Chromia Monthly Update: January 2024

Welcome to the first monthly update of the New Year! In December 2023, we released an updated roadmap while announcing that mainnet will launch in 2024. During this ‘Road to Mainnet’ phase, updates will primarily focus on the roadmap while briefly discussing the provider network, Chromia’s Appnet, and other key announcements.

Staking System Notice

We rolled out an update to our staking system on January 17th that requires users to redelegate their stake by March 3rd to continue receiving rewards. Full details can be found in this article.

According to our data, approximately 60% of staked tokens are currently delegated. We encourage everyone to check the staking page and ensure they complete this process, and to let anyone they know who is staking to do the same.

Introducing: Economy Chain

Moving forward, you will begin to hear the term ‘Economy Chain’. This is a system chain, similar to the Directory Chain and Anchoring Chain. The Economy Chain will become an important part of our network’s structure that will allow us to complete several objectives:

It will host the Native Fees dapp that allows users to lease containers using CHR and distributes payment to network providers.
It will act as the target chain for the official bridge, most notably for the transfer of CHR tokens to and from Ethereum and Binance Chain.
It will act as the originating chain for CHR tokens that enter circulation from the Chromia side.

This system chain also serves functions not directly related to the mainnet roadmap. For example, users and dapps will be able to register FT4 accounts on Economy Chain for the purpose of making CHR payments and transfers. A blog post coming in February will explore this topic in greater detail.

FT4 Bridge Integration and Native CHR

Bridge code is completed, with minor adjustments and testing being done to facilitate ongoing updates to FT4.

We are now implementing an official bridge for CHR tokens that connects Ethereum and Binance Chain to Chromia’s Economy Chain. For the purposes of the ‘Road to Mainnet’ roadmap, we will consider this objective complete once CHR tokens are being bridged from EVM testnets to our Public Testnet.

After this is complete, we will continue work in this area by extending the bridge’s functionality, improving overall usability, and adding official support for additional assets.

Native Fees

The native fee dapp provides a utility for users to initiate or extend container leases using native CHR, which in turn allows them to deploy dapps.

Backend coding is finished, and we have built a basic frontend interface. The core team is finalizing the model that will be used to determine hosting costs. We anticipate this will be completed soon, at which point the native fee system will be considered mainnet ready.

Chain Archival

The chain archival system stores a dapp’s chain data in a resource efficient way when container leases expire. It also restores this data when container leases are renewed. We have coded and tested both of these core functions, and we are now deciding on the optimal way to structure these archived chains on the network. Once this has been finalized and implemented, the system will be complete.

External Anchoring to Ethereum

The anchoring system has three levels: (1) Dapps record checkpoints to their cluster’s anchor chain; (2) cluster anchor chains record checkpoints to the System Anchoring Chain; (3) The System Anchoring Chain intermittently records checkpoints to Ethereum.

(1) and (2) are already in production on our Appnet and working smoothly. We will work to implement (3) after completing the objectives outlined previously in the update.

Chromia Vault

Chromia Vault will act as an ecosystem hub that will allow users browse various Chromia-powered Dapps, transfer assets, and set favorites for convenient access.

An internal demonstration was given in December, and further development and testing is ongoing.

For a dapp to appear within the Vault, it needs to be using the FT4 Protocol and its owner must register it into a metadata repository.

Since Native CHR will be represented by an FT4 token and the Economy Chain will be registered, it will be possible to view and transfer native CHR using the Vault. We anticipate that the public release of Chromia Vault will occur around the same time that Native CHR is implemented.

We expect the Vault will display a small number of dapps at first, with the list expanding over time as FT4 tokens become more common and dapps register their metadata.

Provider Network

Our list of providers has continued to grow, and currently consists of at least 15 distinct providers running 32 nodes across the Public Testnet and Appnet. More will be added shortly, as we continue to build out the network in preparation for mainnet. In addition, we are working to add a section to Chromia Explorer that will allow anyone to view the provider list in real-time.

Chromia Appnet Updates

We want to remind the community that there are still many exciting things happening on our Appnet:

My Neighbor Alice’s Alpha Season 4 has generated over 1.4 million transactions and counting.
VfB Stuttgart’s Digital Collectibles Marketplace is an ongoing real-world example of Filechain, Filehub, and fully on-chain assets
In the coming weeks, we will be adding an additional dapp cluster in preparation for future deployments.

Welcome to Yeou Jie Goh, Chromia’s new APAC Head

In case you missed it, on December 29th, we announced that Yeou Jie Goh, former head of portfolio growth at DeFiance Capital, has joined Chromia as our new APAC Head. Yeou Jie's professionalism and experience will be vital in attracting more users, developers, and partners across the Asia Pacific region and globally. Read more here.

Looking Ahead to February

There is a lot going on behind the scenes, and February is sure to bring some interesting developments. As always, keep an eye on our official channels to get the latest!

About Chromia
Modern society runs on data and every online service you’re using is built upon underlying databases - ranging from your online bank to music streaming and gaming. Chromia is a relational blockchain - a combination of a relational database and a blockchain - making it easy to develop user-friendly decentralized apps for almost any industry, including DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and more.