[RFC] Path to Mainnet

Intro

THORChain community,

Tl;dr: mainnet is (safely) coming. Community engagement and decision making is more important than ever. Please comment (and feel free to use this document as a template for coordinating future work)

It is clear from recent network events and dialogue with the community that we are entering a new phase of THORChain’s development and maturity, and in this phase, we need to do more than simply make improvements to the protocol itself. It will take improvements in coordination and communication on the part of us—the ecosystem. As such, this becomes an important moment to improve our collective communication and decision-making capabilities.

Increasing the overlap between protocol development and high-quality, focused community engagement is the intention of this Request For Comments (RFC).

Background

Over the last six months, a meaningful amount of energy has gone into securing and stabilizing THORChain. The impact and scope of this work will be detailed in full, publicly, but for purposes of this document, suffice it to say that it includes:

  • The formation of THORSec, a dedicated security function,
  • The formation of an ongoing, well-managed bounty program with Immunefi
  • Multiple external audits (ToB, Halborn, independent researchers)
  • Custom fuzzing infrastructure

With these foundations in place, we are now looking ahead to what is necessary to improve THORChain from here. Specifically, this RFC details the main areas of focus along with proposed sequencing for addressing them.

Domains and Sequencing

Based on community discussions, the anticipated sequence of necessary events for the “mainnet” designation are as follows:

  • Network secured by diverse teams
  • Seamless churns
  • Grow bonds
  • Stagenet
  • Terra, DOGE added to Stagenet

We hope to reach mainnet by the end of January, teeing up 2022 as the Year of THORFi. A functioning mainnet—operating smoothly—is a requisite foundation for THORFi. Once mainnet designation has been reached, THORFi and scaling become the focus.

Focusing on Stability

For THORChain’s unique incentives to function properly the network needs to be stable. Outlined below are the domains that contribute to maintaining and growing these incentives and actions that will reinforce a stable network.

Seamless Churns

Consistent and smooth churns are critical to grow the validator set and subsequent bond. Working with Node Operators (NOs) to facilitate seamless churns is an important step to improve Quality of Life for NOs.

  • Improve churn / shash logic
    • Change slash score to ignore age (old nodes no longer heavily favored)
    • Ensure the bad node calculation happens during the churn
    • !2021 (merged)
  • Steadily increasing Node Bonds (incentives dialed in)
    • Change bond rewards to be proportional to bond value
    • Capped at 3x min bond amount -#1187 (closed)
  • Increase liquidity cap to tilt pendulum in favor of Nodes

Seamless Cap raises

  • Incentivize higher node bonds by increasing rewards to node operators
    • Targeting a slightly more underbonded state
  • If sufficient bond has been added, raise caps to target threshold
  • No explicit IDO support / involvement

Stagenet

Stagenet is a permissioned network that handles real assets. The goal is to provide a testing ground that mirrors chaosnet as closely as possible. New features and chain clients will be validated in stagenet where performance and economic outcomes are easily observable by the community.

  • For staging / testing chains
  • Interacts with other chains mainnets
  • New chains should expect to be validated here for a number of months to ensure stability

Community

As the network moves into this new phase, community dialogue is critical as decisions are made for the development of the network.

Expect Requests for Comment (RFCs) and Discord Stages as common forums for these discussions going forward. Join the discussion and commit to constructive discourse to improve the network. Each community member has a vested interest in the success of the network.

The THORChain community is unique in its ingenuity, creativity and spirit. That spark is essential to overcome the inertia of recent events and to deliver THORChain to Mainnet, TOGETHER! ⚡

Discord Stage Discussion

To encourage as much discussion as possible, we will be hosting a Discord stage tomorrow at 2021-12-08 21:00 UTC. (22:00 CET, 16:00 EST, 13:00 PST, 8:00 AET) Please submit questions via the RFC.

Edited by THORChain