains face significant challenges in selection:

1. In terms of cost and process, it is very important for stablecoin issuers to deploy locally on-chain. This option is only suitable for well-funded projects.
2. Users are required to bridge from the Settlement layer of Rollup, which has strong security, but will bring significant resistance to users who do not yet have stablecoins on the Settlement layer of Rollup.
3. Application chains and Rollups can collaborate with third-party bridge connectors, but this approach requires significant trade-offs. Using a single vendor may pose unbearable security risks, but the user experience with multiple vendors would be poor, as users would have to consider multiple versions of the same underlying asset.

As an integrated system, delta solves the most important challenges related to launching AppChain or rollup:

Allocation

• When integrating on-chain, attracting users and Liquidity is a common goal between the chain and its applications. When applying on-chain, builders can only rely on their own efforts - users and assets cannot be shared.
• On delta, assets and users are globally shared - once they are loaded onto delta, they can be accessed by all domains built on delta. At the same time, domains retain maximum control, owning and optimizing their own user experiences.

Interoperability

• Users want to interact with multiple applications simultaneously without friction. To facilitate this experience, AppChain must reintroduce intermediary services (third-party infrastructure and Liquidity providers) to abstract away a lot of complexity. The Block chain aims to eliminate these intermediaries, and every layer of abstraction will move away from the original value proposition.
• On delta, as the state is globally shared, domains no longer need an intermediary to connect with other domains. Users can move from one domain to another without encountering any friction caused by intermediaries or routing complexities.

Admission Threshold

• Compared to integrating a set of Smart Contracts on-chain, building and maintaining an AppChain or rollup requires more costs and resources.
• On delta, the domain can be more lightweight than other forms of AppChain and rollup. Unlike rollup, the domain does not need to prove the complete execution path and/or handle long withdrawal periods related to fraud proof disputes. Unlike independent AppChain, the domain does not require bootstrapping validator set.

Returning to the accessibility challenges of Stable Coins mentioned earlier, this challenge does not exist for domain builders on Delta. On Delta, Stable Coin issuers only need to deploy once, and all domains can equally access their holders and Liquidity, without sacrificing control and reasoning about interoperability complexity.

The Vision of delta

Delta will enhance the vision of application chains and horizontal expansion more broadly. But delta not only solves the problems of existing methods, but also creates a whole new design space.

delta provides its users with two inalienable rights - the right to self-custody and the right to exit without permission. With these guarantees, delta can safely reintroduce a range of trust models at the execution layer. For the first time, Blockchains can provide permissioned services while still ensuring that user funds are completely secure and can be withdrawn at any time. This enables a new category of enterprises, games, and even government Blockchains to coexist on public networks with trustless and Decentralized Blockchains, reaching unprecedented levels of interoperability.

Related reading: Data exploration of the user value of seven major public chains: ETH's single Address deposit is $3500, Sui is catching up with Solana with strong momentum, and TON has no Whale?

Written by Karen, Foresight News

The UK relinquished sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory and transferred it to Mauritius. This historic moment marks the end of British colonialism in Africa and has sparked widespread discussions about the future of the highly anticipated .io top-level domain.

What happened?

In the increasingly intense geopolitical competition, on October 3, the UK and Mauritius issued a joint statement, reaching a historic political protocol on the sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago. According to the terms of the treaty, the UK will agree to Mauritius' sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, including the Diego Garcia Island (the location of US and UK military bases). Although the protocol is subject to the finalization of the treaty, both parties have committed to completing the relevant procedures as soon as possible.

However, with the UK transferring sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the future of .io top-level domains has become unclear. This change could have a profound impact on many websites that own .io domains. The .io ccTLD was originally assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and registered by a British private company Internet Computer Bureau (ICB), which is currently owned by Identity Digital in the United States.

".io" is a top-level domain name derived from the English abbreviation of British Indian Ocean Territory, which is the abbreviation of Indian Ocean in British Indian Ocean Territory, a British overseas territory, in the Internet domain name system. The .io domain extension has been in existence since 1997, and the earliest registered .io domain name was levi.io registered by the clothing company Levi's in 1998. According to a report by the British Independent in 2014, the British government profits from the sale of internet domain names from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. According to the terms of the protocol reached with ICB, the British government receives an undisclosed share of the £60 fee for each activated .io domain name. Paul Kane, the founder of ICB and an internet infrastructure expert, also confirmed that the British government receives a portion of the fees paid for using the ".io" domain name."

