The world’s first Omni-chain decentralized exchange
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PROJECT: Sifchain
TICKER: ROWAN
FOUNDED: Q3 2020, San Francisco, US
WEB PAGE: sifchain.finance
DOCUMENTATION:
Litepaper
Token Economics Paper
FIELD OF INTEREST: Cross-chain Decentralised Exchange (DEX)
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Built with the Cosmos software development kit (SDK) and the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC), Sifchain processes substantially more transactions per second than Ethereum, making it 100 times more efficient than a current leading Ethereum-based DEX like Uniswap in terms of trading fee and transaction speed.
GOAL: “Sifchain’s goal is for new blockchains to consider cross-chain integration as essential as a wallet or block explorer. Liquidity from all cryptocurrencies can then be accessed on-chain, allowing the coordinated deployment of capital from all cryptocurrencies by DAOs.” said project leader Jazear Brooks.
CHAIN /TOKEN TYPE: Cosmos SDK blockchain, it uses the Tendermint consensus algorithm and will support the 4 Cosmos Networks’ Inter-blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC). Token will be ERC-20 standard at the time of public sale auction.
CONSENSUS MECHANISM: Tendermint Core Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT)
LIVE MAINNET: 100+ validators on testnet with a plan to launch mainnet in Q1 2021
DEV ACTIVITY: Sifchain Github
There are 21 contributors in the sifnode repository which has 268 commits since September 2020.
There are 2 contributors in the network repository which has 24 commits since October 2020.
There are no usernames amongst developers/contributors to be found in both Thorchain and Sifchain Github. That doesn’t mean the same developers can’t have alias names.
PRODUCTS: testnet but in Q1 Omni-chain Dex
COMPETITORS:
Thorchain (built with Cosmos SDK)
JellySwap (built on Harmony)
AnySwap (Ethereum)
ChocoSwap (Built on Ontology)
REN (Ethereum)
CypherSwap (build by Cypherium)
Acala (build on Parity Substrate)
Equilibrium (EOSIO & Parity Substrate)
TEAM:
“Our diverse and talented team of operators, business developers, and marketers bring with them experience as legal experts, financial advisors, financial engineering experts and PE/VC experienced professionals. Our team members are seasoned veterans with executive experience at firms like a major cryptocurrency exchange, a major Web 2.0 VC, and a Tier 1 Silicon Valley law firm. The team has extensive experience in the crypto space, especially with exchanges, and can speak to years of experience and connections in the global cryptocurrency community, including strong ties in the US, EU, and Asian markets.
Our product team is composed of experts ranging from crypto-economic researchers, cryptocurrency traders, fintech industry veterans, and experienced cryptocurrency product managers. The team has strong experience working on cornerstone projects, delivering performance and scalable end products at multiple FAAMG companies and notable cryptocurrency projects.
Our all-star team of over a dozen senior engineers includes blockchain architects and developers who have worked on industry-renowned projects such as Thorchain, Cosmos, and Polkadot, as well as massively scaled distributed systems outside of the blockchain industry. The engineering team also has strong experience with full-stack development, complex systems, economic modelling, financial engineering, security, and other disciplines related to blockchain. (source)”
*Jazear Brooks, Project Lead and CEO. Jazear is a developer and entrepreneur with a BS Computer Science and Economics from Yale. Worked in the field of expertise for the last decade at Microsoft, Glassboard, Pixorial, and Madrone. He was also a Technical Product Manager in Gigster, a computer software company providing digital solutions. Gigster is backed by Andreesen Horowitz, Y Combinator (YC S15), and Greylock Partners. His last and active position was a Director of Engineering in Swish managing the blockchain division where he was able to combine his skill set in engineering and economics to develop novel crypto-economic models and trading strategies.
Interview with Jazear on CryptoCoinShow: WATCH THE VIDEO HERE
Other team members were not yet revealed to the public but amongst the content creators on their Medium blog is also Luke Kim. Looks like he might be in charge of marketing, maybe also an active CMO. Was also a CMO for Vite Labs and is currently active advisor of Nonfiction, SF Bay Area-based creative design studio. Luke is a serial entrepreneur.
