This proposal would create a Curve LTC pool and introduce incentives for LTC to be moved on Ethereum. Adding a pLTC/sLTC pool would enable opportunities for LTC holders into Ethereum’s DeFi and grow liquidity for the Curve protocol.
Abstract:
Liquidity mining initiatives are populating Ethereum’s DeFi. While the focus is on Ethereum-based and Bitcoin-wrapped assets, Litecoin holders are currently excluded from the DeFi ecosystem.
Introducing an incentivised Curve LTC pool would increase the amount of LTC moved to Ethereum, while enabling farming opportunities for LTC. Additionally, it would increase liquidity for the Curve protocol.
Motivation:
A liquidity mining initiative for LTC on Ethereum would give the Litecoin community the possibility to join in the DeFi ecosystem, while creating a benefit for Ethereum’s DeFi expressed in terms of added liquidity locked in it.
Adding a pLTC/sLTC pool would attract more liquidity to Curve and users would be able to swap between two transparent LTC on ETH token representations. One of the oldest crypto communities, Litecoin is a top10 cryptocurrency in terms of trading volumes contributing over 2 Billion daily volumes to centralized exchanges (average over the last month according to coinmarketcap.com).
The aim of the proposal is to move LTC liquidity to Ethereum and to increase liquidity for the LTC trading pair on Curve.
Specification:
The pNetwork DAO has voted in favour of incentivising pLTC liquidity providing on Ethereum. If passed, this proposal would create a pLTC/sLTC pool on Curve and activate incentives coming from both pNetwork and Curve.
The Curve pLTC/sLTC pool would be set up following the standard pool specifications of Curve pools.
pTokens LTC is a tokenised asset part of the pNetwork ecosystem. It is a 1:1 pegged representation of LTC on Ethereum (audited codebase and transparent cross-chain process).
Synthetix LTC is a synthetic representation of LTC on Ethereum.
If the proposal is passed and the pLTC/sLTC pool is added, the pNetwork DAO would incentivise the Curve pool distributing pLTC to everyone providing liquidity to such a pool. Such an incentive would encourage LTC holders to put their LTC at work on Curve and receive pLTC as a reward. The pNetwork DAO will distribute up to 60% APY for 60 days with a commitment of 100,000 USD/month worth of pLTC.
If the proposal is passed, the pLTC/sLTC pool would be created with additional incentives in CRV for everyone providing liquidity to such a pool.
For:
This would bring more liquidity to the Curve protocol as well as moving LTC liquidity into Ethereum’s DeFi.
Just a note that the use of TEEs in pTokens make the whole cross-chain process transparent (while this is not the case for other cross-chain projects).
That said, I understand LTC might not be interesting for you.
But how much work is this to integrate? Can’t they just pay us for this work? Why not make like a retail version for them? Or something like a white label solution. (ltc.curve.fi)
Because more such coins will come to Ethereum. And we can’t show them all on the curve front-page.
Interchain DeFi is something that should be embraced. Lots of people have LTC sitting around doing nothing on its own chain, while everything on ETH is being utilized.
A stable LTC pairing on such a trusted platform like Curve, would allow LTC holders to put it to work.
With a 24 hour Vol of $1,808,073,351, LTC has more than proven itself as an respected entity in the space.
Currently ranked 10 on CoinGecko.
The more top 10 ranked coins available on Curve, the better.
Think its a great idea and I would bring my LTC in for a stable pair on Curve.
Positive Liquidty on Curve
New Users
Addition of pLTC rewards to Curve
Commitment of 100,000 USD/month worth of pLTC from PNetwork Team
Well they are offering incentives and it’s not a lot of work to integrate. It’s two standard ERC20 tokens so can use the same codebase as Bitcoin pools.
I read on your FAQ that Provable is the oracle provider that makes the pTokens possible, and that there is a plan to eventually decentralize the bridge with multiple validators. What is the status of that transition?
I’ve never heard of pTokens, and I have no idea if they are safe or if there is much of a market for them. If we do consider them trustworthy, perhaps we ought to consider implementing other pTokens into the various sPools that are being discussed now. Can we make new pools upgradable so that as more of these bridge protocols pop up, their assets can be added to existing pools, instead of having to migrate liquidity?
pTokens actually do NOT run via an oracle (there’s no need for it).
Provable Things is a team that has been working in the Ethereum space since 2015 and it is the development team behind the longest-running oracle on multiple blockchains (Provable oracle, previously known as Oraclize). You may not be familiar with it as the project traditionally did not have a token (more on this below) since there was no need for it within the system, but there are hundreds of dApps integrated.
This same team is also the main development team behind pTokens. While the Provable oracle and pTokens are separate things, the technologies and team skillset used are very similar (multiple blockchains, multiple TEE systems, etc). The oracle is a long term bet, while pTokens has more immediate applicability.
As mentioned, we have been working as a team on Ethereum, multiple blockchians and TEE technologies for years. We have presented our work with talks at major conferences including Devcon 1,2,3,4 and 5, all EDCONs, all EthCCs among others. Some of these are available online, if you want to check them out (here is a non-complete list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDQuXwspMa0&list=PLtR8irJykqD-_Xt8Dpjk8g5pwx9E9GmGJ). Specifically, the pTokens project was announced at Devcon 5.