In history, ccTLD domain names have been removed five times

The future of '.io' is largely determined by the Internet naming and digital Address allocation agency ICANN. However, it should be noted that '.io' is a country and regional top-level domain name (ccTLD), in which political factors outweigh technical and commercial factors.

As mentioned above, ICANN is a non-profit organization located in California, USA, established on September 30, 1998, to take over tasks related to the Internet, including managing domain names and the allocation of IP addresses. According to Domain Incite, since its establishment in 1998, ccTLD has been removed from the DNS root only five times. In all cases except one, the triggering factor for the removal was a change to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 list of the International Organization for Standardization.

1. '.yu' was originally the ccTLD owned by Yugoslavia in the Internet domain name system. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia disintegrated due to civil war in 1992. However, with the dissolution of the remaining alliance countries of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006, '.yu' stopped accepting new registration applications from March 2008. It was not until 2010 that ICANN finally removed '.yu' from the DNS root.

2. '.tp' was originally the top-level domain (ccTLD) for the country and region of Portuguese Timor, officially launched in 1997 when the country was still under Indonesian occupation. After gaining independence in 2022, the country was renamed to East Timor, and ISO assigned the new code TL, removing TP from its list. However, it was not until February 2015 that '.tp' was completely removed from the DNS root.

3. '.zr' was originally the top-level domain (ccTLD) of the Zaire region. Due to the restoration of Zaire's national name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was later changed to .cd. In 2001, '.zr' was officially discontinued. '.zr' was the first ccTLD to be removed by IANA.

4. '.an' was originally assigned as the ccTLD domain name for the Netherlands Antilles. After the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in 2010, Curaçao started using the '.cw' domain, Sint Maarten started using the '.sx' domain, and Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba obtained the '.bq' domain. ISO also removed AN from its list. In 2015, the '.an' domain name was completely discontinued.

5. ".um" is the ccTLD domain name for the United States Minor Outlying Islands, but it is not in use. In 2007, ICANN removed the .um domain name from the domain master list.

However, it is worth noting that ".su" is an exception. The ccTLD ".su" assigned to the former Soviet Union was launched on September 19, 1990. Despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the domain name is still in use.

Where does the future of ".io" lie?

According to the ccTLD deactivation policy, the eligibility of ccTLD is determined by the relevant country or region assigned in the ISO 3166-1 standard. When a country or region is removed from this standard, its eligibility will expire and it needs to be stopped after an orderly transition period. By default, the ccTLD will be deleted after five years. The ccTLD administrator can apply for an extension, but there needs to be a valid reason. The extension can only be extended for a maximum of 5 years, so the longest possible period for formal removal is 10 years. Of course, the ccTLD administrator can decide to deactivate the domain names in advance.

If the eligibility of the ccTLD changes, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) will notify the ccTLD manager of the intention to issue a revocation notice when it decides to deactivate it. The ccTLD manager will have the opportunity to designate an alternate contact to handle the deactivation-related notices.

As noted by Domain Incite, the core concerns for .io domain name registrants are whether the renamed British India Ocean Territory (BIOT) will continue to retain IO assignments on the ISO list and whether the archipelago will remain uniquely eligible for ccTLD status. If the BIOT exists only as part of Mauritius and is no longer considered an independent territory by the United Nations, the survival of the .io domain name will face serious challenges and may be scultled. Conversely, the situation would be further complicated if BIOT remained its independent territory and remained eligible for ccTLDs. Of course, there are also ". io" on the ". su" old way, but this probability is relatively small.

Which crypto companies are using .io?

In the field of computer science, 'IO' is often used as an abbreviation for 'I/O' (Input/Output), which makes .io domain names naturally suitable for technology-related services. Combined with simplicity, this top-level domain is highly favored by technology startups and software companies, and is also used in the crypto field. In addition, .io domain names are preferred for video game projects because 'io' represents browser-based multiplayer games in gaming terminology.

According to the Netease account 'Tech World', 'Glitch and GitHub Pages both use the .io domain for users to create websites and applications, and the Itch.io game store also uses this domain. The domain has earned nearly 40 million dollars, which means that there may be over a million .io domains registered.' It is worth mentioning that in 2021, the domain 'Metaverse.io' was sold for 1.14 million yuan, which is the highest publicly traded .io domain at present.

