After publishing the article Darwinia 2.0 Will Upgrade Staking Module, we received some feedback from the community. In the previous article, we explained that a staking module upgrade is required to perform the merge of Darwinia chains. In this article, we will explain the purpose of the merge in greater detail, what will change, and what will remain the same.

Why The Merge?

Put simply: to reduce the complexity of Darwinia Network architecture.

Currently, Darwinia core network includes 6 chains: Darwinia Chain, Darwinia Smart Chain (also known as the EVM module of Darwinia Chain), Darwinia Parachain, Crab Chain, Crab Smart Chain, and Crab Parachain. The first three belong to the Darwinia Mainnet, and the latter belong to Darwinia Canary Network.

The following figure shows Darwinia Network infrastructure before the merge:

The current design was determined and settled upon at a time the technology was immature; and there would have been many problems in the provision and decommission of any parachains. Therefore, Darwinia Network separated the responsibilities of the parachain from the solo chain (Darwinia Chain and Crab Chain) so they worked independently, and the parachain's governance maintained remotely on the Darwinia Chain, showcasing one practical application of Darwinia’s LCMP protocol and cross-chain message network. This approach worked well at the time.

However, this confused some users and caused misunderstanding among application developers; and having to develop and maintain six chains also slowed down progress of the team. further complicating and made governance far more complicated The governance of the parachain needs to be reached through a cross-chain procedure. In addition to that, during cross-chain, because of one more hop, cross-chain time and cost are all increased.

Now that the technology has matured, the Darwinia dev team is ready to readdress the issue. After conducting a feasibility study, we have decided to merge the Darwinia Chain, Darwinia Smart Chain and Darwinia Parachain, and of course, Crab Chain, Crab Smart Chain and Crab Parachain, as well. The goal, therefore, is to simplify Darwinia cross-chain message network, and reduce finality times and gas fees.

After The Merge

The Darwinia Chain, Darwinia Smart Chain (also known as the EVM module of Darwinia Chain), and Darwinia Parachain will be merged into one chain. The name of the merged chain will be Darwinia, which will be secured by the shared security of Polkadot as a parachain.
Similarly, the Crab Chain and Crab Parachain will be merged into one chain named Crab, which will be secured by the shared security of Kusama as a parachain.

The following figure shows Darwinia Network 2.0 infrastructure after the merge:

Changes In Cross-Chain Routes

After the merge, the most intuitive change will be that there is one less hop in the Darwinia cross-chain network.

For example, the original path of Moonbeam <> Darwinia Parachain <> Darwinia Chain <> Ethereum will become Moonbeam <> Darwinia <> Ethereum, and there will be a one hop reduction on all paths through the Darwinia cross-chain network.

More importantly, all cross-chain applications based on Darwinia cross-chain network will be simplified in their operation, and users will pay less for an enhanced cross-chain service.

Inflation Model Remains Unchanged

After the merge, the economic model of Darwinia Network will remain unchanged, which means that the block reward will be the same, that is to say that the inflation rate will still remain the same.

User Assets Unchanged

Once merged, since Darwinia Chain is a Polkadot parachain, and Crab Chain is a Kusama parachain, their economic and consensus security will be guaranteed by Polkadot and Kusama respectively, so Darwinia Chain and Crab Chain validators will no longer be needed.

The original validator’s role collecting transactions and producing blocks will be taken over by collators.

The responsibility of the collators will be relatively small, but nonetheless important, so collators will need to apply with a bond. Collators, like validators, will receive rewards from producing blocks, but their proportion will be smaller, as the responsibility is reduced. This reward ratio will ultimately be determined by the market, and token holders will still be able to earn rewards by nominating collators.

Staking Adjustment

After removing the validators and adding new collators, the staking model will be adjusted accordingly.

Referring to the feasibility study, technically, it turns out that using the original staking pallet is too complicated and not suitable for staking on a parachain, so a new simplified staking module is needed, which the dev team is researching.

In addition, some adjustments will be made to the staking model because collators are not responsible for securing the entire Darwinia Network, and should therefore require less value at stake. Due to this, the proportion of the collator’s block reward may also be reduced accordingly, and ultimately this proportion may need to be determined by the market.

Because there may be fewer number of collators than validators, the reward obtained by a collator may not drop sharply, however, it is difficult to estimate what it might be.

About Darwinia Network

Darwinia is a cross-chain messaging infrastructure, which provides a light client-based, programmable, universal cross-chain messaging network for decentralized applications. Now, we’ve successfully used Darwinia’s light-client cross-chain messaging protocol(LCMP) to bridge cross-chain messages between substrate-based chains, and even between substrate-based chains and EVM chains, meanwhile, Darwinia provides developers with an SDK, so they can easily integrate cross-chain capabilities into their Dapps. This will have profound implications for cross-chain interoperability, and Darwinia as a cross-chain messaging infrastructure will facilitate the building of a hybrid cross-chain network.

Darwinia 2.0 Merge Overview