Volume AMA: Flock Upgrades, Curve Bots, & 1MM GRAINs for Your AI Pigeon

Overview

The Paloma network reaches new milestones as the fastest message-relaying chain in the cryptocurrency space in the Paloma v1.10.2 release highlighting reduced response time, performance weights, and attestation functionality. The upgrade to Cosmos SDK 50 ushers in the most advanced functionalities opening access to more paths to payment for validators, faster relay, and transaction throughput across the network.

Hosted by Taariq Lewis, @LewisTaariq, CEO of VolumeFi (volume.finance), this week’s AMA episode also showcases the newest addition to Palomabots, Curve’s leverage lending bot and the mirror trading bot deployed to Arbitrum’s DEXs. The leverage lending bot is a collateralized debt position bot that allows users to pledge collateral and leverage up to 50 times, all done on-chain and managed by the Paloma validator set.

Paloma flies to Arbitrum mainnet with mirror trading bots. The bot mimics the strategies of the most successful traders to execute transactions for less sophisticated users. From Arbitrum, plans are underway to deploy mirror trading bots to Ethereum, Optimism, and BNB, while forging new partnerships with other DEXs to drive more activity and usage.

An AI Art competition will be launched next week for the most retweeted AI image of the Paloma Pigeon. The winner walks away with one million GRAINS.

Definitions

AMA - Ask Me Anything
Validator - or Pigeon in Paloma-speak, a participant in a blockchain network responsible for validating new transactions and maintaining the security of the blockchain.
DEX - or decentralized exchange, enables users to trade crypto assets through blockchain transactions without needing a custodian or centralized intermediary.
GRAINS - Paloma’s (unlisted) token.
Pigeon Feed - the on-chain marketplace for message relaying on Paloma.
Gas - the cost that certain blockchain protocol users pay to network validators each time they wish to perform a function on the blockchain.
Cosmos SDK - a platform for building multi-asset Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains. It is both a library for building and securely interacting with blockchain applications.
Leverage lending - allows traders to maximize profits by using crypto assets as collateral to borrow extra capital and open leveraged positions.
Mirror trading - a trading strategy where investors mimic the trades of successful traders done through a platform that automatically copies trades from the strategy provider's account to the investor's account.

Intro

Taariq welcomes everyone to Volume’s Twitter Spaces. He gives special thanks to the 30 validators who’ve stayed with the Paloma network since its launch to mainnet and welcomes new Pigeons who have recently joined the flock. He shares a brief background about Volume.

“Volume is a software company building on the Paloma network. We are focused on using the validator set for custody and remote execution of transactions on multiple chains.”

While many great teams use the same core technology, Paloma optimizes the use of the network to execute remote trades on decentralized exchanges.

“We are focused on executing arbitrary logic calls there so there can be new products on DEXs enabling users to do new things with private keys that were not possible before.”

Small Change, Big Impact

The latest upgrade to Paloma V1.10.2 introduces more improvements to message handling assignments for faster relay execution. The most notable change reassigns a message that has not been picked up or delivered in 10 seconds, which will be further reduced to 5 seconds in the next release.

“That means that Paloma is the only blockchain that will retry messages faster than any other chain currently alive. Small change, big impact.”

Taariq explains that Pigeon Feed creates a marketplace for relaying messages where anybody can join as a validator for as little as 10 GRAINS to start relaying messages and make money.

“We want revenues to wind up as the volume of activities increase so that the network of 200 pigeons can be a true flock that just flies in, delivers messages, executes trades, executes custody faster than anyone else.”

While in the current set-up, messages are assigned deterministically but randomly, Paloma is now moving to assign messages based on performance weights that are tracked and stored on-chain.

“We're going to start giving weights to Pigeons based on their ability to execute the tasks needed. So the more you're executing, the more you're validating, the more you have balances on your endpoints, the more your endpoints are reporting in, the more weight you get. The higher the weight, the more you will be selected for a message.”

Pigeons will be competing in message relay activities for rewards. Those who pick up messages consistently and quickly, and have their operator keys set up will be assigned more jobs based on their ability to execute the tasks needed. Taariq expounds on the three factors to optimizing Paloma’s message relaying.