Among the approximately 20,000 Web3 companies and projects listed in Foresight Wiki, nearly 16% of them use .io domain names, including but not limited to Matter Labs, ZKsync, Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, Sei, Damus, CoinFund, Scallop, Mask Network, TrueFi, Raydium, DODO, etc. It is worth mentioning that gate uses the name with the main domain name as the brand name.

As for the future of .io domain names, Foresight News will continue to follow.

Reference:

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Golem (@web3_golem)

Yesterday, the first phase of BTC stake protocol Babylon Cap-2 stake ended, with nearly 23,000 BTC participating in the stake despite only lasting for 10 Blocks. However, in terms of community discussion and on-chain transaction fees, the stake for Babylon Cap-2 phase appears to be much calmer. What are the reasons for the differences before and after? Who is still staking BTC like crazy?

Odaily Planet Daily will analyze the above issues in this article, and compile statistics on the stake situation of mainstream Babylon re-stake protocols in Cap-2. Finally, it will briefly discuss whether there are hidden risks to user fund security and the development of the Babylon ecosystem as the re-stake ecosystem expands.

Why is Cap-2 stage stake so calm?

Reviewing the Babylon Cap-1 stake phase, in order to stake BTC into Babylon, the BTC network transaction fees were pushed up to over 1000 Satoshi/byte, and the transaction gas consumption exceeded 4% of the principal. The stake limit of over 1000 BTC was reached in just over 3 hours, with approximately 12,700 participating addresses.

On the other hand, the staking in Cap-2 phase on the chain is much calmer, with a total staking amount of 22891 BTC and 12,570 participating Addresses. However, the average network transaction fee during this period also remains at only 30 Satoshi/byte. The main reasons for this difference are as follows:

stake rule change

In Cap-1stake rules, there is not only stake hard cap, but also a maximum stake transaction limit of only 0.05BTC and a minimum of 0.005BTC. In contrast, Cap-2stake has removed the stake upper limit and changed to a "limited time unlimited amount" stake mechanism, with a stake period of 10 Blocks (864790-864799), and at the same time increased the maximum single stake amount from 0.05BTC to 500BTC.

The mechanism of limited time and unlimited quantity can to some extent alleviate the user's fear of missing out emotion, according to the time progress stake. The adjustment of the upper limit of a single stake may have little impact on individual retail investors, but it may have a greater impact on some staking protocols and institutions. Because their stake volume is often large, a low upper limit for a single stake will force them to trade more frequently, which is more likely to cause on-chain congestion. The upper limit for a single stake in Cap-2 phase is 500BTC, which is suitable for the needs of institutions and staking projects.

Therefore, the change in the stake rules is the main reason for the "calm" on the Babylon Cap-2stake chain.

stake points are diluted

In Cap-1, because of the stake cap of 1000 BTC, the 3125 points generated by each block are distributed more points according to the stake ratio, for example, if an Addressstake has 0.05 BTC, then each BTCBlock can earn 3125* 0.05/1000 = 0.15625 points. The "head mine" benefit is also the biggest reason why Cap-1 can cause fear of missing out.

With the unchanged points distribution mechanism, the points generated per Block will increase to 10,000 during Cap-2. If an Address still stakes 0.05 BTC, they can now earn 0.0209 points per BTC Block.

It can be seen that after Cap-2stake is launched, the stake points will be severely diluted, which will also affect the enthusiasm of users to participate to a certain extent.

Stake is already dominated by institutions and project parties

According to statistics, there are 12,700 addresses participating in Cap-1stake, while there are 12,570 addresses participating in Cap-2stake. Not only did there not appear a significant rise, but there was even a slight decrease in the number of addresses.

In Cap-1stake, according to official disclosure, about 80% of the 1000 BTC stake comes from the LST project of the liquid stakeToken, and about 20% comes from native stakers. In Cap-2stake, the proportion of restaking projects has further increased, according to Odaily Star Daily statistics, the proportion of mainstream restaking projects has already approached 90%, and the proportion of native stakers may already be less than 10%.

