We are excited to announce that the Phase One of the Celer State Guardian Network (SGN) mainnet is now up and running! SGN is the last piece of Celer Network’s coherent layer-2 scaling platform. Today’s launch marks another significant milestone of the Celer layer-2 blockchain scaling platform after the Celer State Channel Network, which was successfully launched more than a year ago and supports hundreds of thousands of users today.
TL;dr
SGN will be fully launched out in multiple phases to maximize security and to exercise the SGN on-chain governance functionality . To ensure a fair launch and staking reward distribution, the first phase (now till end of November) will NOT have reward distribution to make sure our community can practice and understand the process of delegation and staking before the reward starts to distribute fairly. We have also included full instructions for our community members who did not get a chance to try the whole process out to try out delegation, and later validation, directly on the mainnet. We also published a block reward schedule out after extensive research on similar projects and we are open to community feedback.
SGN Overview
State guardian network (SGN) is a scalable and decentralized “watchtower” sidechain that ensures the off-chain state security and smooth usability for state channel users. It provides highly reliable and efficient services including client channel state protection, delegated payment receiver, and app connectivity oracle. SGN is decentralized and incentive-aligned through the CELR staking process that governs the layer-2 validators and rewards all layer-1 CELR stakeholders.
Figure above shows the high-level system components and functionalities. For more details about the motivation and design of SGN, please refer to our CelerCore architecture website. Note that the CLER DPoS will be shared by all Celer layer-2 systems, including SGN and the future Celer hybrid rollup sidechain.
Below please find some important links about SGN.
- Mainnet web portal
- Testnet web portal
- Architecture document
- Mainchain contract code
- Sidechain code
- Operation manual and configurations
- Deployed DPoS contract
Mainnet Launch Phases
The network is public to delegators and state channel clients right away. Any CELR holder can delegate tokens, claim rewards, and view network information through the SGN web portal. We will provide tutorials for state channel clients to use SGN to guard their channels later, and we are still developing the state channel SDK to support full SGN integration.
To make sure it is fair to all the SGN early participants so that there is no concern of “pre-mining” and to exercise abundant caution in the launch process, we take extra steps to gradually roll out the validator network. The mainnet launch will consist of five phases with different launch stages and configuration regarding the validator memberships, reward distribution, and slash conditions, as summarized in the table below.
| Phase | Timeline | Validator Set | Staking | Reward | Slashing | Channel Guardian |
| 0 | now – Nov 29, 2020 | Whitelisted: Celer Foundation | Public | No | Disabled | Public |
| 1 | Nov 30, 2020 – early Jan 2021 | Whitelisted: Celer Foundation | Public | Yes | Disabled | Public |
| 2 | Start from early Jan, 2021 | Whitelisted: Celer Foundation and Staking Partners | Public | Yes | Disabled | Public |
| 3 | Upon satisfying phase 2 results | Whitelisted: Celer Foundation and Staking Partners | Public | Yes | Enabled | Public |
| 4 | Upon satisfying phase 3 results | All Public Staking Partners | Public | Yes | Enabled | Public |
Phase 0 (NOW) is to bootstrap the network, during which CELR holders are welcome to onboard as delegators but no reward will be distributed. The purpose of this phase is to make sure the network bootstrap smoothly, and all delegators have enough time to prepare and can start receiving rewards fairly at the same time.
Phase 1 starts on November 30 and it is the time when the network begins to distribute block rewards. All validators will be run by the Celer Foundation during this phase, which lasts about a month. This is to ensure that any issues discovered during the initial phases of mainnet launch will be maximally contained and quickly resolved.
Phase 2 starts from early January next year, when we will bring in validator nodes run by Celer’s selected staking partners, so that we can gradually open the validator network in a fully distributed fashion while taking extra caution on the mainnet security and stability. During the first three phases, slashing events will be recorded but not actually executed. This will be a grace period to make sure our validators know the expectation of SGN nodes’ operation requirements and do not put our community’s delegated token at risk down the road.
Phase 3 will enable the slashing execution. This is upon satisfying phase 2 results, which give us enough confidence about our code reliability so that a good validator with qualified setup and proper network connections would never get slashed.
