Volume AMA: Multiple Deployments on Mutliple Chains for Multiple Clients
Overview
VolumeFi CEO Taariq Lewis @LewisTaariq hosts this week’s AMA episode. He talks about all the amazing new features on the latest Paloma release from resilience in handling message relaying, Pigeon operator keys enabling validators to send more messages, to the launching of Pigeon feed and gas management.
As Paloma is now a message relay marketplace, Pigeon feed kicks off to make sure that rewards go validators who do good work. The introduction of performance weights will allow Paloma to track successful relay execution based on performance data. Pigeons that have a fast message response and relay will receive more messages prioritized by their fee charge to the system.
Paloma’s Curve TWAP, Euro Off-Ramp, and Momentum bots are live again! More bots and more improvements to further strengthen the network will be announced in before yearend as the work continues for Paloma to be the fastest cross-chain relay in crypto space.
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.
GRAINS - Paloma’s (unlisted) token.
Tokenomics - derived from the words 'token' and 'economics,' is the study of the supply, demand, distribution, and valuation of cryptocurrencies.
MEV - or maximal extractable value, is the maximum profit that blockchain miners and validators can make by including, excluding, and changing the order of transactions in a block.
Gas - or gas fee is the cost that certain blockchain protocol users pay to network validators each time they wish to perform a function on the blockchain.
Pigeon Feed - the relay performance ruleset by which each validator Pigeon is weighted for receiving messages and executing successful relay work. These rules and weights are set in governance and voted by all GRAIN holders.
EVM - short for Ethereum Virtual Machine, is a crucial component of the Ethereum blockchain platform, serving as the runtime environment for executing smart contracts and decentralized applications.
Oracle - or price oracle, is a source of price data streamed onto the blockchain. Oracles bridge the off-chain world with the blockchain, by publishing off-chain price information on-chain.
Intro
It will be nearly a year since the Paloma network and Pigeon went mainnet quietly with deliberate intention, as the team continues to build, improve, and iterate. Taariq notes that using the tokenomics approach will ensure that GRAINS get delivered to validators and the community with speed to generate more volume and activity to the chain.
He shares a brief background about Volume.
“Our goal is decentralized custody, decentralized trading, decentralized lending, and all automated with intelligence via the Paloma network community across chains. We're doing so and our goal is to be the fastest blockchain.”
Paloma blocks are currently 1.5 seconds, faster than any other relay chain in existence. He adds that the goal is to have bots manage private keys on multiple chains quickly, enable automation, and get more profit for validators.
Being a validator-focused network, Paloma wants to increase revenue opportunities in many ways possible for Pigeons via MEV.
“We’re doing relay revenue via transaction handling and we’re trying to get people to build on Paloma bots that will bring lots of revenue for the validator set.”
Message Relay Resilience and Pigeon Operator Keys
The upgrade to Paloma V10.0.1 highlights resilience in message relaying and the introduction of Pigeon operator keys which are now operational. Pigeon operator keys enable validators to relay more messages using multiple keys.
“That means that validators can send more than one message in a block. And if you can send more than one message in a block, that means you can get paid more than once in a block.”
The new upgrade also significantly decreases the need for valset updates which burn gas making the network more expensive for validators and users. Valset updates require validators to send messages to all supported chains when there are state changes. With this improvement, valset updates will only happen when there is a logic call or a message relay has happened. Pigeons that are not supporting the chain and experiencing problems are not added to the valset. The new feature of unjailing back-off allows validators to fix problems with their Pigeons before they are unjailed.
“This means that there is less network noise, more space, more time, and more capacity to send relay messages.”
The rising cost of gas has been a challenge as validators have to spend gas to send messages. He emphasizes that validators must make sure that they are EIP 1559 compliant. Volume will be topping off more gas for Eth to make sure that all messages are sent out as the network heads into Pigeon Feed.
Pigeon Feed Launch
Pigeon Feed kicks off as Paloma is now a relay chain marketplace. Taariq explains what it means.
