Highlights

• Oasis separates consensus from computation on Consensus and ParaTime layers to enable high performance without compromising security
• The unique dual-layer design helps Oasis support confidentiality, versatility, resilience, performance, and auditability
• The first Oasis ParaTime is already being used by teams in the genomics, hospital management, credit scoring, and financial services industries. The potential applications are extensive.
• Oasis, based on the Tendermint consensus protocol, will support an active set of 80 validators at launch called the “consensus committee”
• Validators are placed in the active set dependent upon stake, and propose blocks proportionally to their stake
• Inflation starts at 15% and then decreases roughly linearly for the first 3 years
• Per the Oasis protocol’s design, running a validator entitles participants to earn more rewards for helping secure the network than delegation. Validators share inflationary rewards with their delegators but not the transaction fee earnings. The more ParaTimes on the Oasis network, the more transactions there will be, and the more advantageous it becomes for network participants to run a validator and share in the network’s success.
• Bison Trails will support customers who wish to run validator nodes in the Consensus Layer with the Bison Trails platform with planned support for one or more ParaTimes when supported by the protocol.
• Alternatively, token holders can also delegate to the Bison Trails Oasis Community Validator if they do not wish to have their own validator.

Introduction to Oasis

User data is a fundamental asset of the modern economy. Control, ownership, use, and monetization of this data remain both a business challenge and privacy struggle. Oasis, a privacy-first, proof of stake, decentralized computing network is built to address these issues and enable a “responsible data economy.” The protocol aims to put users in the driver's seat, allowing them to own and control their data, while supporting the development of privacy-preserving applications and services.

Oasis has a unique design which makes the platform highly adaptable while allowing for high-performance computation. Consensus is separated from computation on a Consensus Layer and a ParaTime Layer.

• The Consensus Layer is the decentralized set of validator nodes that maintains the blockchain
• The ParaTime Layer can host multiple parallel runtimes, each of which represent a replicated compute environment that can distribute processing of private data but with shared agreement on the state of the processing

For most Layer-1 protocols, the blockchain is one-size-fits-all. Every decision—on operational code, pricing, protocol design, and more—impacts all applications and services identically. By separating out the ParaTime layer from the Consensus layer, Oasis is able to optimize computation for a variety of use cases without sacrificing strong security.

Each ParaTime defines its own security model: its own manner for determining truth and process for agreement. Once that agreement is reached, the output is hashed and put on the main chain, providing an unalterable record of all past states.

The four key reasons for the dual-layer design are:

• Confidentiality - Oasis’ ParaTimes have support for key management and TEEs like Intel SGX in order to allow for end-to-end confidentiality and data ownership on the network.
• Versatility & Resilience - Oasis can support a wide variety of use cases without needing to go through hard-forks or large updates.
• Performance - Throughput issues are reduced or avoided creating a faster Network that is less prone to congestion.
• Auditability - ParaTime state and execution can be trusted because each ParaTime can be audited and verified independently, without sharing state publicly

Anyone can build a runtime and add it to the Consensus layer.

Oasis Labs’ Data Sovereignty Runtime will provide a confidential compute and storage layer for developers who plan to run confidential smart contracts on Oasis. This runtime allows developers to “take advantage of confidential computation and secure computing techniques while the blockchain technology is abstracted away.” The potential applications for ParaTimes are extensive: ParaTimes are already being used by teams in the genomics, hospital management, credit scoring, and financial services industries.

Other ParaTimes in development include the SecondState Virtual Machine (SSVM), a fully-featured Ethereum WebAssembly (Ewasm) Virtual Machine.

“We support Oasis’ vision for a responsible data economy. Oasis’ innovative approach to optimize computation for a variety of use cases, without sacrificing strong security, is very exciting and we’re looking forward to mainnet launch."

–Joe Lallouz, CEO of Bison Trails

How Oasis Works

Runtimes determine for themselves how they work, come to agreement, and operate; these design choices are independent of one another and the Consensus Layer. Given this system, the consensus mechanism on Oasis is of less importance than on many other blockchains.

The Consensus Layer is essentially the auditor of a ParaTime’s decision, accepting the hashes of the most recent state (values) and writing them into the next block on the Oasis blockchain. It provides other universal services as well to secure the parallel runtimes:

• Epoch-based time keeping and a random beacon
• Basic staking operations required to operate a proof of stake (PoS) blockchain
• An entity, node, and runtime registry that distributes public keys and metadata
• Runtime committee scheduling, commitment processing, and minimal state keeping

Oasis is based on the Tendermint consensus layer (similar to Cosmos). At launch, the active set (called the “consensus committee”) will be 80 validators. Validators are placed in the active set dependent upon stake, and propose blocks proportionally to their stake. 67% of the voting stake must agree on a block for it to be considered valid.

