TLDR: Solayer introduces Stage 1. The beginning of the Solana restaking layer.

Wait… before we activate Epoch 0, let’s talk!

Solayer is excited to introduce Stage 1 of its release roadmap. Blockchain is composed of interconnected units. Leveraging restaking, Solayer is enabling the economic & infrastructure premium and guarantee to these decentralized systems, powered by Solana. 

We are humbled to bring this paradigm to the ecosystem, native to Solana.

Overview 

Solayer has been in stealth development to build a Solana-fitting restaking platform, with two areas of development:
1. shared security infrastructure via restaking
2. horizontal scalability 

Our vision is to build a consortium of permissionless networks at the Layer 1 chain, extending Solana to the wider array of decentralized worlds. Solana as the internet layer provides how data, trust, and money travel. Solayer leverages its economic security and premium execution as the decentralized cloud infrastructure to enable higher degree of consensus and blockspace customization for application developers.

Key stages

1. Restaking epochs: stakers will restake via liquid staking and native staking

2. Node operators: client registry that can provide services to the inter-connected systems

3. Shared Validator Network: primitive-focused modules to develop SVNs.

We are breaking down the release in 3 phases to ensure the successful and smooth onboarding of key parties, as well as a balanced pooled security to leverage with sufficient yield.

Let’s talk about Stage 1

The roadmap for stage 1 is pooling liquidity, separated by epochs - similar to Eigenlayer. We are introducing new mechanisms that are drastically different than, which will be released at Epoch 6. 

What is restaking? 

Solana employs a combination of Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of History (PoH) consensus mechanisms. Participants stake assets for a chance to validate network activities according to protocol rules. Validators engaging in dishonest behavior risk having their stakes slashed by others. In return for their contributions to network security, validators receive additional tokens as rewards.

Restaking allows holders of SOL or Liquid Staked SOL to participate in "delegated consensus". They restake their assets into the Solayer restaking vault and delegate to a group of operators. These operators then opt into other systems to validate and earn rewards.

How it works technically

Restaking Implementation

Native SOL restaking

Please go to our docs page to learn more information. Note, the Solayer docs are in its infancy and will be improved upon over time.

Stage 1 initial restaking assets

• Native restaking pool

• Liquid restaking pool is available to the following liquid staking protocols / tokens

  • Marinade-SOL

  • Blaze-SOL

  • JITO-SOL

  • INF

Solayer inherently supports over 20 assets. To mitigate risk, we are initially launching with 4 major Solana Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs). The Solayer native restaking pool rebalances the asset across different validators to achieve maximum base yield etc, starting with Jupiter validator. If you are a protocol with LST, and want to be added, we will release the Solayer Improvement Proposal (SIP) process as a mechanism for inclusion. Please stay tuned for more details.

Stage 1 native restaking pool yield

Our native restaking pool offers a three-fold yield stack, providing returns from native MEV-boosted staking yield, Solayer rewards, and SVN yield.

The Solayer contract has gone through an audit with Otter.sec, the most prominent auditing firm in Solana. Please view detailed reports here. Security is the most important priority of the network, and our subsequent efforts to uphold that include:

- Solayer internal bug bounty program

- Third party bug bounty program

More details will be released soon. 

Why are we building Solayer?

Solana has initially focused on performance optimization, establishing itself as a critical player with robust infrastructure and network effects capable of handling computation-intensive and high-capacity applications. As we look ahead to the coming year, we are excited to lead the movement towards "scaling out" from the Solana base chain. Restaking will play a key role in enhancing Solana's position as a leader, offering both monetary and infrastructure advantages. Our vision is to empower the development of more distributed systems and workloads built on top of Solana.

The activation timeline of Stage 1, Epoch 0 will be released on Twitter.

See you soon!