VolumeFi CEO Taariq Lewis @LewisTaariq shares a recap of the milestone achievements of the Paloma network in the past year and plans for growth for 2024 in this week’s AMA episode.
2023 was marked with many challenges as well as big wins for the tenacious team at Volume and Paloma. Among the highlights are the continuous improvements and upgrades to the Paloma protocol and validator set, the successful launch of Palomabots, the deployment to seven chains, and the pivotal partnership with Curve Finance. The year ended with a high, hitting $10M volume in transactions on Palombot’s TWAP.
The Paloma network is the most stable now in the lifetime of the project and is rife for the launching of Pigeon Feed and the GRAIN token. More ambitious plans for 2024 are underway from building more on leverage lending to allow users to take on perpetual leverage from any chain to building on Solana and Bitcoin L2s. Paloma is also aiming to further improve block times from 1.5 seconds down to 500 milliseconds to get to Solana speeds. The upgrade to the latest and best version of Cosmos SDK 50 will further harness and showcase the power of the Paloma network.
Pigeon Feed, one of the core pillars of Paloma, will introduce the marketplace for validators allowing them to set their price for message relaying is near completion, paving the way for the GRAIN token launch.
The newly forged partnerships with Rysk and Silo Finance for loan repayments and options trading will mean more bots and drive more users to Paloma.
Taariq welcomes all listeners to the Twitter Spaces for Volume. He thanks the community of validators who have been onboard for nearly a year since the Paloma network went mainnet as he welcomes new Pigeons who joined the flock this January. Taariq gives a big shout-out to the hard-working team at Volume and Paloma for all the amazing wins in the past year, grinding away in crypto winter.
He shares a recap of what happened in 2023 from the mainnet launch to the continuous upgrades on Paloma and validator set, the successful launch of the Palomabots, and deployment to seven chains.
One of the major highlights is Paloma’s pivotal partnership with Curve to build bots launched in the second half of 2023. This saw an upsurge of usage in the network leading to a high of nearly $10M in Palomabot transactions by yearend.
The most popular bot is Paloma’s Curve TWAP bot. The host adds that there is nowhere else in the world you can do TWAPs on Curve except via Paloma where you get immediate execution.
He recalls that some validators left because the GRAIN token was not launched but respects their decision. The business is also about liquidity and token value. He emphasizes the importance of a solid value proposition for GRAIN, especially because Paloma is in this project for the long haul.
Taariq proudly shares that the Paloma network now has been the most stable in the lifetime of the project.
The Volume team has been working on leverage for the last three months. The leverage lending bot will allow users to take on perpetual leverage from any other chain.
Taariq shares that Paloma is going to focus on Solana as it scales to Layer2, as well as Bitcoin L2s this year.
As the Paloma network is now stable, the team will continue building on Pigeon Feed, the on-chain marketplace for message relaying on Paloma. This is the most important feature crucial to launching the GRAIN token allowing validators to set their price for message relaying.
Pigeon Feed is designed to track and store the performance of Pigeons in relaying messages through performance weights. High-performing validators are prioritized in the queue based on these weights and their costs. Pigeons with the best performance and the cheapest price get messages first to relay.
It has been a long journey to get Pigeon Feed moving, and Taariq assures that it is going to happen soon.
There will be an upgrade on Paloma with Compass this week. Paloma has Compass on Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Ethereum, Gnosis, Kava, and any other EVM chain. Taariq explains that the feature will allow Compass to upgrade on all chains at the same time to ensure the continuity of contracts that depend on it.
After Pigeon Feed is launched, Paloma will be creating the bridge tax, much like a toll booth, for GRAINS to transfer across the bridge and further strengthen security.
Taariq explains that the bridge tax is essentially a vote to deploy the GRAIN token on the various chains and a vote to create the pools that will automatically have value. This will trigger a demand for GRAINS from users who want to pay validators for message relaying.
The more people use it, the more GRAIN goes up in price. Initially, GRAIN will be very cheap so that more people will use the network, Taariq adds.
Paloma is upgrading to Cosmos SDK 50 enabling the network to operate on the best and most advanced version of Cosmos. Taariq reckons that this is the most auspicious time to upgrade, take risks, and capture the opportunity to land on the latest and greatest Cosmos software.
Block times were down to 1.5 seconds from 7 seconds in mid-2023. The team is now aiming to go down further to 500 milliseconds block time to get to Solana speeds. Taariq reveals that reduced block times are not only great for the network but for validators as well because it means more GRAINS.
Taariq welcomes the new partnerships forged with Rysk and Silo Finance of Arbitrum as Paloma gets more demand for bots.
Pigeons will be handling automatic loan repayments for Silo Finance and options trading for Rysk Finance. Options trading is more like mirror trading where users copy the trading strategies of more experienced and successful traders. Rysk Finance has a leaderboard of the top traders so users can trade the same positions as the people on are winning on Rysk.
These partnerships will mean more bots and more volume for Paloma.
Taariq wraps up the episode with thanks to the Paloma community, the validators, and the team at Volume.
Stay tuned for the next AMA!
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