To participate in the Oasis Network, you can run an Oasis validator node (consensus node). ParaTimes have their own compute nodes and requirements separate from the nodes in the Consensus Layer.*

Consensus nodes interface directly with all ParaTimes to verify the incoming values. This process is known as discrepancy detection. Consensus nodes check all compute nodes for a ParaTime and if there are any differences in the output values, they signal there is a discrepancy and require the work to be double-checked. This makes verifiable computation on Oasis ParaTimes more efficient, reducing the replication factor needed to achieve any given level of security.

* We will support customers who wish to run Oasis Consensus nodes with the Bison Trails platform.

"By providing an extensible platform for arbitrary computation running on top of a solid consensus foundation, Oasis ParaTimes enable near limitless opportunities to decentralize, democratize, and monetize verifiable compute use-cases.”

—David Shoots, Software Engineer at Bison Trails

Oasis’ Token Economics

A validator must have a minimum self-bond of 100 ROSE, plus another 100 for the entity housing the validator. The entity is like an on chain identifier that has a single validator at a time associated with it. In order to receive staking rewards, the validator must sign at least 75% of the blocks in a single epoch, meaning it can’t be down for more than about 15 minutes per hour.

For delegation, an individual must delegate a minimum of 200 tokens to a validator. Rewards are shared with delegators based on the validator fee. Transaction fees are not shared with delegators and only accrue to the validator itself. Rewards are automatically distributed and restaked: they must be unbonded to be spendable.

Inflation starts at 15% and then decreases roughly linearly for the first 3 years. This decrease is not a step function; the rate declines slowly, and these values are the expected benchmarks. The rate of inflation is not impacted by the staking rate, only by time since launch.

Read Oasis Token Metrics for additional information.

Slashing Risk on Oasis

At launch, slashing will only occur for double signing. The network will slash the minimum stake amount (100 tokens) and freeze the node. Freezing the node is a precaution in order to prevent the node from being over-penalized. A frozen validating node will not be able to participate in consensus ever again.

However, the entity running the validator can continue to participate by replacing the frozen validator with a new validator, which moves the token delegation to the new validator and enters that one into the active set. Token holders do not need to take any action when this happens as they are technically delegating to the entity itself and the entity can swap validators at will.

Why Run a Node?

• All ParaTimes rely on the security of the underlying Oasis blockchain for their auditability. Running a validator on the Oasis blockchain is a way to support all ParaTimes.
• Per the design of the Oasis Protocol, running a validator entitles a participant to earn more rewards for helping secure the network than delegation. Validators share inflationary rewards with their delegators but not the transaction fee earnings. The more ParaTimes on Oasis, the more transactions there will be, and the more advantageous it becomes for network participants to run a validator.
• ParaTime operators will ultimately need to have individuals run nodes on their ParaTime and may look to the Oasis validator list to identify reliable infrastructure providers for support. Those already running an Oasis validator will be well-positioned to be selected to operate those new nodes, for which they may earn additional fees.

“Bison Trails brings their expertise in infrastructure and staking services to the Oasis Network. They’re fantastic to work with, and we’re excited to have their top-tier team as members of the Oasis Community.” -Jernej Kos, Director of the Oasis Foundation

Why Run Oasis Nodes with Bison Trails?

• Bison Trails has been working with the Oasis team over the last year as the protocol development and testing progresses towards mainnet launch. We advised the Oasis team on infrastructure and rollout plans, how to structure the incentivized testnet, the Oasis University Program, and general community-building.
• As the top community contributor—and ranked in the top 5 for availability in the Oasis Quest incentivized testnet—our team is intimately familiar with the protocol and has extensive experience operating nodes in the network.
• Bison Trails is working directly with a select group of universities to run their Oasis validators as part of the Oasis University program to assist with reviewing technical details of the Oasis Network architecture and to provide participating universities and clubs technical support.
• Bison Trails is planning to add support for one or more ParaTimes in the future. Participating with Bison Trails now will make it easy for customers to run additional infrastructure on ParaTimes in the future.
• Bison Trails will reimburse all missed rewards for our customers.

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Bison Trails: Pioneering Blockchain Infrastructure®

Bison Trails is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service company, based in New York City, specifically focused on blockchain participation. We’ve built a platform for anyone who wants to participate in new chains effortlessly (e.g. by running Cosmos Validators, Tezos Bakers, and Libra Validators, etc.)—without having to invest time and resources into developing any of the engineering, protocol, dev ops, or security competencies in-house. Our goal is for the entire blockchain ecosystem to flourish by providing robust infrastructure for the pioneers of tomorrow.

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