The market is gradually recovering, and the Sanctum airdrop has landed, but the response is not as good as expected. With a large amount of funds "unlocked", what will be the next project in the Solana ecosystem that is worth paying attention to and will attract a large amount of capital inflow?
As a rising star project of Solana re-staking, Solayer announced the completion of the builder round of financing on July 2, and the investment lineup is also quite strong. As of July 15, the TVL on its platform has exceeded 120 million. With the support of the expected airdrop, can Solayer attract more capital inflows? How to participate in the project? This article will take you to quickly understand this new Solana re-staking project.
What is Solayer?
Solayer is a re-staking protocol for the Solana ecosystem. By leveraging its advantages as a decentralized cloud infrastructure, it can support SOL holders to stake their assets to other protocols or DApp services within the Solana ecosystem that require security and trust. In addition to POS staking income, they can also obtain MEV and AVS and other income. Currently, Solayer supports users to deposit native SOL, mSOL, JitoSOL and other assets.
Solayer uses Solana's stakers as validators, providing a high degree of decentralization and security, avoiding the trust risk of centralized service providers or their own tokens. It provides a simple way for decentralized applications (DApps) to create their own AVS LST. These tokens use Solana's native staking income as a basic reward, as well as additional MEV income. DApps can also receive part of the staking commission, and in the future they can also configure the underlying operator for staking delegation.
Solayer's role can be summarized in a simpler and more straightforward way. Imagine Solana as a highway, with different lanes charging different fees and congestion levels, and different DApps as cars passing through, with different speeds and acceptable fees. Solayer plays the role of coordinating cars, highways, toll collectors, and other parties by accepting user funds.
Financing
Solayer currently has no institutional investors, but judging from the builder round of financing announced on July 2, its investors are also quite strong, including Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Solend founder Rooter, Tensor co-founder Richard Wu, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, etc.
EigenLayer on Solana: Exogenous AVS and Endogenous AVS
As Solana's EigenLayer, its functional difference is mainly reflected in the different main problems that the re-staking system focuses on solving.
EigenLayer's re-staking is mainly used for Ethereum expansion solutions, but Solana, as an integrated blockchain, does not rely on Layer 2 compared to the modular Ethereum, and the re-staking system built needs to focus more on applications. Solayer is not only used for exogenous AVS (Exogenous - Actively Validated Services), but also focuses on endogenous AVS (Endogenous - Actively Validated Services) on the Solana blockchain. The goal is to provide decentralized applications (DApps) on the Solana chain with larger block space and the possibility of priority transactions.
Solayer calls Eigenlayer’s redesign exogenous active verification services (AVS). These systems are off-chain or outside the Ethereum mainchain and can leverage Ethereum’s proof-of-stake security.
This is defined as Exogenous AVS: systems off-chain or outside the main network that can share proof-of-stake security.
For example: cross-chain bridges, shared sorters, oracle networks, etc.
Solayer redefines restaking for Solana while solving the security and performance issues required by developers. Especially as the underlying L1 network becomes more congested. Endogenous AVS is proposed: a Solana native program that uses SOL PoS to configure application security and throughput.
Define it as Endogenous AVS: Dedicated to supporting decentralized applications (DApps) on the mainnet chain. The goal is to provide DApps on the chain with greater possibilities for securing block space and prioritize transaction inclusion.
In addition, the Solayer AVS unbinding process is managed separately by the delegate manager. To provide greater flexibility, Solayer allows them to design their own unbinding process, with the longest unbinding time not exceeding 2 days. Solayer will also provide an emergency exit mechanism to release bound assets from users when AVS stops functioning.
How to re-stake on Solayer?
Solayer Labs is developing its own multi-stage points program, which also prioritizes early participants. Solayer's earliest depositors (whitelisted as early supporters) will have 24 hours to deposit any amount, and the multiplier effect of the points will be higher.
In the first phase, starting from May 27, the total locked value (TVL) of cycle 1 is capped at $50 million. As of June 15, the locked amount has reached the cap. During this period, depositing more than 10 Sol can unlock a permanent invitation code and enter the task interface. Completing more than 3 tasks can earn higher points. The tasks are similar to other projects, such as inviting friends, depositing LST, and depositing more than two phases.
Currently, we have entered the third phase, and there is no upper limit on TVL, which can be pledged at any time. Compared with other currencies, native Sol deposits can earn more points.
Re-staking security and the future
Re-staking projects derived from liquidity staking can use idle staked assets to obtain additional income, which expands the security of the base layer for Ethereum. However, for Solana, there are still many doubts about whether re-staking is needed. Ryan Connor of Blockworks Research believes that Ethereum is a "modular" blockchain; relying on Layer 2 to run, its huge base of staked assets makes re-staking highly practical. As an "integrated" blockchain, Solana's demand is much smaller than that of Ethereum and other modular systems. In addition, the protocol and nesting doll risks of re-staking itself also worry many users. The lack of trust in the protocol, the fear of hacker attacks, etc. are time bombs. But Solayer, as the re-staking protocol with the highest locked volume on Solana, is still worthy of attention.
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