While the pTokens project is recent, thanks to its purposely simple design, we were able to launch in production in a very short time. The goal of the project is to interconnect a variety of blockchains to enable the fluid movement of assets.
Currently, the pTokens bridges available in production are pBTC on ETH, pLTC on ETH and pBTC on EOS. The project follows a progressive decentralization approach - the governance token PNT and the pNetwork DAO have been introduced as part of this path. The system is currently in its Phase 0, planning to upgrade to Phase 1 beginning of Q4 2020.
In terms of security considerations (decentralization, security, transparency), this is covered in the answer to the TEE-related question (posted by Thomas Bertani). Please have a look at that and ask if there’s anything not covered there.
Regarding TEEs the short answer is: a TEE-secured node is necessarily safer than a non-TEE-secured node, and all alternatives to pTokens in production today are extremely centralized. Of all wrapping systems in production today, pTokens is the most advanced in giving transparency guarantees on the cross-chain movement of assets.
What follows are some of the security considerations regarding pTokens:
While it is our plan to introduce in the coming weeks a network of validators (as per the roadmap), it is true that the current pTokens Phase 0 is running on a single, TEE-secured validating node. So pTokens are not yet a fully decentralized solution, but neither are all of the other wrapping systems.
Currently, none of those other wrapping systems in production are truly decentralized to any great degree (though some are more transparent than others in making this clear!). This is true for both already listed on Curve - wBTC is a centralized solution and renBTC’s Greycore (key management) is currently unilaterally run by the Ren team (per their own declaration).
So in pToken’s case, the use of TEEs as well as other elements (see below) makes pTokens more advanced in terms of the transparency guarantees it gives today, mainly because the claim of WHAT code is being executed in that TEE to secure the funds can already be verified by anyone.
The codebase backing pTokens (including both pBTC and pLTC) is already fully open-source, and was made so as early as the mainnet release. The same cannot be said for the pTokens alternatives in production today.
The pTokens project implements a continuous auditing process. The development team works alongside an external auditing team so that the evolving codebase is continuously verified and audited by industry experts before going into production. Auditing isn’t just about ticking boxes, but about ensuring funds are safe. We found that doing initial audits at launch is not enough, since the codebase does inevitably change rapidly over time.
A community governance system is already implemented. Decisions on the project are in the hands of the community, who can contribute via the Aragon-based pNetwork DAO. Better still, members are actively encouraged to participate in the decision-making process by being rewarded with a 42% APY on their stake.
At the time of writing, approximately 60% of the total governance token’s supply is staked within this DAO and the company behind pTokens only control a minority of that total supply, so the community themselves are in charge of decision making. (One caveat to this is that new proposals can currently only be started just by the pTokens team, though this is also planned to change in the near future as the DAO matures)
The use of TEEs increases the security of pTokens nodes since TEEs themselves are designed as environments with increased security features when compared to a normal server. pTokens leveraging TEEs in the system means they are necessarily able to give better transparency guarantees compared to non-TEE-enabled systems. During Phase 0 (where only a single validating node exists), the TEE ensures - and enables anyone to independently verify! - that the audited open-source code is what is actually running in production.
In future phases where a network of validators will exist, those TEEs will also make attacking the system more expensive for any malicious nodes in the network.
The use of TEEs gives guarantees as to the security of the private keys held therein. To my current knowledge, none of the other wrapping systems in production can give similar guarantees on the security of their keys.
To conclude even in Phase 0, pTokens already gives more security and transparency guarantees compared to competing wrapping systems in production.
And so going against what seems to have unfortunately become the norm, it is not our intention to promote the pTokens project as fully decentralized when it is not yet so. Indeed our DApp highlights this with a warning to users of exactly this fact. With that said, the security considerations listed above clearly show that pTokens offer not less than the currently available alternatives in terms of security and transparency, but rather that pTokens offer more. And these guarantees will only become stronger and more numerous as pTokens moves towards phase 1 (multi-node networks) and beyond.
For future reference, our team is also preparing a deep-dive blog on the current status of pTokens in terms of security and decentralization, I will link it here for those interested when it’s published.
Maybe we have different definitions of what oracles are, but it is my favorite topic in the blockchain stack. I consider any entity sitting between a blockchain and any other system to be an oracle, including the TEE node that broadcasts the state between two separate blockchains. I’m also familiar with Oraclize, now Provable. And I’m familiar with TEE’s, their advantages as well as their trust assumptions. Some people are not fond of them because it moves trust to the manufacturer of the trusted hardware. I actually think the concerns are overblown and that TEEs represent the best simplest solution for transmitting tamperproof data to a blockchain. However, it should be emphasized, as it has been on this thread, that a single TEE node is a single point of failure. It cant necessarily lie about the state, but it can turn off. A node turning off can be devastating to the peg, as well as any disruption in the bridge would be.
I agree with your analysis on that front, that’s exactly why it is very high priority for us to move onto a multinode setup (as planned in our roadmap), hopefully other projects will do it too. So while I agree with your point in principle, I don’t see it as a fair comparison point given the alternatives currently live on Curve provide lower security and transparency guarantees.
Although LTC is not the most talked about project of the moment, historical data shows that this coin is still very popular and traded. This could be a good opportunity to incentivize all LTC holders (especially those who keep coins in their wallets without receiving rewards).