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PIP-00: Pontem Informal Coin Kingdom List (PICKL)
- Sadogee Nakamoto, Pontem core contributor
TL;DR: The user experience for bridged assets is a barrier to entry for Pontem users on Aptos. Pontem wants to unite the community of builders integrating with Pontem products around a verifiably neutral standard for Metadata. This Metadata would be anchored on usage metrics for wrapped assets that prioritize the user experience on Aptos and beyond in the Move ecosystem.
Defending Mount Sinai…
If a new permissionless layer 1 (L1) blockchain has various bridges to other L1s, how do we optimize user experience across all layers of reality? We call on our Dog Satoshi for guidance. Since Satoshi is just an immaculately conceived figment of our collective consciousness - we must ask each other “What Would Vitalik Do (WWVD)?”
We must prioritize user experience by allowing users to opt into their bridged versions of sovereign reality with no information asymmetry and full disclosures. On the gospel of Twitter, our Lorde and Saviour Vitalik has cautioned us that the “The future will be *multi-chain*, but it will not be *cross-chain*: there are fundamental limits to the security of bridges
Although we mostly agree with Vitalik’s pessimistic view on “cross-chain applications” due to concerns around 51% attacks on small cap L1s, we are optimistic that there can be synchronized states across the top 3 - 5 L1s for wrapped native coins like ETH, BTC, BNB, APT, etc. If Vitalik is “optimistic about a multi-chain blockchain ecosystem, (there really are a few separate communities with different values and it's better for them to live separately than all fight over influence on the same thing)...” we must make sure our L1 Aptos island is harmoniously cohabitating in the same version of reality for all users, otherwise we will be letting down our Lorde.
But why do people love to hate on bridges? We think it is because bridges are the heroes we deserve but don’t need right now…. Maybe they are not our heroes. Maybe they are silent guardians, watchful protectors, Dark Knights that bring liquidity “across-chain” from established ecosystems like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana to emerging ecosystems like Aptos.
We believe users should make informed choices and diversify their risk based on their own preferences for security and performance architecture of different bridge options. It is likely the most popular bridge will have network effects and a power law distribution based on adoption and user sentiment on safety guarantees and available liquidity. However, an ecosystem being dependent on one bridge can also create a big honeypot for hackers, so we hypothesize it is safest to let users opt in and diversify across their own preferences.
Pontem Informal Coin Kingdom List (PICKL)
Pontem will support a standard PICKL with the most popular bridged assets as canonical (non prefix). The benchmark for assessing popularity will be initially a 15 day moving average of a weighted function of adoption factors, including but not limited to the following:
Starting metrics:
- Total value in ecosystem (TV)
- Total value locked (TVL)
- # of Txns
Other metrics to consider
- Tx volume (in $USD)
- # of verifiably unique addresses
- # of bridged NFTs
x. etc….
The formula for ranking bridged assets will be something akin to:
Canonical Val = 30 day Moving Avg (w*m)
Where w = weight, m = marketshare in metric
Initial weights will be:
- 40% for total value on Aptos
- 40% for total value locked in Aptos DeFi
- 20% for total transaction volume on Aptos
More weight is put on total value as opposed to Txns & unique addresses because total value is most reliably bot proof. As we feel more comfortable with analyzing wash trading and sybil attacks for airdrops, the weights and metrics considered can be expanded.
Once a standard canonical view is set, it can only be changed if another bridged asset maintains a lead in the calculation for a period of 30 days, which can later be increased with stability. This ensures a costly user interface switch only happens if there is sustained dominance of one bridged asset over the other.
The time periods for assessment, currently set at 15 days for the moving average and 30 days for dominance time periods, should also be discussed by the community and updated over time to reflect community sentiment.
Where possible we will also aim to set standards for personalizing user experiences and allowing them to set their own preferred canonical asset, which might differ depending on the chain and bridge the user is coming from.
We will do our best to remove unreliable metrics from the calculation in order to provide users the most accurate version of reality. We ask our community to help us self regulate this standard and report suspicious activity on twitter, Discord, Telegram or this community forum.
We are working on a data dashboard for the community to vote on the weights distribution
of the factors for determining the canonical assets. For now we will go with a simple heuristic of 80% on total value at risk and 20% on total transaction volume. We invite the community to comment on the weights to ensure we are providing the most accurate calculation for adoption.
Below is a preview of the dashboard we will make public to track adoption of bridged assets. We will also create an ecosystem wide dashboard which is in progress, and will soon be publicly available.
We will also work on more creative solutions for users to opt into their version of canonical reality through wizards that educate users on the different bridges and give them the choice to opt into a different standard than what is default canonical. We will also provide links to up to date information on the top bridges in the Aptos ecosystem so users can stay informed on each bridge provider.
We invite the community to comment on this proposal on Twitter, Discord, or telegram. For now we are evaluating which will be the starting PICKL and we will also invite the community to participate in the decision for default canonical. A Dashboard for these metrics and analysis on our opinion for weights for the formula will be coming soon.
We will update the user interface to very clearly outline to users which bridged asset they are using, from now and beyond when the PICKL is agreed upon by the community.
Current State of the PICKL
Although LayerZero assets are currently over indexing on Liquidswap, Wormhole wrapped assets are ranking above LayerZero for the overall Aptos ecosystem over a 15 day time period, so we will default Wormhole assets to be without prefixes.
Our current hypothesis is that Pontem users prefer LayerZero wrapped assets, but evidence points to overall Aptos users preferring Wormhole wrapped Assets. Further analysis is required to see which apps and which users are using Wormhole outside of Liquidswap and why the discrepancies exist.
If it continues to be the case that LayerZero is more popular on the Pontem ecosystem and that is counter to the overall Aptos ecosystem, the question must be asked… should Pontem prioritize the user experience of its own native users over the standard set for Aptos?
It is too early to tell what the right solution is to provide the best user experience. We believe a default + some form of personalization based on the assets in the wallet is probably best. We will soon release an MVP of this to start testing with our users.
The PICKL will be published here:
https://github.com/pontem-network/coins-registry/blob/main/coins.json
Live Metrics can be tracked live on community sites like
