MilkyWay Whitelist Address for Deployment of Liquid Staking Contracts

Proposal Discussion
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Greetings Osmosis community!

This proposal seeks to grant permission to address osmo1zmptm0xcrrhmje5tgrppjktkskcnnmkr6v5h3t the ability to upload CosmWasm contracts to Osmosis without seeking further governance approval for each upload. This address is administered by MilkyWay core contributors.

About MilkyWay

MilkyWay offers a liquid staking solution for the Celestia ecosystem. It will be deployed and operated on Osmosis.

When users stake their TIA coins with MilkyWay, they receive an on-chain representation of their TIA staking position, known as milkTIA. This allows Celestia token holders to access liquidity for their staked assets. They can then provide liquidity to the TIA:milkTIA pool on Osmosis, which will be the first DEX to list milkTIA.

Liquid staked TIA automatically compounds staking rewards, and users can withdraw their TIA to receive their native tokens and accrued staking rewards.

Read our Introducing MilkyWay blog to learn more about why we built MilkyWay.

Why is Liquid Staking important to Celestia?

Celestia is a modular blockchain that provides a secure and scalable foundation for decentralized applications (dApps). It achieves this by separating the consensus and data availability layers from the execution layer. This structure allows Celestia to prioritize secure and efficient data storage and ordering, while leaving transaction execution to other blockchains.

In Celestia, staking holds greater importance compared to other appchain ecosystems. The consensus layer not only secures its own chain but also numerous applications that rely on the base chain for data availability, ensuring the safety of the applications they develop.

However, due to Celestia’s genesis chain setup, existing liquid staking protocols cannot support it at launch. As a result, MilkyWay aims to deploy the necessary contracts on Osmosis to enable TIA liquid staking.

How does this benefit Osmosis

The first TIA:milkTIA pool will be launched on Osmosis. Osmosis serves as the primary liquidity hub for on-chain TIA trading. With the introduction of milkTIA, the TVL and trading volume on Osmosis will increase, solidifying its position as the largest and preferred marketplace for TIA.

Contracts to be Deployed

The proposal includes the deployment of:

  • Staking Contract: This contract handles the minting and burning of stTIA tokens, as well as manages the TIA:milkTIA exchange rate.
  • Treasury Contract: This contract is responsible for managing MilkyWay’s protocol fees.

Permissions Clarification

This proposal specifically focuses on the liquid staking contracts and their potential future upgrades. It does not grant permission for all contracts or changes without exception.

Contract information

Technical Architect

MilkyWay leverages a fusion of CosmWasm contracts, multisig custody system and the Cosmos SDK authz module.

To oversee this process, MilkyWay will initially launch with seven trusted operators comprising of Figment, Stake.fish, Everstake, Chorus One, Allnodes, 01node, and Cosmostation.

Read this blog for a detailed explanation of MilkyWay’s technical architecture.

Resources

For more information on MilkyWay, please refer to the following resources:

Twitter

Medium

Documentation

Github

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Hey! Thanks for this proposal.

I think that it’s a mistake to use the stTIA ticker for this token. This has significant potential to create brand confusion with the stTIA that will be launched by Stride, one of Osmosis’s largest business partners.

I liken this to the Nomic vs Onomy situation. Both are using the NOM ticker, and despite Onomy launching first, it has come under fire for using the ticker that another project in Cosmos had already started using and the brand has never quite recovered from it.

Deploying a brand on Osmosis that has the potential to alienate a large business partner of Osmosis is ill-advised and in poor taste. The st prefix (in Cosmos at least) is widely associated with Stride. It’s quite clear that Milky Way knows this, and this sure feels like a way to capitalize on Stride’s success in Cosmos or, at minimum, frontrun usage of the ticker to gain early market share.

I’d strongly recommend using a different ticker (maybe sTIA or mTIA?)

I also have a few questions:

  • Who are the MilkyWay Core contributors? I’ve read that it includes individuals from the Cosmostation and Manythings teams, but can you speak to who specifically is working on this?

  • Have the contracts been audited?

Thank you!

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I frankly think Osmosis’s community should vote no on this proposal in protest of the ticker. The protocol is valuable for Osmosis, but it takes no effort at all to amend the ticker and does far more damage to MilyWay’s own brand and Osmosis’s relationship with Stride to leave the ticker in place.

Given that the 7 core operators of Milkyway are also most of Osmosis’s largest validators though, I feel as though this is a pre-determined yes vote.

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We will be voting No or No With Veto on this if the ticker of $stTIA is kept.

That doesn’t benefit anyone but MilkyWay by creating confusion of tickers.

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Idk if this is too crazy, but maybe governance of the stTIA ticker should be taken to Celestia governance?