From the Telegram chat: “We’re not really like a standard anonymous project in that we are actually very corporate and have taken on a lot of tier 1 venture capital firms which do traditional due diligence on teams as part of their investments. We try to keep it focused on the team as opposed to individual members, but it’s no secret that a lot of our credibility lies with the fact that we have so many members from the Thorchain team, including its early architect. This gives us a lot of credibility and experience with cross-chain software and AMM token design. Jazear was not just involved in early architecture on Thorchain but helped with development on Cosmos’s official Ethereum <> Cosmos bridge for the Interchain Foundation and the Polkadot <> Ethereum bridge for Web 3 so we are experts in cross-chain transactions. Beyond that, our team has a lot of experience with other crypto projects including a YC-backed crypto startup and multiple crypto exchanges. Purely on the development side, we have over a dozen engineers, most of whom have prior blockchain experience on other major chains. They’re supported by strong business development and marketing experience over many major famous cryptocurrency projects by our operations team.”
There are strong pointers that Sifchain is being developed by the same guys that are behind Thorchain as there are so many upgrades of the existing Thorchain tech features planned by Sifchain. Thorchain was also anonymous at the time of private sale and IEO on Binance DEX. On the other hand, there is no proof of that. Developers on the Sifchain Github have different names as in the Thorchain’s.
PARTNERS: Wings Foundation, KNS Groups, Kosmos
INVESTORS: $3,5M was raised in a seed round in Q3 2020 by NGC Ventures, Alameda Research, AU21 Capital, Danish Chadhry of Bitcoin.com exchange, Mechanism Capital and Bitscale.
On their web page, there are also TRG Capital, Genblock Capital, Juncapital, Kinetic Capital, Master Ventures and Highline Investment mentioned.
TOKEN USE CASE AND REVENUES:
-governance token for Sifchain. All changes to Sifchain will be voted for by the amount of Rowan that is held. This will also be weighted. The more Rowan you have the more percent of a vote you will get.
-settlement token for Sifchain. It must be purchased to execute trades against CLPs.
-Rowan will be used as block rewards for validators.
The Sifchain network will be secured by the validators who will be allowed to stake Rowan with APR between 10–100%. (instructions). Token holders will be able to delegate their token to validators and/or pool tokens in CLP.
Sifchain will run a 12-week liquidity mining program to incentivize people to invest early. As Sifchain is a cross-chain the team will offer 0.5% of all Rowan to Rune-holders and 0.5% to Atom-holders during BetaNet’s launch.
TOKEN METRICS:
FULLY DILUTED MARKET CAP: $30M
INITIAL MARKET CAP: ≅$2.1M
TOTAL TOKEN SUPPLY: 1B
INITIAL CIRCULATING SUPPLY [%]: ≅7%
FUNDS RAISING INFO:
-Seed 4% at $0,00625 with 25% per quarter for 4 quarters
-Private:
*R1 24% at $0,0125 with:
-⅔ 0% for the first month and 25% per quarter for 4 quarters
-⅓ 25% per quarter for 4 quarters
*R2 4,5% at $0,03 with 0% for the first month and 1/12 vesting (8,3% per month)
-Public 7% at $0,03 starting price with 8,75M eRowan tokens of 70M. Hourly addition 364k eRowan tokens.
Rowan will be the functional token of the Sifchain network. For convenience, token sale purchasers will be able to purchase wrapped Rowan tokens — eRowan — on the Ethereum network. All eRowan will be convertible to Rowan 1:1 on the Sifchain network when BetaNet launches. All unsold eRowan will be burned after the end of the public token sale.
The token sale is implemented as a smart contract liquidity pool containing USDT and eRowan. This smart contract liquidity pool is created using a customized fork of a Balancer contract. Its audit report is here.
TOKEN DISTRIBUTION:
Details about the token distribution and vestings can be found here.