The main battlefield of Babylonstake undoubtedly belongs to institutions and stake projects, which are professionally staked through custodians and some trading confirmation service providers. For users who have already deposited BTC into the restake platform, the entire process does not need to be directly involved, and even follow, just need to receive rewards at a specific time. Therefore, Cap-2stake looks 'calm' to a certain extent, also because of the continuous development and growth of the Babylon restake ecosystem, providing convenience for users.

Who stakes the most BTC crazily?

Odaily Planet Daily has compiled statistics on the current stake situation of 7 mainstream Babylon re-stakeprotocols in Cap-1 and Cap-2.

Based on the above data, overall, these seven stake protocols account for over 80% of the total stake in Cap-1, while the share in Cap-2 has increased to around 90%.

Among them, Lombard staked the most BTC in Cap-2, with a total of 7,166 BTC staked, accounting for 31.66% in Cao-2. Previously, due to high transaction fees in Cap-1, Lombard did not choose to stake BTC in Babylon. As of now, the amount of BTC deposited by users on their platform is 8,081.8 BTC, and the platform's loan-to-value ratio (the ratio of BTC staked in Babylon to BTC deposited by users on the platform) has reached more than 88%.

In addition, platforms with a loan-to-value of 100% include Solv, Chakra, and pSTAKE protocols.

Has stakeprotocol violated the original intention of Babylon again?

Babylon has developed a trustless and self-custody solution that allows users to securely stake their BTC and earn rewards while providing security for the POS system.

In the Babylon ecosystem, the stake protocol acts as an intermediary between users and Babylon. Users first deposit BTC into the stake platform, and then when Babylon stake is activated, they use business and technical expertise to help users stake BTC. In terms of rewards, users can enjoy dual points rewards from the platform and Babylon.

From the perspective of income and convenience, it is understandable for users to stake again. On the one hand, staking again can not only enjoy the rewards of the staking platform and Babylon, but also unilaterally enjoy the platform's staking rewards even without staking BTC in Babylon; on the other hand, because the Babylon staking rules and time are more complicated, the re-stake protocol can save users energy and time.

However, from a security perspective, is it worth sacrificing some security for the sake of returns and convenience? Is it even contradictory to the narrative of trust-free and BTC self-custody promoted by Babylon?

Babylon and stakeprotocol currently use a custody solution. Previously, Bedrock suffered an attack that caused losses of around $2 million on the DEX. Although the official team fixed the issue and compensated users, this event raised concerns about the security of stakeprotocol. Will there be other Black Swan Events in the future? When a user's stake is threatened, the rewards earned by staking will be worthless like 'happy beans.'

"Not your keys, not your coins", Babylon attempts to unleash the potential of BTC without breaking this principle, but if the security and upgrade of the stake protocol within the ecosystem are not valued, or if the native stake ratio remains low, then the problem may return to square one.

Authored by: Matti, Zee Prime Capital

Compiled by zhouzhou, BlockBeats

Editor's note: The rise of meme coins today is a good demonstration of the wealth effect and innovation opportunities in the encryption culture. Although meme is still in the early stage of pursuing short-term gains, it provides reference value for future cultural finance and cultural coins. The article proposes to build a meme coin crowdfunding platform, which combines tokens not only with memes, but also with lifestyle products, fashion brands, DeSci and other cultural projects to leverage the power of capital formation. In the future, cultural coins will become the carrier of value creation and distribution.

The following is the main content:

In the narrative of MEME coin, fun and optimism coexist, but its logic is misleading, often interpreting the world with Zero-sum Game thinking, borrowing some uncomfortable Marxist perspectives, emphasizing the redistribution of power and wealth, and ignoring real value creation.

"No need to create value, just take a share." This mentality is widely accepted, and Airdrops seem to have become a kind of "benefit". The more free resources obtained, the stronger the desire. However, opportunities are not obtained out of thin air, but through hard work. The jealousy of the seed round investment opportunity is the rationalization of the MEME coin. However, market access is one thing, and obtaining the seed round investment opportunity depends on individual social capital. In addition, many people overlook the survivorship bias - in fact, most seed round investments are losses.

In the current encryption market, investors, project parties, and users have become accustomed to trading Tokens without actual value through 'meme premiums'. The natural evolution of this market paradigm has led to a more straightforward phenomenon: 'since that's the case, let's just issue Tokens that obviously have no value.' This assumption assumes that there is no real creative intent in the encryption field, but this is not the case - 'You are not a lottery ticket'.