“Pigeon feed is all about paying validators for relaying messages, making sure that validators that are willing to do the job and want to get paid for the job, get the message.”
The intention is to make sure that the rewards go towards validators who do good work.
“Pigeon feed starts rewarding pigeons who do good work with more messages. If you’re a Pigeon and you’re delivering on relaying and you're relaying on time, you get more work to do. And if you get more work, you get paid more.”
Taariq emphasizes that this is a very straightforward causal link. This is simple work where if you do more work, you get paid more.
The introduction of weights will allow Paloma to track the success and performance of a Pigeon at state.
“We're tracking state performance. If a Pigeon relays a message on time, we want to track. If a validator relays a successful message, we want to track it. If a Pigeon relays within a ten-second time window, we want to track and then we want to start weighing these things.”
These weights will be added as validators start accumulating them like points in the system. Messages will no longer be assigned randomly. Pigeon will collect performance data, rank, and assign messages based on the weight system.
Paloma Weekly Wings on December 6th has an overview of the weights and how they work. As Paloma is now getting more usage from Curve bots and Palomabot users on Uniswap, messages will need to get executed as urgently as possible. These performance guarantees are improved on with Pigeon feed.
Gas Management
Taariq announces that the next phase of Pigeon feed will be gas management allowing Pigeons to set their price based on the gas rate on what they are looking to collect.
“Pigeons will get paid gas in GRAINS, or they will get paid in gas on the EVM side, or whatever target chain native token there is.”
Pools will be needed to allow validators to charge fees in gas rates of the target EVM. Paloma needs to make sure that messages are sent quickly because they are going to essentially read, calculate, and attest to the messages from the cross-chain target oracles.
Taariq sums up the new features of Pigeon feed which includes tracking weights from each Pigeon and assigning jobs based on those weights. For payments, Pigeons can state their fee rates where the best Pigeons with the lowest rates are most likely to get more jobs, more GRAINS, and more rewards.
He adds that validators do not need to have a high stake to make a lot of fee revenue. Validators who have good weights on their performance can compete to reach the top of the tier to collect the most revenue for delivering the most messages.
Palomabots Are Live Again!
Taariq shares his excitement as Palomabots’ Curve TWAP, Euro Off-Ramp, and Momentum bots are back online.
Fees for bots will be charged beginning this December and reduced from 0.5% to 0.2%. These fees go back to validators to pay for gas and improve Palomabots as the network moves to Pigeon feed.
Announcements will be shared on Discord and Twitter as more bots come back online. Taariq encourages everyone to check them out, try them, build on them, and share the good news.
Taariq gives a special shoutout to the Curve team for their support as the team continues to build more bots.
He also announced that Paloma has a capacity for 200 validators, and there are currently 30 on the network. Taariq extends an invite for people to come on board.
“There's lots of room for people to become a validator on Paloma and join the relay activity to strengthen the relay network. So if you know folks that are looking to get paid and looking to get a job, all they need is 10 GRAINS to become a validator and off to the races they go.”
Recap and Closing
Taariq wraps up the episode with a short recap.
Palomabots from Curve are coming back online. New features in the latest Paloma release include Pigeon feed where validators get to set their own fees and updated job assignments based on performance weights. Pigeon operator keys are fully functional enabling validators to sign more transactions and get paid more.
More features will be coming out in the next two weeks to generate more volume and activity. Volume and strong demand on the chain will come once GRAINS are listed.
These are exciting times on the Paloma network and Taariq gives special thanks to all Pigeons who’ve stayed on and are trying to keep costs low. He encourages them to check out Nodies which offers free RPC endpoint services for Paloma validators.
“We definitely want to keep costs low as we continue to refine Pigeon feed, gas management, and of course scaling new bots.”
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 at (https://www.palomachain.com/), follow them on Twitter (@palomachain), and join the flock on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/tNqkNHvVNc). Coo!