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Agree with Robo in regards to the Ticker. stAsset has been used by the Stride team for a while, attempting to hijack the stTia ticker seems something done to highjack the Stride stAsset brand recognition in cosmos.

We will vote NWV on this if its posted as is.

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Greatly looking fwd to this!

Need liquid TIA!

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Been following this conversation passively on Twitter today but feel compelled to weigh in. I have no affiliation with either side and so I hope my opinion can be viewed as the unbiased opinion that it genuinely is.

For me, the “st” before an asset is representative of a liquid staked asset, not any given project. Not Lido, not Stride and not Milkyway.

In the same way that the “sq” in the likes of squeeth or sqOSMO is reflective of a powered perpetual.

It’s a bit concerning to me that we’re assuming bad faith (some of the comments I’ve read) because people want to use these prefixes.

Are they trademark owned? If not, anyone should be able to use them.

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We strongly oppose the use of stTIA.

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Yes. Milky way celestia path to mwTIA/TIA. I will also stake Celestia via liquid if it works with the stride principle

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I am pretty sure the “st”-prefix has not been trademark registred.
There is something like morals and values though. One thing which we have heard a lot in the ecosystem that protocols should not fight each other, but support each other. That also means that it involves leaving space for other protocols to stick to the “standard”. Stride has already launched a lot of stAssets, having to deviate for TIA would be quite weird.

And especially is ome large Osmosis validators are involved, this should not be something new. We are here to make an ecosystem successful, not just one project. If this goes on chain with the “st”-prefix I am pretty sure it will be voted down via one way or another. There will be a massive campaign to downvote it, so my advice would be anyways to adjust (which should be do-able I guess).

Regarding content; will the Milkyway-contract work with bridging the asset, putting into the contract, getting mwTIA in return and the TIA is bridged back to Celestia and staked over there?

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I’m a trader btw, so I’m looking at this strictly as that, someone who interfaces with these kinds of assets regularly. The usage of “st” as a prefix in DeFi is kind of like an established industry standard, representing liquid staked assets.

The argument that employing this relatively standard nomenclature equates to a lack of morals and values does not align with the nature of industry standards, which exist to provide consistency and clarity. The “st” prefix is not a proprietary or trademarked term owned by any single entity or project. It is a general descriptor used industry-wide to denote a specific type of asset, in this case, staked tokens in a liquid form.

Asserting that the use of such a widespread and recognized standard is immoral seems to overlook the purpose of these conventions in the first place. These standards are meant to facilitate understanding, not to confer exclusive rights or indicate endorsement.

To me there is nothing immoral about using an industry standard (which is how I see it) to represent your asset. That’s like saying if a project called “Squid” rose to popularity in the Cosmos, that Osmosis could no longer use sqOSMO or sqBTC or sqATOM since it’s likely that Squid would want “that space”. It makes no sense.

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And actually, if anything would be “immoral”, it would be the latter.

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I totally agree with it on the longer run, but I guess we are not anywhere near the point where such a mutual agreement would be workable within the ecosystem tbh.

I am not a trader, so I don’t look at it from that perspective, but from the perspective where at this early stage in the ecosystem it is now very clear which team is behind a certain asset. I very very much agree that we need a better concept in the ecosystem to make it easier to understand for non-crypto-natives in general.
But when I as non-crypto-native and (for example) Stride-token holder would receive stATOM, stOSMO, strTIA, and other variations for other assets I would be quite lost. So that should also not be forgotten imo. The Cosmos-ecosystem brings some additional complexity in that perspective which should be handled reaching a point where we have an easy to understand concept (like for example using lstAsset for any type of liquid staked asset) while still safeguarding diversity to avoid a Lido-situation in this ecosystem.

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Hey @Winfred I’d like to push back somewhat on the “industry standard” argument. I can’t think of a single version of liquid staked ETH using the st Prefix that isn’t Lido staked ETH. (think cbETH, rETH, etc etc etc)

Can check here: Top Liquid Staking Tokens By Market Capitalization | Crypto.com

Now there may be one I’m missing, but it’s pretty clear that with respect to ETH, the stPrefix is commonly associated with Lido. I use ETH as the example here because the LST ETH market is by far the largest. There’s brand value in that prefix in the Ethereum ecosystem. Sunny seems to agree that this is the case, rather than the “industry standard” prefix argument. https://x.com/sunnya97/status/1725604455779819640?s=20

Comparably, in Cosmos this prefix is associated with Stride. There is certainly brand value associated with it. Everyone in Cosmos knows that stATOM, for example, is associated with Stride (rather than with Lido, pstake, eris, or others).

