Cirus has recently announced the development of the Cirus Staking and Contribution Pool (NASDAQ:POOL). The pool will go live with the launch of the Genesis stage of the Cirus Platform in Q4 2021 and will only be available to platform users. As part of Cirus’s commitment to a network and ecosystem-first approach, the Staking and Contribution pool will allow users to contribute to the ecosystem while earning rewards.
Traditional Proof of Stake vs. Cirus Staking Rewards
Traditional Proof of Stake (PoS) required token holders to lock up (or ‘stake’) a certain number of tokens in a smart contract to secure the network. The logic is that token holders will have an interest in maintaining the integrity of the network and would not have any incentive to attack the network. In other words, the user would become part of the network infrastructure by staking and would lose their stake if they misbehaved.
This form of PoS has since evolved into a mechanism whereby users can earn rewards (usually in the form of tokens) by locking up supply (which has many functions, such as enhancing the stability of an ecosystem).
Cirus is committed to network-first development and is taking a middle-of-the-road approach. Cirus will use part of staked funds to build out the network’s infrastructure. This will generate value at the protocol and network layer, delivering resilience and performance to the applications that are then built on top of it. This approach, reminiscent of the Fat Protocol Thesis, is a bet that the lion’s share of value is captured by the protocol layer, not the application layer, which is what can be seen with traditional development such as web-based application development.
This distinction is key. When new services, functions, and benefits are added to an ecosystem at the application layer, only the application benefits from, provides, and supports those functions and benefits. When value is built into a system at the protocol level, however, substantial network effects result. Every new application built on the platform will enjoy the benefits of the protocol-level enhancements that are added to the system, helping the system to gradually evolve. The system can also iteratively plan and add new features, such as security enhancements, processing innovations, guaranteed consensus, and other functions and features that all future apps built on the platform will benefit from.
By diverting a fixed percentage of staked funds to a network infrastructure fund and bolstering the infrastructure on which the Cirus platform and new applications are built, the team is providing the community with the opportunity to contribute directly to the strength of the Cirus ecosystem.
Some of the initially planned uses for the infrastructure fund include the creation of ETH and MATIC nodes for public RPC-endpoints connected to device and data transmissions, as well as validator acquisition and specific protocol level support on ETH(L2) standards.
All staked funds and rewards will be held in publicly viewable, secure, multi-signature wallets, and the Cirus Foundation will provide regular reporting on all uses.
Future Applications and Considerations
Future considerations for the fund include the following:
- Governance capability tied to network updates and/or fund usage, which may include permanent locks or burning of tokens.
- The formation of a rewards pool for platform participants.
- The formation of a treasury to be used as collateral for the creation of a Cirus stablecoin.
- The creation of stakeholder programs to expedite device deployment.
As per the Cirus project roadmap, when first launched, the Staking and Contribution pool will only be available on the Ethereum network. However, the team’s goal is to build integrations and interoperability with Matic as well. However, it is important to note that the pool is another important indicator of Cirus’s commitment to building network and ecosystem value. The Cirus IDO followed a similar strategy, with staking opening on one of Cirus’ IDO partner platforms, MantraDAO (Zendit), as well as Dfyn, a premier Layer-2 partner. This shows the team’s commitment to the ecosystem and the new staking contract demonstrates a consistent commitment to this network-first approach.
Additional details on the pool will be provided as the project nears the launch of Genesis, so look out for new updates from the dev team. Alternatively, you can directly join the waitlist for Genesis by clicking here.