Ideas from the community -- The Evolution of SKALE

General
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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.

  1. 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.

2 Likes
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Hey @jackoholleran –

Thank you for putting this together! I’m a big fan of both of the ideas you put forward on behalf of the community.

However, before I dive into my thoughts on those want to share that I fully agree and have similar discussions with developers and projects all the time re-innovation. SKALE is one of the most stable blockchain networks while simultaneously offering strong decentralization, best in class scalability, great security, and top tier economics. Innovating on top of what is already there is going to open doors to more developers looking for decentralized compute who may not have come across SKALE yet and continue to help existing SKALE devs iterate and build their businesses.

Exploring More Chain Options

Really excited to hear that others are interested in this. I think the AppChain narrative will continue to grow over time while also shifting to follow the ethos of decentralization. Layer-2s, Layer-3s, etc that are popping up as well as 1-2 node subnets just don’t make sense to me as a viable option for ecosystems or applications that are claiming to be Web3/decentralization. I think the majority of these “chains” will be great candidates for smaller SKALE Chains.

Additionally, I fully agree that the price of hub chains (e.g medium chains) should increase.
This would enable the network to have the primary source of revenue be split toward key parties (e.g validators) and critical initiatives (e.g replenish the bounty pool) while also ensuring that validators continue to be as profitable as possible.

I think the next step here will be to understand in greater detail what the capabilities of a small SKALE Chain are, understand the costs back to validators and the network, and then finally align that within the broader pricing model. In parallel, I believe deeper exploration also needs to continue towards non-SKALE developers who are building their own chains to understand what they value, what price points they are looking for, and what compute requirements they have so that future SKALE Chain options will be as enticing as possible to possible chain owners.

Overall, I’m very pleased about more SKALE Chain options as I believe it will attract a lot of developers looking for their own chains who just don’t need the power of a medium SKALE Chain now or in the future.

Exploring a SKALE Layer-1

I’m also a very big fan of this idea. I agree that L1s and L2s seem to draw more trust re DeFi even though the security and decentralization is generally lacking considerably compared to a SKALE Chain. A couple of key callouts here are:

  1. MEV Resistance: I think this is really interesting. There are new chains being created all the time and they have very little at the design level that makes them unique. Being able to have this at the chain level would increase security far more than trusting a 3rd party to do it. Additionally, SKALE already uses BLS Signatures and Threshold Schemes meaning this aligns very closely with the SKALE Core.

  2. Complementary to AppChains: I really like the fact that the discussions are already around how can it work with what is there today. I think a new innovation like this would be a major stepping stone towards growth and give those building on SKALE Hubs and AppChains a bigger place to showcase themselves instead of on another AppChain. The idea of it taking Europa’s place as the primary place to interact with DeFi and value also makes a ton of sense to me. I remember working with a number of teams and people during the initial hub design and thinking how critical it would be for Europa to grow and really become a cornerstone for value growth. While it is growing, I think the AppChain style semi-permission layer has really delayed it where a permissionless L1 could see growth that an AppChain just wouldn’t be able to replicate.

  3. SKL for Gas: This is really unique as well and I think would tie the ecosystem together fully. It also has multiple benefits to the SKALE Ecosystem like allowing existing SKL holders to have more ways to participate in the network itself. It would open up some new ways to incentivize a new set of validators.

Other Ideas

A couple other ideas I had related to a possible L1 are:

  1. Improving Network Efficiency of Critical Operations: e.g validator orchestration and delegator operations are very expensive on Ethereum. These are more longer term concepts but I think an initiative like this opens up the door for exploration.
  2. Increased dApp + Infra Compatibility: While SKALE Chains today are almost fully compatible with Ethereum (outside of some bleeding edge Solidity opcodes), one of the most common things I see when working with projects (especially projects that have been around for 4-5+ years) is the use of native gas for payments. With the gas being valued, msg.value would be in play in Solidity for payments enabling some projects who may have previously chosen not to build on SKALE due to possible engineering or audit costs that were not feasible to be able to immediately deploy on a chain with this feature.

Summary

I think both of the ideas put forth by Jack align with a lot of things that members of the community are sharing with me as well. As I continue to contribute to the SKALE Network I’m excited to work with all members of the community as everyone explores these innovative ideas further.

Thank you,
TheGreatAxios