Marlin (POND)
Marlin (POND)
Overview
In July 2019, Marlin raised $3 million in a seed round from Binance Labs, Arrington XRP, Electric Capital, NGC, and other investors.[75]
In 2020, Marlin announced that there will be no public sale.
Instead, the distribution will directly target participants of interest.
Two modes of distribution were identified in particular: Eggnet relayers and FlowMint gateways.
With the Eggnet designed to incentivize the supply side of the network bootstrapping the decentralized cluster of nodes, FlowMint is to encourage usage and drive bandwidth liquidity in the network.
The Eggnet was a success witnessing over 1100 nodes at its peak.
A number of poorly performing nodes later quit the network bringing their amount to over 850.[72]
The next stage of the Marlin network launch, the Larvanet, expected to begin in January 2021, will mark the transition to a more accountable network with nodes required to stake MPOND.[72]
Marlin Relay
The Marlin Relay network is a generic and adaptable relay network that works with many different blockchains.
Its key feature is the incentives system, being able to incentivize better behavior needed for a healthy and robust peer to peer base layer.
The Marlin Relay is comprised of four key layers:
Producers: Set of nodes who introduce blocks into the relay network. Producers are responsible for the validity of the propagated block and spam prevention mechanisms ensure that producers who introduce invalid blocks are slashed appropriately.
Consumers : Receivers can be exchanges, block explorers or any other node which profits or benefits from receiving blocks in the lowest possible time.
Receivers pay a subscription fee to the protocol to join the consumer set.
This incentivizes the network and reduces the length of orphaned chains.
Clusters: Clusters are groups of relayers that work like pools and put resources together to deliver blocks from producers to consumers.
Relayers . [70]
Relayers are necessary to ensure that the message is propagated across the network.
There are 2 types of incentives provided to the relayers:
Fee: Fee is the component of the reward mechanism directly proportional to the work that people do on the network, and the fee is used for the costs of running a node and the amount left is pure profit.
Block Reward: Block reward is the component of reward that is awarded based on the amount of work done by each relayer. These rewards are provided to bootstrap the network and the reward value decreases over time as the organic usage of the network increases and relayers recover increasing a higher portion of the costs through fee.[70]
Tokenomics
Token Design: Token flow of POND and mPOND
The Marlin ecosystem uses two Ethereum-based tokens - POND and MegaPOND (MPond). While POND is initially transferable, MPond is not (with a few exceptions such as the token distribution contract and transfers to/from a bridge). The bridge allows conversion from 1,000,000 POND to a 1 MPond and vice versa while imposing certain restrictions. The total supply of POND is 10 billion. Thus, there can only exist up to 10,000 MPond.[71]
A Marlin node relays and caches data.
Every Marlin node is required to stake at least 0.5 MPond.
The node receives staking rewards and fees based on its performance.
Both MPond and POND can be delegated towards other Marlin nodes.
In such cases, delegators share a portion of their rewards with the node operator.[71]
MPond stakes may receive a different rate of staking reward as compared to POND delegators.
Initially, they are set to the same values but may be modified via governance.
MPond holders also gain the right to participate in governance by making or voting on proposals.[71]
Token Allocation
Marlin Tokens i.e POND and MPOND, are cumulatively allocated for different stakeholders in the following way:
Staking Rewards - 21.8%
Private Sale - 17.2%
Advisors - 3%
Team - 10%
FlowMint - 16%
Ecosystem - 31.9%[71]
POND Release Schedule
POND has an initial total supply of 3.184 billion but 2.184 billion are staking rewards vested over 24 months and which start with the Larvanet stage going live.
The 10% unlocked tokens (of the 10 billion total supply) are distributed in the following ratios amongst ecosystem service providers:
Validators (4.33%): 433 million tokens are distributed amongst early participants - developers and validators who helped test the network, relay blocks, and improve the ecosystem as a whole.
Developers and Community, TBA (5.67%): 567 million tokens are not yet allocated and are available initially to reward developers and participants engaging in the development of the peripheral tools, increasing awareness and growing the ecosystem. It is expected to be decided by community members on how to further allocate these funds.[71]
There is no team, liquidity fund, or any other portion of liquid POND that is available to the team or Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) participants in the first few months.
The initial circulating Supply is thus going to start at 433 million and can expand up to 1 billion in the first 6 months (excluding staking rewards). The remaining 2.184 billion tokens generated as part of the initial total supply is to be moved to the staking contracts once the Larvanet is live.[71]
MPond Release Schedule
4623 MPond is released according to the following schedule:
Team: Vested over 24 months in the form of MPond at half-yearly intervals.
Advisors: Vested over 12 months in the form of MPond at half-yearly intervals.
Stake Drop: Vested linearly over 24 months in the form of MPond.
Private sale: Vested over 12 months in the form of MPond at half-yearly intervals.[71]
As a result, 4.623 billion POND will be minted and locked on the bridge in the future to back these MPond if they were to convert to POND.
MPond is initially non-transferable but can be turned transferable after a corresponding governance proposal is successfully passed.
The success of the governance proposal would depend on the maturity and adoption achieved by the network ensuring long-term alignment of core developers and early backers.
In the meantime, rewards for staking and other kinds of possible engagements are distributed in the form of POND incentivizing MPond holders to be active participants in the network.[71]
FlowMint
FlowMint is a cross-chain stakedrop for Marlin platform tokens that started on December 15, 2020.
FlowMint is a mechanism by which users with ATOM, DOT, IRIS, MATIC, NEAR, etc can participate in the Marlin network and acquire Marlin tokens. 20% of the genesis supply of Marlin token MPOND will be distributed to different Blockchain communities over the next 24 months via FlowMint. Holders of eligible platform tokens who stake or delegate towards eligible validators will be awarded MPOND which they may use to run a Marlin node or participate in governance. [74]