Research Summary
The Maker Forum discusses the exploration of a fork of the Solana codebase for the implementation of NewChain, a standalone blockchain for the Maker Protocol. NewChain aims to address governance attacks, technical failures, and accumulated technical debt. The Solana codebase is considered promising due to its technical quality, resilience, and successful examples of forked appchains. The forum also mentions Cosmos as a potential alternative, despite its less efficiency-focused design.
Key Takeaways
Introduction of NewChain
- Reimplementation of Maker Protocol: NewChain is a standalone blockchain that will serve as a complete reimplementation of the Maker Protocol. It is a long-term project expected to take at least three years.
- Addressing Technical Debt: NewChain will allow the ecosystem to deal with eight years of technical debt in the protocol, enabling all components to be purposefully rebuilt for their exact role in the final technical design.
- Backend and User-Facing Components: NewChain will mainly contain the backend of the Maker Protocol and the SubDAOs, while all user-facing products and systems will remain on Ethereum, L2s, or other large blockchains.
Solana as the Foundation for NewChain
- Technical Quality: The Solana codebase is highly optimized for operating a singular, highly efficient blockchain, which aligns with NewChain’s requirements. It also has two client implementations, crucial for resilience.
- Resilience and Developer Community: Despite challenges, the Solana ecosystem has proven its resilience and maintains a thriving developer community, indicating its long-term viability.
- Successful Fork Examples: There are existing examples of the Solana codebase being forked and adapted to act as appchains, such as the pyth project.
Alternatives to Solana
- Cosmos as a Contender: Cosmos is considered an alternative to Solana, with benefits including a large talent pool and a range of independent developer companies. However, it is not as efficiency-focused as Solana and lacks a strong central foundation organization.
- Other Blockchains: Other blockchains like Aptos and Sui were briefly researched but found less suitable compared to Solana and Cosmos.
Actionable Insights
- Building Symbiotic Relationships: The goal should be to build a symbiotic relationship with the existing ecosystem, potentially by funding and maintaining an independent client.
- Accessing Developer Talent: Tapping into the large amounts of developer talent available, while also training and increasing the talent pool, would be beneficial.
- Strategic Bridge Building: It would be strategically beneficial to ensure there is a Two-Stage Gravity Bridge from NewChain to Solana and Ethereum, connecting two of the biggest blockchains with a highly secure bridge.
