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Key Takeaways
Solayer enhances Solana's scalability and efficiency by leveraging liquid staking and restaking, allowing staked assets to remain active while securing the network.
Solayer's infrastructure uses a Restaking Pool Manager, Delegation Manager, Reward Accounting Unit, and oracles to streamline processes.
The token model features LAYER, sSOL, and AVS, driving governance, liquidity, and staking rewards, with the Binance HODLer Airdrop increasing its DeFi presence.
Introduction
From couriers on horseback delivering time-sensitive messages to early telegraph systems struggling with speed and capacity, humanity has always been constrained by technology's limits. Now, in the digital age, blockchain technology faces similar bottlenecks in terms of speed and efficiency.
But just as those early systems evolved to meet growing demand, Solayer (LAYER) aims to usher in a new era for blockchain, reducing or perhaps even eliminating these bottlenecks.
What Is Solayer (LAYER)?
Solayer is a Layer-2 blockchain built on top of Solana. Its primary goal is to enhance the scalability and liquidity of the Solana network. Rather than just having your tokens sitting idle in your wallet or being used only for staking, Solayer unlocks new ways to use them across decentralized applications (DApps) and liquidity-represented tokens (LRTs).
To clarify, imagine your SOL token as a small piece of digital real estate within the Solana ecosystem. You rent it out like a room in a crowded building, reducing congestion and increasing the space for DApps so they may run smoothly.
Thus, you provide the network with power and support bandwidth. Your token remains active and will continue to earn rewards during this process.
How Solayer Works
In simple terms, Solayer can be considered a restaking protocol that increases the utility of SOL tokens. Multiple key components work together to give Solayer the potential to enhance scalability and efficiency in blockchain networks:
Layer 2 and restaking
Remember that Solayer operates, in part, as a Layer 2 (L2) solution to Solana. You can think of L2s as sidekicks for the main blockchain. They handle some of the workload, leaving the main chain less burdened and thus increasing speed and efficiency.
In the case of Solayer, the L2 manages the staking process more efficiently. It’s like having a dedicated team handling the logistics of SOL token distribution across different staking opportunities.
Restaking Pool Manager
The Restaking Pool Manager can be thought of as the brains of the operation. It’s essentially a smart contract responsible for the pooled SOL tokens. It manages the following processes:
Receiving SOL tokens from stakers.
Creating and distributing sSOL tokens.
Distributing pooled SOL across staking opportunities, including on the main Solana network and other DApps and services.
Collecting and distributing rewards.
Liquid staking tokens
We referenced sSOLs above, but what exactly are they? They are liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and are essentially a tokenized representation of staked SOL. They are an essential component of the liquid staking mechanism as they give you a separate token to use within the Solana ecosystem.
What this means is that you don’t have to wait for your SOL to be unstaked to use it elsewhere, allowing increased flexibility while still earning staking rewards.
Delegation Manager
The Delegation Manager is essential to Solayer’s staking mechanism. While the Restaking Pool Manager is responsible for distributing pooled SOL across staking opportunities, the Delegation Manager determines how that SOL is delegated. It interacts with a range of validators and assigns staked SOL to them, ensuring that the staking process is managed efficiently and securely.
Reward Accounting Unit
The Reward Accounting Unit tracks and accounts for rewards earned by the SOL pool. It also manages the accuracy of rewards distribution to sSOL holders, ensuring that this is done fairly and based on their proportional ownership of sSOL.
It differs from the Restaking Pool Manager because it doesn’t do the staking or receive rewards directly. It simply acts like an accountant, calculating the amount of rewards earned by each sSOL holder.
Oracle price feed
Solayer relies on oracle price feeds to maintain the peg between sSOL and SOL. The objective is that one sSOL should always be approximately equal to one SOL, plus earned rewards. Oracles are services that provide blockchains with real-world data. In this case, they provide up-to-date SOL prices to ensure an accurate exchange rate.
Step-by-step process
If you still find the theory behind Solayer’s functionality somewhat abstract, let's go through an example.
Let's say you stake your SOL. The Restaking Pool Manager receives your SOL and gives you sSOL in return. The Restaking Manager then strategically deploys your SOL across various staking opportunities, allowing you to earn rewards. The exact location where the SOL is deployed is delegated by the Delegation Manager.
The Reward Accounting Unit tracks and calculates earned rewards, and the Restaking Pool Manager distributes rewards to you based on these calculations. All throughout this, the oracle price feeds ensure that the sSOL market is stable and reflects the price of your staked SOL.
Solayer Tokenomics
Solayer operates using a multi-token model, each token serving a distinct and important role within the ecosystem. We have talked about most of these tokens already, but let's explore them further:
SOL: The native token of the Solana blockchain, used for staking and governance and as the base currency within Solayer.
LAYER: The primary utility token of Solayer, used for staking, governance, and incentivizing network participants.
sSOL: A liquid staking token representing staked SOL, enabling users to participate in staking while maintaining liquidity.
AVS Tokens: Specialized tokens created by DApps on Solayer provide access to SOL yield and MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) opportunities.
sUSD: A stablecoin pegged to the US dollar and used for transactions, staking, and liquidity provision within the ecosystem.
LAYER on the Binance HODLer Airdrop
Binance announced Solayer (LAYER) as the eighth project in its HODLer Airdrops program. Through this program, BNB holders are rewarded with token airdrops based on historical snapshots of their balances. Users who previously subscribed to Binance's Simple Earn products during the designated eligibility periods qualify for LAYER rewards. A total of 30,000,000 LAYER tokens, equivalent to 3% of the total supply, have been allocated for distribution.
After the airdrop, LAYER is listed on Binance with the Seed Tag applied. This allows it to be traded against the BTC, USDT, USDC, BNB, FDUSD, and TRY pairs.
The token's design and its role in providing long-term support to the Solana ecosystem already reinforce its position in the DeFi space. However, this listing on Binance gives LAYER visibility and broader market access, which may help solidify its potential to drive blockchain solutions.
Closing Thoughts
By combining liquid staking and restaking, Solayer takes a step in this direction, unlocking new ways to enhance efficiency and scalability. By making better use of staked assets, it aims to improve network performance. With its multi-token model and focus on congestion reduction, Solayer introduced a more flexible approach to blockchain infrastructure.
Further Reading
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