Staking and Fees

L1 gas fees represent the cost of on-chain compute, SIN transaction fees represent the cost of interchain compute.

Solving the interchain communication problem is important enough to require its own network with its own economics. L1 gas fees represent the cost of on-chain compute, SIN transaction fees represent the cost of interchain compute.

Agents stake to start validating SIN transactions and participating in the network. As users and Dapps make interchain calls, they pay fees to the network similar to L1 gas fees. These fees are split among honest agents(Notaries, Guards & Executor) involved in processing that transaction.

This ecosystem of dapps and users paying fees for interchain compute and agents staking to earn fees opens the opportunity for an economic ecosystem built around interchain compute fees.

For example, in the future, the network could support an LSD (liquid staking derivative) of the token used for staking. As well as a DPOS (delegated proof of stake) model where token holders who want to earn fees can delegate their tokens to those running agents.

Note: In today's Synapse Interchain Network testnet, fees are paid in origin chain gas and staking is disabled.

Proof Of Stake

Note: The terms stake and bond are used interchangeably.

Both Notaries and Guards are required to stake prior to participating in the system with guards submitting the smaller of the two stakes since the guards stake serves primarily to disincentivize griefing attacks (filing incorrect fraud reports).

Executors are not required to stake to participate in the network.

All stakes are posted on Synapse Chain and recorded as part of the global state of the SIN using the BondingManager.

In the event agents submit invalid attestations they will be reported and slashed with the reporter receiving the stake of the agent that commited fraud.

Stakers also have to wait a period of time before being able to unstake. How long this ends up being will decided when the staking module is activated.

Synapse Interchain Network Fees

Note: The terms tips and SIN fees are used interchangeably.

In SIN contracts, fees are referred to as Tips. This terminology is used to reflect that while the nature of compensation for off chain agents is dynamic, it does have a lower bound much the way the base fee & tip cap work in dynamic fee transactions on Ethereum.

All transactions that go through SIN require multiple participants to be compensated for their participation in consensus and gas fees and infrastructure costs. This process is completely trustless and happens on a per-transaction basis. Fees are dynamically adjusted based on gas prices using the GasOracle with a markup value defined in the oracle contract on a per-chain basis.

Tip values returned by the GasOracle represent the minimum value required for messages to be included. Client contracts can pay additional fees to ensure faster execution by agents.

The fee distribution per message is as follows:

• Guard Tip - Tip paid to the guard for posting a snapshot for a given origin chain.

• Notary Tips -

  • Snapshot Tip - Tip paid to a notary for posting a snapshot of the origin chain.

  • Receipt Tip - Tip paid to a notary for posting a receipt

  • Attestation Tip - Tip paid to the notary for posting the attestation to the destination chain

• Executor Tips-

  • Execution Tip- Tip paid to the first executor performing a valid execution attempt (correct proofs, optimistic period over).

  • Delivery Tip- Tip paid to the executor who successfully delivers the message.

Tips are eligible for collection only after the first valid attempt at message execution.