Hi all! One of the strongest qualities of SKALE is that it is a fully open source project. All code is built in the open. Anyone at anytime can see the full roadmap, sprint plan, and even see the status of small technical tasks such as bug fixes. This is all open to see in GitHub. Contributions to code are made from many different companies and independent contractors. All technical roadmap decisions are made in an open and transparent manner. All decisions regarding network economics are made via onchain voting. With that in mind, I want to share some feedback and ideas I’ve received from validators, dapp developers, open source contributors, core devs, delegators, and community members.
Caveat – These are just ideas as they would need to be approved by the broader dev community from a technical perspective and then ultimately approved via onchain voting.
One recurring theme is that there is a belief that SKALE must continue to innovate and push technical boundaries in order to maintain our technical advantage. I agree with this sentiment and think the ideas being brought forward are very good and should be implemented.
Here are two primary areas for focus and growth for the technical roadmap based on the input from various stakeholders:
1: More chain options for dapp developers
Appchains are becoming more HOT as the industry matures. SKALE saw this early and from day 1 has had configurable size app chains as a product feature. The mainnet has only leveraged the medium size to date. Many people have proposed opening a small chain option that is more affordable. It will also be able to process less info and have less computation power/storage, but will cost dramatically less. This also helps open up higher pricing for Hub Chains. Right now, individual apps renting their own chains need to pay the same as a hub. This drives most individual apps to hubs. This is not necessarily a bad thing but some apps want their own chain. This smaller chain option will make that now an affordable option.
Ideally a large hub chain is ~$2M in SKL per year which equates to about $500/per month/per app if 300 apps share a chain. The new SKALE Core tech will be able to process thousands of TPS so hubs will have no issue supporting 300 concurrent apps. If an app starts getting a ton of traction they can always migrate to their own appchain or to a Private Hub where it is shared with less apps.
Testing for this is already under way. A formal spec should be produced by the dev community, a formal governance proposal needs to be created by the community, and then it must be voted on in order to be added to the ecosystem as this touches network economics.
- Launching a NextGen Chain
For anyone that interacts with a SKALE chain they soon realize that it is the most performant chain in the market. It is hyper fast, secure, reliable, and efficient. There are currently about 18 chains running in the ecosystem. All are fast, gas free, and connected to Ethereum. These chains collectively are in the Top 10 of all Blockchains and Layer 2 chains in terms of Unique Active Wallets and Transaction Volume.
One issue we have from a macro perspective is that SKALE chains fill a huge need for developers but don’t fit nicely into the category of L1 or L2. SKALE doesn’t fit neatly into a bucket because it is “BUILT DIFFERENT”.
That said, I am consistently asked why SKALE doesn’t also have a Layer 1 in the ecosystem of chains. If it is the world’s fastest blockchain, are we losing market share and functionality by not having a Layer 1 in addition to the current set of chains?
In addition, DeFi users trust L1s and L2s more than appchains/modular chains at the given moment. SKALE needs to up its DeFi game in order to bring even more value to the gaming and Ai ecosystem.
So the idea is to create a pure Layer 1 within the SKALE Network. It would have its own validator set, it would be the fastest blockchain in the world, would have MEV resistance, instant finality, etc. AND it would use SKL as the token and burn SKL tokens for its use. Therefore creating more security value within the entire SKALE ecosystem. This chain would not have any negative impact on other chains. It would effectively replace Europa as the centerpoint chain for DeFi, trading, swapping, liquidity, and more. Games and other high performance apps that need zero gas fees would still use SKALE Hubs like Nebula.
Summary - I think these are great ideas brought forth by the builders in SKALE. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts.