HydraDX March Update

Omnipool, Collators Onboarding, HDX Transfers

Dear tribemates,

After a successful onboarding, the HydraDX shell parachain is now producing blocks in the Polkadot network. This marks a historic milestone on the journey towards the Omnipool - our main product which is designed to remove barriers to liquidity by offering unparalleled efficiencies that cannot be matched by traditional AMMs.

In the previous blog post we announced the steps we will be taking to migrate HydraDX from Snakenet towards a Polkadot parachain. The migration will be performed during the upcoming weeks, in the meantime staking will remain available. This should give us enough time to diligently select an initial set of collators from our community of validators, which will allow us to decentralize our collator set. Once the migration to a parachain is complete, the HydraDX Council will initiate a referendum to enable HDX token transfers.

In this post, you will also find an update on the journey towards Omnipool. The Omnipool research has been completed, and the implementation phase is now ongoing. As there are some external dependencies, it is not possible for us to give an accurate estimate of the launch date of Omnipool. However, we will keep you updated on the progress as we go.

Ready for the migration from Snakenet?

Omnipool Update

We are happy to announce that research on Omnipool has been completed, together with an economic audit. The conducted research has been translated into product specifications which allow our Development teams to work towards the first implementation of the Omnipool.

Besides the remaining work for implementing the Omnipool, there are some external dependencies from our ecosystem which need to be resolved before we could launch. The most important one is XCMP - according to the latest news, it may take 1-2 months until cross-chain transfers are possible on the Polkadot network. XCMP is an essential feature which we need in order to provide the 22.9m DAI which was raised during the LBP last year as part of the initial liquidity of the Omnipool (XCMP via Moonbeam and Ethereum bridge).

While giving estimates in the uncertain field of blockchain remains unfeasible, we will do our best to keep you updated on a regular basis on the progress towards Omnipool. In the upcoming weeks, we will continue the series of Omnipool R&D posts in which we will share some of the output of our Research department. After that, we will publish the product specification of the Omnipool which will serve as the foundation for regular status updates from the Development department.

Collators Onboarding

Before we complete the migration from Snakenet towards parachain mode, there is one more step that we would like to take. To make sure that the infrastructure supporting the HydraDX protocol remains decentralized, we have decided to decentralize the collator set.

The new HydraDX collators will be selected among the 165 validators who have been supporting us during Snakenet. The initial plan is to onboard 20 collators over the course of the upcoming 2-3 weeks. Once we have reached this number, we will perform the migration.

If you are interested in becoming a HydraDX collator, please follow our Discord channels where we will publish some of the selection criteria, as well as the application form. After we have onboarded the first 20 collators, we will monitor the stability of the network before deciding on expanding the set to 50 collators. So if you are not among the first picks don’t get discouraged - you might be selected for one of the following rounds. Also, rumors say that big brother Snek will also be transitioning towards a decentralized collators set..

HDX Transfers

The migration to a Polkadot parachain marks the end of Snakenet - the HydraDX stakenet which allowed early hydraheads to stake their tokens for a juicy ~50% APY. As staking is coming to an end, there are voices emerging from the tribe that advocate the unfreeze of HDX transfers.

We have indeed mentioned in the past that the team would respect a referendum for unfreezing HDX transfers. As we have already bootstrapped 22.9m DAI during the LBP last year, we have sufficient initial liquidity to kickstart the Omnipool. After exploring several hypothetical scenarios, we came to the conclusion that the prospect of having HDX listed on some CEX does not have a negative impact on our launch plans. On the contrary, having some price discovery taking place prior to trading in the Omnipool could create some interesting opportunities.

The only limitation we would like to set to this regard is that the referendum should not be initiated before the migration to parachain is complete. The reason for this is simple: We want to count the votes of every tribesmate, including the crowdloaners who will only receive their HDX rewards during the migration (also, the 3x of existing balances will take place then). Once the migration is complete, the HydraDX Council will launch a motion which will pass through the internal Council voting round before eventually becoming a public referendum.