Volume AMA: Palomabot Wins, Upcoming Features, Cross-chain GRAINs, and More
Overview
In this week’s AMA episode, the host, Taariq Lewis @LewisTaariq, CEO of VolumeFi (volume.finance), revisits the milestones of Paloma bots and Curve bots which garnered $7.5M in transactions in just three months. As the Paloma Network undergoes upgrades and fixes, plans to scale Paloma to new heights are discussed from Pigeon operator keys: allowing validators to send multiple messages in a block, to improving validator performance and throughput speed to differentiate itself from the crowded blockchain ecosystem.
The Python SDK goes through an upgrade as well that will include the new message attribution feature tied to GRAINS. Paloma Compass-EVM has been successfully deployed to all mainnet chains, including Ethereum, BNB, Gnosis, Base, Optimism, and Polygon.
The team continues to grind away with engineering and development work in preparation for the nearing deployment of GRAINS to mainnet.
Definitions
AMA - Ask Me Anything
GRAINS - also called Pigeon feed, is Paloma’s (unlisted) token.
Validator - or Pigeon in Paloma-speak, is a participant on a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain whose job is to validate transactions on the network for rewards.
Private Key - a cryptographic key that is used with an asymmetric (public key) cryptographic algorithm. Used to compute a digital signature that may be verified using the corresponding public key, it is uniquely associated with the owner and is not made public.
TVL - or Total Value Locked, is a metric used to measure the total value of digital assets locked or staked in a particular DeFi platform or dApp.
Compass-EVM - a smart contract written in Vyper that allows the user to run any other smart contract with arbitrary transaction data.
TWAP - stands for time-weighted average price, which is a pricing algorithm used to calculate the average price of an asset over a set period.
RPC endpoint - a remote-procedure call node, is a system that bridges decentralized applications (dApps) with the blockchain.
Mempool - or memory pool refers to a backlog of pending and unconfirmed transactions in a blockchain.
Intro
Taariq welcomes everyone to Volume’s Twitter Spaces. He gives a brief introduction about Volume Finance.
“Our goal is decentralized custody bots and decentralized trading bots, decentralized lending bots, all managed by Paloma validator set and communicating across any number of blockchains in the ecosystem.”
He adds that another goal is to use bots to manage private keys on multiple chains and enable more automation for the bots in the entire crypto community. The final and most important goal is to help validators generate profits.
Palomabot Wins and Scaling to New Heights
Taariq prefaces the topic by noting that there is an oversupply of blockchain space in the crypto ecosystem. It takes hard work to help validators find a reason for block space.
“So how do validators get to turn profits when there's an excess supply of blocks supplied by every new L2 and every L1? We, in the Paloma space, believe that it may be in bots.”
He offers the winning metrics following the successful launch of Palomabots.
“Total volume that was processed on Paloma via Paloma validators was about $7.5 million in three months. This is TVL without incentives.”
He emphasizes this TVL was not incentivized, and that no GRAIN tokens were given. There were some competitions to ramp up usage such as the Palomabot sweepstakes which opened with an initial prize money of $10,000 going up to $30,000 for the 300th user. He thanks everyone who participated in the sweepstakes.
“Folks were able to get bots running on the BNB chain, which was awesome. The total bots we've recorded was 360. We have over 360 bots on the Paloma network. So we have broken that record and so congratulations again to the validators.”
He cites that the biggest and most complex bots were created on Curve, where the Curve TWAP bot garnered the highest volume in transactions. He thanks the Curve team for using the bots and providing feedback on how to improve them.
“We want to improve the Paloma network because the bots are actually getting used. So a big takeaway is that Paloma bots and Curve bots soft launched with millions in volume.”
Taariq notes that with the excess glut of block space across the entire world from every blockchain, Paloma will need to differentiate its block space as unique and rare in a world of high supply.
“One of the things we need to do is Paloma needs to scale. And the functionality of Paloma needs to scale so that pigeons can provide performance that is not available in any other blockchain.”
He believes that people will want to build on Paloma for its fastest throughput speed. Throughput is the number of transactions that can go through and speed.
With the success of the Palomabots soft launch that generated $7.5 million in transactions, Pigeons will need to improve performance and throughput.