Meme Coin is essentially just a social game of ups and downs, and there's nothing wrong with that. It can be seen as a new type of lottery, vaguely linked to the zeitgeist. However, the rationalization logic behind Meme Coin is disturbing: rebel against the "evil capitalists" who exploit our earnings! Even if there is no value, we are entitled to wealth! We have the right to outperform the market!

However, there is a fundamental difference between wanting to make money and demanding to make money. The narrative of meme coin caters to this hollow desire, ultimately filling the pockets of insiders, who then criticize the so-called 'evil risk investors'. Some equate meme coin with early encryption investments, which is wrong. The difference is that in today's venture-backed false projects, perhaps only a few projects can create trillions of dollars in value in the next decade.

Value will only be distributed.

Value should be claimed.

Value is just the product of the acquisition path.

Fundamentally, meme coins are indeed full of fun, and they even have the potential to become the next trend of escapism in consumer culture. In the future, they may also become agents of value creation, as the tokenization of culture is a powerful and underdeveloped tool. However, the current narrative of meme coins essentially carries a strong Marxist color.

So, how do we transform this narrative into a culture of financial game with positive sum outcomes?

The Rise of Cultural Finance

As the foundation of encryption culture is money, and money is precisely the driving force of desire culture, we may have found the key to breakthrough. Culture (in this case, money) has become a product, which also explains well the emergence of phenomena such as meme coin and platforms like pump.fun.

We typically like to think about the waves that new products and technologies adopt from the 'bundling/unbundling' framework. In September 2023, before the craze of meme coin erupted, we proposed a model and pointed out: 'Perhaps not very intuitive, but the cultural correlation will be traded.'

Our direction is correct, but we failed to anticipate the rapid rise of MEME coin. In hindsight, this is actually reasonable, as the convergence of the wealth effect and a lack of real innovation at the time sparked this phenomenon. However, meme coins are not a dead end. In fact, they provide excellent concept validation for 'CultureFi' and 'culturecoins,' and encryption technology is gradually becoming a powerful cultural incubator.

Meme Coin shows us that brands and distribution channels can be effectively bundled together, which is at the heart of Meme Coin – they are extremely efficient distribution machines. Although the meme coin forms we see today are still very primitive, relying more on short-term quick pump and dump and lacking sustainability, they lay the groundwork for the evolution of cultural coins in the future. Price Pump is undoubtedly the most effective marketing tool, and in the logic of Meme Coin, Price Pump is not only a means, but also an end. But for the culture coin of the future, the price pump is just a tool for a bigger goal, just like Ethereum, Solana, or BTC.

The future of cultural Token will be more diverse - Token is not only the carrier of culture itself, but also the medium of distribution and communication. Here are my revisions to the 'bundling / unbundling' model, although it may not be the final version, it reflects my in-depth thinking and insights on the vertical field of encryption consumption at the moment.

The potential impact of this trend cannot be ignored, and we believe that there is still great innovation space for the issuance of meme coins. Instead of continuing to launch short-term 'missiles' that may be manipulated by 'Pump and Dump' groups, perhaps it is possible to build a dedicated meme coin 'Crowdfunding platform' to transform these tokens into true cultural coins, which are closely related to lifestyle products, rather than just creating funny memes.

This Crowdfunding platform can turn simple price fluctuations games into tools for unlocking products and opportunities (such as access to specific products or content). With Crypto Assets' strong capital formation capabilities, this approach can be used to launch mission-driven cultural coin projects - whether it's fashion brands, record companies, or Decentralization Science (DeSci) projects like $HAIR, or even innovative things we haven't thought of yet.

Prediction markets like Polymarket have already demonstrated the potential to capture value through predicting events, trends, and culture. In today's 24/7 'live reality show' world, people want to stay closely connected to the zeitgeist through financial tools to seek pleasure and dopamine stimulation, which is completely normal.

Today's meme coin is like those early websites of the internet (if they were financialized), they are still in a primitive state, disorderly and with limited functionality. And when culture itself becomes a battle, direct involvement will only further raise the stakes and potential impact of this game.

Soon, cultural coins may develop a practicality, leading us from what is equivalent to the 'pre-industrial era' of the Internet to its rapid industrialization. If you think it was the free expansion that drove the rapid progress of the industrial era, then cryptocurrency is the extension of this freedom provided for the Internet.