I can appreciate an argument that simply admits this fact and says “welp, it does have brand value, that’s why we want it, may the best protocol win,” but trying to equivocate around the fact that this is clearly a competitive move is misleading to Osmosis governance. We will have to decide whether to allow these contracts to be uploaded knowing full well that it the product will collide with a product offered by Osmosis’s second largest liquidity partner.

The protocol itself will be great for Osmosis, but the ticker has the potential to distract from the benefits this protocol will provide to Osmosis and harm MilkyWay’s brand, leading to a net negative to Osmosis.

EDIT: Actually this list is a bit more complete as far as LST tokens go https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/liquid-staking-tokens.

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There’s literally no complexity though, on the UI it is very clear that the stTIAs are very different.

I don’t feel misled one bit, nor confused or perplexed. I do feel that I understand easily what type of asset I am interacting with.

I would understand if the issue here was that a project was trying to use the STRD ticker. But a prefix? A prefix that they are not the ones who even introduced? I seriously don’t get it.

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I’m at the spa, and simultaneously debating LST prefixes, what a productive Sunday :sweat_smile: Thanks for your replies btw.

I agree that industry standard is maybe a little strong a descriptor, hence why I added “relatively” before standard here:

and mentioned here that that was how I saw it based on the assets I interact with the most. NEAR, Lido, Stride think I saw Tether use it (so I’d still go as far as to say that collectively, it is the more used prefix for this asset class):

I guess I see the merit in your point as well, that in the Cosmos ecosystem, Stride is who is known to use it.

Does that mean they must be the only ones? That’s where we see things differently.

For example, Margined Protocol is using sqOSMO for their powered perps. If another protocol decided to use a similar ticker and clearly indicated through branding that they were a different protocol, I would have no issue with that. For me it makes my life so much easier.

So the question then here I guess is what matters more? Brand exclusive rights for prefix use? Or ease of use and streamlining understanding within the Cosmos ecosystem

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Thank you for the replies as well, and hope you’re enjoying the spa!

I can appreciate this perspective, but I think one thing that has gotten a bit lost in this discussion (probably my fault tbh) is the fact that this is not just about UX confusion. I do think there’s a danger of this, having supported Osmosis end-users with UX issues for over 2 years, but even assuming this isn’t a problem (or is solvable) there’s another issue here as well.

If we can agree that the st prefix is less of an industry standard and more of a brand association in Cosmos, and that the UX isn’t confusing despite the same ticker for both assets, the question remains: why keep the prefix?

If MilkyWay’s usage of mwTIA would be no more confusing than stTIA, but using stTIA invites conflict with Stride (who has spent millions of dollars in their own protocol emissions to build liquidity on Osmosis pools), wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to not use the st prefix from a growth / marketing perspective?

I certainly think so. Why would a product launching on Osmosis be so keen on inviting conflict with Osmosis liquidity partners? These are the things that Osmosis governance should consider, especially as Stride looks to onboard major assets like stDYDX or its own stTIA and looks for a DEX on which to host that liquidity.

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We actually wrote a blog introducing the team Meet the Team behind MilkyWay. Welcome to the team that will bring the… | by Josie Leung | MilkyWay Zone | Nov, 2023 | Medium.

The contracts haven’t been audited yet, we are in the process of doing so.

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Thank you everyone for your contribution to the discussion.

Our initial choice of the $st ticker was inspired by its association with ‘staked’ and drawn from the successful branding of Lido Finance. We want to express our gratitude for the input received, especially as it reflects the active engagement of the Osmosis community in shaping the future of our project.

We understand that the $st ticker has been previously used by Stride within the Cosmos ecosystem. While our intention was not to create any conflict, we recognize the concerns raised, and we want to assure everyone that our objective is not to impede the progress of any other project within the Cosmos community. We hold great respect for Stride Protocol and its accomplishments.

In light of the community’s feedback and our commitment to fostering a collaborative and harmonious environment, we have decided to make an adjustment. After careful consideration, we are transitioning to a new ticker symbol: $milkTIA.

Despite how certain individuals have assessed our previous decision to use the stTIA ticker we would like to reiterate that this was not any form of tactic to undermine any other entity and that we firmly believe that tickers should not be exclusive to any single one. We hope this change aligns with our commitment to cooperation within the broader blockchain ecosystem but also throw caution to the wind that these micro-conflicts can potentially stunt innovation or impede fast moving lean teams. We are eager to continue working on advancing Celestia, with our current focus on delivering a liquid staking derivative and exploring innovative ideas to enhance MilkyWay.

As a team with a proven track record in the blockchain space, we remain dedicated to addressing challenges and delivering impactful solutions for the greater good. We appreciate the understanding and support of the Osmosis community as we navigate this adjustment.

Expect us soon!

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