ROADMAP:
*Q4 2020 Launch
-Liquidity Pools DONE
-Sifchain <> Ethereum Cross-Chain Bridge DONE
-Rowan public sale DONE
*Q4 2020
-IBC Protocol
-SifDAO for Governance
-Multi-chain wallet support
-Block Explorer
*Q1 2021
-Continuous Limit Order Book
-Margin Swaps
-Oracle verification
-Additional blockchain pegs
SOCIAL MEDIA:
Medium (95)
Twitter (1355)
Telegram (2796)
Discord
NOTES
Sifchain, built with Cosmos SDK and using infra from Thorchain, is a cross-chain DEX with a goal of 20–25 blockchain integrations. They will also have an open-source development process for additional cross-chain integrations. Sifchain will aggregate liquidity in cross-chain liquidity pools and have order books for optimal order execution. Sifchain will upgrade the formulas used for liquidity pool algorithms from first principles of complexity theory to implement adaptive AMMs suitable to limit orders and token swaps alike. There won’t be validator front-running order placements. The traders will be allowed to place limit orders that are executed against the liquidity pool as the market price fluctuates but also to use margin on their trades by borrowing from the liquidity pool.
Sifchain is powered by ROWAN tokens. The token is used for governance, block rewards and as a settlement token when swapping two external assets.
Sifchain will be governed by the SifDAO.
Sifchain uses a pegged token model, which means users trade and swaps the pegged tokens that can be redeemed on the blockchain at any time for their native underlying token.
“Sifchain uses a two-way peg protocol which results in the swap of pegged tokens. For example, a trade of YFI for COMP would be executed as transactions of pegged tokens (cYFI and cCOMP) on a Cosmos SDK blockchain. Each source chain would have a specified peg chain (known as a peg zone) in the Cosmos network with its own validators separate from Sifchain. Sifchain would verify peg zone validators’ transactions through the IBC. Peg zone validators must run a full node only for their peg zone blockchain and the blockchain to which they are pegged. For example, an Ethereum peg zone validator only needs to run a full node for the Ethereum peg zone and the Ethereum blockchain.
The primary benefit of using a native token is participation in the consensus mechanism of the native token’s set of validators, miners, or other nodes. However, that benefit is not as helpful as the deployment of a pegged token based on a combination of technical and crypto-economic incentives.”
Obviously, Sifchain was inspired by Thorchain. They are both after the same thing. Building a true cross-chain DEX and liquidity aggregator protocol. Both are built with Cosmos SDK. So what’s the difference?
The main difference is that Thorchain uses native tokens while Sifchain uses a pegged token model which means users trade pegged tokens that can be redeemed on the blockchain at any time for their native underlying token. Each source chain would have a specified peg chain in the Cosmos network with its own validators separate from Sifchain. Sifchain would verify peg zone validators’ transactions through the IBC.
Sifchain will also upgrade or extend some of the Thorchain’s features such as liquidity pool formula, the fees and the rewards.
Sifchain wants to achieve self-sovereignty with self-funding and self-sustaining development. To be able to achieve that they have joint forces with MetaGov and UC Davis Research Lab.
More about the comparison between Thorchain and Sifchain can be found here.
“Liquidity pools are important in decentralized finance (DeFi) — particularly decentralized exchanges (DEX). Because Sifchain is the world’s first Omni-chain DEX, this technology is fundamental to our vision. We use something called a Continuous Liquidity Pool (CLP).
Centralized exchanges (e.g. Coinbase, New York Stock Exchange) use order books: marketplaces where buyers and sellers come together, respectively trying to buy at the lowest possible price and sell at the highest possible price. Sifchain uses a hybrid model with both an order book and CLPs.”
CLPs were developed by Thorchain and are one of the most significant and innovative futures by them.
Sifchain will be bringing Ethereum’s liquidity to the Cosmos Ecosystem while being a cross-chain DEX enabling Ethereum compatibility almost from the beginning of its existence. Based on the DEFI PULSE, the Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi on Ethereum is currently $15B and is growing constantly and quickly since March 2020. Cross-chain solutions are the future of cryptocurrencies and Thorchain as well as Sifchain are the ones that might lead the way. With Thorchain already in the spotlight. Looking at the competitors in the cross-chain liquidity and DEX there is plenty of room for new projects. Those are THE main issues in the DeFi and DeFi is currently considered as Ethereum DeFi & others. All that is going to be solved by the Sifchain. That is the plan and the final goal at least