“We need to allow pigeons to process more messages in a cosmos block. We need to fill up the block, we want the block to be filled. That is how we generate demand for the block.”
Paloma Upgrades
The Paloma V1.10 upgrade fixes will prevent Gravity batches from failing on testnet due to the high speed of Paloma at one-second block time.
The Paloma Compass EVM has been successfully redeployed to all six chains on testnet and mainnet. These are Ethereum, BNB, Optimism, Gnosis, Polygon, and Base.
To enable Paloma to scale up volume, unjail scripts will be ending soon. These are used by validators who do not meet the required performance requirements to unjail nodes when Pigeon is faulted and unable to either confirm RPC endpoint is active, or when target chain balances fall below the minimum.
Validators who do not have properly operating Pigeons are unable to deliver messages on time which compromises the reliability and performance of the Paloma network.
“We did $7 million in volume in three months when we could have done most likely $15 million. The reason was that there were pigeons that did not have correct configurations, did not have properly working RPC endpoints, or did not have available balances that were getting messages. They hold on, fail to deliver the message, and the message needs to be retried.”
When a mission-critical trade or TWAP that needs to happen gets to a Pigeon that is failing poses a critical problem for the entire network. A cooling-off period is being prescribed to allow the validator to fix the problem.
“It forces validators to slow down, cool off, fix their validator, make sure their RPC endpoints are working, make sure their balances are up, make sure the configurations are good, make sure the proper versions, and then they can come back to the network. We need the network to be reliable.”
Taariq encourages all validators to use Nodies who offer free RPC endpoints for Paloma.
“We are letting folks know if you want to cut costs while the GRAIN token is not yet launched and we are mainnet, get Nodies. They rock.”
Custom mempools that were implemented to remove account sequence mismatches and allow pigeons to send more messages with transaction prioritization are being reevaluated. The team continues to work on this issue which was a part of the Paloma V1.10 release. Once the mempool issue is resolved, validators can begin to use Pigeon operator keys.
Taariq encourages all validators to use Pigeon operator keys allowing them to make more transactions in a block.
“Use our Pigeon operator keys because it's going to come down to money, it's going to be about money. If you do not use pigeon operator keys, you will make less money. Pigeon operator keys are how validators get to sign yet more transactions in a block so that they can make more money per relay.”
Python SDK Upgrade
The Python SDK used by Paloma for communicating is currently being upgraded.
“The SDK is open for anybody to build on. Anybody can build apps on Paloma today. We're going to build apps faster so that people can see. And we're going to let people fork, copy our apps, and replicate their own.”
The new SDK upgrade will include the message attribution feature allowing the network to know which validator operator keys are sending a message to attribute GRAINS to every message.
“We need to attribute the message sent to the right Pigeon because they're using multiple keys. This attribution functionality is critical and is now going to be put in the Python.”
Once upgraded, all Paloma and Curve bots will be redeployed and undergo stress testing.
“Can we bring in more volume? Can we get more transactions executed? Can the flock begin to differentiate itself?”
GRAIN Token Deployment and Bridge Tax
The GRAIN token cannot be deployed until all new fixes are up. The team will deploy the GRAIN token batches on the testnet to make sure that they work. Taariq assures that GRAINS on mainnet is coming.
“It’s coming. 2024 is going to be the year. We are looking to target GRAIN landing on mainnet on all chains.”
Once the GRAIN token is deployed, the bridge tax of around 10% will be implemented.
“The bridge tax is for all those people who decided to keep their grains to secure the network on their delegated stake. So we want to reward staking behavior and security. The way we're going to design the tax is that all the funds in the GRAIN tax go back to the delegated stakers.”
The GRAIN tax amounts will be on governance and a 10% tax will be rewarded those who stay and make sure that the network is secure.
Closing
Taariq reiterates the goal of making the network profitable for all Pigeons.
“I think what you can see is Palomabot success as an indication that there are people who want unattended remote scheduled trade execution across any network and any AMM.”
He thanks everyone who tuned in, especially the community of validators, and assures everyone that the Paloma network is stable, and the flock is solid.
“We barely have any feathers in our wings and we're still flying in formation, flap our wings, and make sure that we fly towards the chains and we can fly regular transactions from here to there in a consistent and scalable manner.
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!
