⚔️ 🦉 Gnosis Chain Weekly · December 17, 2021
👋 Welcome to the first ever Gnosis Chain Weekly Newsletter! The xDai weekly newsletter was published to keep the community up to speed with the latest integrations, project news, development, governance, and other happenings. The Gnosis Chain Weekly is now that resource serving the broader Gnosis Chain Community.
We continue to update sites, DEXs, social spaces and the many other places referencing the xDai Chain. The transformation from xDai Chain 🐛 to 🦋 Gnosis Chain will take time, and the rebranding efforts, logos, and updates are chugging along 🚊.
For now, expect to see the chain referred to as xDai Chain, Gnosis Chain(formerly xDai Chain) and/or Gnosis Chain as the news of the token merger reverberates throughout the ecosystem. If you find a project still referencing the xDai Chain, feel free to share the news with them of the name change and expanding opportunities opening up for Gnosis Chain users!
STAKE/GNO Swap Update
The token swap is proceeding smoothly on Ethereum and on Gnosis Chain. To date nearly 45% of the available STAKE on Ethereum has been swapped.
A smaller percentage of STAKE has been swapped on Gnosis Chain, however many more addresses have swapped lower amounts, reflecting token holder demographics.
While the swap will be live and available for the next 6 months, the Gnosis Auction which impacts GNO price and effective STAKE/GNO swap price will end in 3 days, on December 20 at 3pm CET.
We expect to see STAKE trading opportunities phase out as liquidity moves out of DEXs and CEXs move to support GNO rather than STAKE. There are also anticipated airdrops upcoming for GNO holders on both Ethereum and xDai. 🦉Read more about GNO utility and holder advantages.
So, if you’ve thought about swapping but haven’t had a chance to yet, this weekend is a great time to make the move from STAKE to GNO!
Gnosis Beacon Chain
One of the first big developments to emerge from the merger is the launch of the Gnosis Beacon Chain (GBC).
In addition to providing stable, low-cost and optimized transactions, the GBC infra will serve as a final frontrunner for important Ethereum updates. This includes the Eth2 merge. Gnosis Chain plans to merge with the GBC approximately 1 week prior to the Ethereum merge, giving devs a final opportunity to uncover any last-minute issues and confirm functionality in a real-value environment.
The UI for GBC deposits is in development and an alpha set of validators is now in place, proposing and attesting blocks!
If you are interested in becoming a validator, please visit the docs and read the requirements, then sign up for the waitlist (or if you often fail the marshmallow test and have the technical chops, follow the instructions to run and fund a GBC node today!).
Validating only requires 1 GNO, giving a diverse group of validators the ability to participate on the Gnosis Beacon Chain. APY incentives for validators follow a curve based on the the number of participating validators.
The future for GBC looks bright 😎, and blockchain luminaries are already envisioning GBC as a Layer 3 in the not-to-distant future.
LAYER 3 🤯? Joe Lubin reflects on the Gnosis Chain and how it might fit into an exponential scalability paradigm.
📡 Ecosystem Updates
Clients
A 2304 GNO (~ 1M USD) grant from the GC was awarded to the Nethermind team to continue their innovative work in the client realm and participate as validators on the GBC. Nethermind has been instrumental in their support of the Gnosis (xDai) infrastructure and will continue to enhance and support stability and features through the GBC merge.
Privacy
Privacy and security guide every step of our development mindset. Two zk (zero knowledge) solutions announced Gnosis Chain integrations this week designed to provide increased user privacy.
Tornado Cash: Tornado Cash Nova is a new ETH pool that allows for arbitrary withdrawals/deposits and shielded transfers. Fees for users will be reduced drastically while maintaining fast withdrawals.
Zero Pool: A large-scale privacy solution will allow users to enter a zk pool on the Gnosis Chain through an OmniBridge gateway. Users will then be able to transact privately within the pool without disclosure of the sender, recipient, and value of a transaction.
DeFi
Curve and Sushi are two well-known projects deployed and active on the Gnosis Chain. While they have provided previous STAKE incentives for users, the token merger presents an opportunity for new incentivization structures. Look for GNO rewards coming soon for both of these protocols.
Incentives will also shift for many DeFi protocols on the GC. A Gnosis forum proposal from Swapr by DXdao queries the GnosisDAO regarding funding for prior approved incentives.
AutoFarm is a yield farming aggregator running on many chains throughout the ecosystem. They announced several vaults on GC this week with high auto-compounding rates for stable tokens.
Projects of Interest
Colony Token Sale is underway! This is a unique batch-auction sale where price discovery is happening right now. More than half of the 20M supply has been sold with xDai as the sale currency. Learn more here!
Cardstack continues to progress with their CardPay payment protocol and Card Wallet. They announced a public beta to download the app and claim a prepaid card to get started. More in their December news update.
🙏 We’d like to thank our long-time community and welcome new community members as we embark on this next chapter of growth with the Gnosis Chain. In the web3 space, stagnation = death, and it is important to continuously grow, discover new boundaries, and anticipate what lies ahead. We look forward to the journey!
See you on-chain,
The GC Team