“One, we need to reduce the time to respond. Two, we start tracking who responds within the reduced time. And then three, we have to upgrade the ability to check which is called attestation.”

Upgrading Attestation and Pigeon Feed

Taariq explains attestation and why upgrading the attestation functionality is an important piece of Pigeon feed.

“Attestation is essentially why Pigeons have RPC endpoints and eth-getLogs are so big, they are constantly querying transaction flow and filtering for all the transactions that happen on Compass. Attesting to those values and state changes is what makes Pigeons special because everything is done on consensus.”

BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) consensus requires that a two-thirds majority of the Pigeons observe an event happening on another chain and attest to the event. Once attested, the reward is released to the Pigeon for actually doing the work.

Pigeon feed will allow validators to set their price, such as gas plus x, gas plus their performance fee plus a security fee. Taariq emphasizes that the release of rewards hinges on proper attestations.

Cosmos SDK Upgrade

Working alongside the Vitwit team through hundreds of commits in the past week alone, the Cosmos SDK upgrade brings the latest functionalities to access more paths to payment for validators. The new Cosmos SDK Paloma version 0.50.0 is targeted to be tested privately in January.

“This is going to be wild because if you’re a validator on this network, this means better cosmos and more cosmos features. It means better, faster CometBF functionality for everything from NFTs to modules.”

Leverage Lending Bots

The Volume team has been working on leverage and lending bots which are on Curve’s USD ecosystem. These are stablecoin-based lending bots or collateralized debt position (CDP) bots.

“You can essentially pledge collateral and the bot will manage your loan position, either add more collateral or allow you to take more leverage or deleverage automatically.”

There are signals coming off-chain for when to create a bot and to start it with funds handled by the Paloma validator set’s 30 data centers that are running the messages. Taariq tested the leveraged lending bot and with compliments to the Volume team had this say.

“It is magic. It is amazing. You could do anywhere from 10 times leverage on Curve USD using Eth. Any token that you have gets swapped into Eth, that Eth takes out a loan for crvUSD and that crvUSD that you were supposed to get goes back in and essentially borrows more Eth up until the maximum limit, which is about nine times leverage.”

He adds that everything is done on-chain, and users can start doing leverage in multiples of 20 times up to 50 times, all handled by the Paloma validator set. This bot does not require any fancy strategies nor require a user to be a very complex trader.

“Anybody can use it if you're a minnow or shark or a whale, you can all use the bot to the same effect.”

The lending bot goes live today! Taariq mentions that Paloma will continue to get good at leveraging lending and lending bots to drive more usage on Paloma.

Mirror Trading Bots and Arbitrum

Paloma is forging new partnerships with other derivative DEXs to build mirror trading bots on Paloma. Paloma will be deploying to Arbitrum not only to drive more volume on Arbitrum but also obtain Arbitrum grants to drive more volume with mirror trading.

Taariq explains that mirror trading is a very basic function where the user can copy the strategy of the best traders.

“This will be a great way to showcase Paloma being able to execute trades on behalf of folks who are copying or mirroring the trades of people who are really good at trading or people who are good at sending signals.”

He urges everyone to read Paloma’s Weekly Wings to learn more about mirror trading. After Arbitrum, Paloma is looking to do mirror trading on Optimism, Ethereum and BNB all handled by the Paloma validator set.

A Million GRAINS Giveaway

As the Palomabots are coming back online, Paloma is coming up with an AI Art competition that will reward a million GRAINS to the most retweeted AI image of the Paloma Pigeon or the Paloma network. More details about the competition will be announced in the next AMA.

“We're excited to now open up, increase the size of the audience, and get folks interested in what we're happening, especially now that we're looking at mirror trading as one of our bots. And that leveraged trading bot is now coming online and fully functional on mainnet.”

Taariq thanks everyone who tuned in today and promises to announce more news about leverage bots, the new Paloma on Cosmos 50, and the next phase of Pigeon feed in the next AMA.

Stay tuned for the next AMA!

To find out more about Volume, check out Volume Finance (https://volume.finance/), join the Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Ebh6YjMShu), and follow us on Twitter (@Volumefi). Check out Paloma Chain on palomachain.com (https://www.palomachain.com/), follow them on Twitter (@palomachain), and join the flock on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/tNqkNHvVNc). Coo!