Phase 4 will make the SGN validator network fully open to the public. Anyone can compete to become a SGN validator through the DPoS process and completes the full launch process.
The Ethereum mainchain smart contract has been fully audited, and is expected to be used through all the phases. While the sidechain core features have also been extensively tested during the past testnets, we will continue to improve the codebase and may coordinate sidechain upgrades through the governance process during phase transitions.
At the same time, there will also be a testnet for delegators and future validators to practice. We will also launch a bug bounty program to help us ensure the code security and stability.
Reward Schedule
Celer staking reward consists of block rewards of SGN and service reward (transaction fees) paid by sidechain users. The purpose of mining reward is to bootstrap the network and feed the ecosystem while service reward grows. 20% of Celer’s total supply of 10 billion tokens will be allocated to the Celer SGN block rewards, which will be distributed over the next 8 years.
Table below shows the tentative schedule of the approximate yearly reward pool. We are open to hear the community’s feedback on this schedule through this feedback form.
| Year | Target Stake (30% of circulating supply) | Reward Pool | Reward Rate |
| 1 | 1,972,276,120 | 300,000,000 | 15.21% |
| 2 | 2,346,000,000 | 300,000,000 | 12.82% |
| 3 | 2,436,000,000 | 280,000,000 | 11.52% |
| 4 | 2,520,000,000 | 280,000,000 | 11.14% |
| 5 | 2,598,000,000 | 240,000,000 | 9.24% |
| 6 | 2,670,000,000 | 220,000,000 | 8.24% |
| 7 | 2,736,000,000 | 200,000,000 | 7.31% |
| 8 | 2,796,000,000 | 180,000,000 | 6.44% |
Below is a sample of expected annual reward rate considering different amounts of CELR being staked.
| % of circulating supply staked | 10% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 50% | 60% |
| reward rate of each year | ||||||
| 1 | 45.63% | 22.82% | 15.21% | 11.41% | 9.13% | 7.61% |
| 2 | 38.46% | 19.23% | 12.82% | 9.62% | 7.69% | 6.41% |
| 3 | 34.57% | 17.28% | 11.52% | 8.64% | 6.91% | 5.76% |
| 4 | 33.41% | 16.71% | 11.14% | 8.35% | 6.68% | 5.57% |
| 5 | 27.71% | 13.86% | 9.24% | 6.93% | 5.54% | 4.62% |
| 6 | 24.72% | 12.36% | 8.24% | 6.18% | 4.94% | 4.12% |
| 7 | 21.93% | 10.96% | 7.31% | 5.48% | 4.39% | 3.65% |
| 8 | 19.31% | 9.66% | 6.44% | 4.83% | 3.86% | 3.22% |
How to delegate your tokens?
CELR holders can delegate their tokens through the SGN web portal. You can see a list of validators and their status on the homepage. More information of a validator can be found once you click its address.
Steps to delegate your token:
- Approve CELR to the DPoS contract through the lower left button.
- Once clicked into a validator, you can see a “Actions” button in the upper right corner. Delegate through “Actions -> Delegate”
Steps to withdraw your stake:
- Input the amount of take to withdraw through “Actions -> Initialize Withdraw”
- After the mainchain slashTimeout (currently 100 ETH block, approximately 30 minutes), confirm your withdrawal through “Actions -> Confirm Withdraw”.
Note that once the slash execution is enabled later in phase 3, slashTimeout will be much longer.
Steps to withdraw reward:
- In the reward page, click “Initialize Redeem”
- Wait for the “collecting signatures” timer to finish, then click “Redeem Reward”
How to become a validator?
While we start from Phase 0 and Phase 1, we are now preparing for Phase 2 and we have started to onboard quite a few staking partners that will be announced in the coming weeks. If you are interested in becoming the first batch of whitelisted validator partner, please fill in your information in this form.
To know a bit more about how to operate a validator, please check out our validator operation manual.
Need Help?
If you encounter any issue during your delegation process, we are here to help! Feel free to post your question in our Discord channel and we will respond ASAP!
