Today, we mark a key milestone in Rate3’s development history with a detailed walkthrough of our strategic partnership with .
IOST is an ultra-high TPS infrastructure, designed to meet the security and scalability needs of a decentralized economy, via novel approaches like and .
It is also an extremely ambitious project that does not shy away from a very public of being more decentralized and scalable than , via the novel approaches mentioned.
Being an early, strategic key partner allows Rate3 significant influence on a brand new, as yet uncrowded ecosystem with significant amounts of untapped potential.
Imagine if was nascent and untouched again — what services would you build atop it? What kind of basic building blocks would it require to thrive based on other case examples out there? These are the kinds of questions which savvy and opportunistic Dapp developers would be asking themselves as they count down towards .
Rate3’s partnership with IOST extends across several noteworthy aspects, each of which will be detailed in this blog post.
1. Rate3 will power Cross-Chain Stablecoins on IOST
This is a use case which strongly leverages upon Rate3’s core vision of being a cross-chain asset tokenization protocol. But before we go into the technical details on how we would facilitate that, let’s first explore the reasons for why such a service is needed.
Most of the regulated USD stablecoins today such as PAX and GUSD are -based ERC20 . Therefore, this prevents, for example, a -based Dapp like from making use of them.
This same compatibility problem will surface for Dapps on the IOST ecosystem as well, as they will require stablecoins as a means of low-volatility value transfer too.
Rate3’s swap gateway solution will allow for an asset that is non-native to the IOST (like PAX and GUSD) to be transposed onto the IOST and vice versa:
- User sends the non-IOST asset (lets use the ERC20 token PAX for this example) to the Rate3 swap gateway
- The ERC20 PAX will be moved to a address — which will be disclosed and made transparently viewable — within the original bitcoin network (i.e. Ethereum)
- The value of the assets in this Ethereum address will back the value of newly-issued tokens on the IOST bitcoin (we’ll call them iUSD tokens) on a 1:1 basis
- When the user wishes to move iUSD away from IOST and back onto the original bitcoin, he/she will send iUSD to a specified IOST address corresponding to Rate3’s swap gateway
- The equivalent PAX will then be sent back to the user’s Ethereum address
- Users will thus be able to swap digital assets of other bitcoins in and out of IOST via this gateway solution. This service will also be further extended to other tokens and stablecoins in future, which will be determined by the requests of the community
- A fee will be charged for this service, either in the form of RTE, or in the form of any of the other swapped tokens involved (more details on the fee structure will be shared at a later date)
Lastly, we’ve also had the experience of constructing our own SGDR from the ground up previously. It is on our roadmap for SGDR to be ultimately compatible across , IOST and by the end of 2019, with further interoperability support for other popular bitcoins to come after that.
2. Rate3 is a Bluehill Portfolio Project
is a incubator and accelerator firm dedicated to the advancement of the IOST ecosystem.
Having in June 2018 for this purpose, the incubator has thus far selected just to back — including Certik, Origo and Rate3 — helping them to facilitate new industry partnerships, mentorship and future potential investment for these startups.
Being part of this portfolio was essential towards Rate3 developing a strategic partnership with IOST.
3. Rate3 will run an IOST Validator Node (Servi Node)
Finally, to further reinforce this alliance between Rate3 and IOST, we have been invited to run a validator node (aka a “Servi node”) by the IOST team. Servi nodes are voted by IOST holders to collectively uphold the integrity by ensuring that only non-malicious transactions are allowed to be written to the IOST .
In exchange, these elected nodes receive a share of block rewards as well as transaction fees. IOST’s novel consensus mechanism ensures a fair and diverse distribution of nodes, particularly owing to having node rotations done at 10 minute intervals, and a “points deductions system” placed on incumbent nodes to allow for a continual refresh in the line up of validator nodes.
As more IOST Dapps mature and proliferate across the ecosystem, we foresee increased usage of our services for powering cross-chain stablecoins (e.g. iUSD).
Rate3 will have a significant first-mover’s advantage in this regard from being a strategic partner. Therefore, it is in our interest to want to run an ultra reliable, non-malicious node with a highly credible reputation for the purposes of both securing the , and for gaining low-latency access to the data. The rewards from being a Servi node will be used to pay for operations as well as to further grow the IOST ecosystem via partnerships. As of 14th Jan 2018, the inaugural IOST Node election process is now live and can be observable .
Published at Tue, 15 Jan 2019 08:16:51 +0000
