Edgeware (blockchain)

Edgeware is a proof-of-stake smart contract blockchain developed by Commonwealth Labs that was created as an experiment in cryptocurrency community building and on-chain governance. Edgeware was built using Parity's Substrate library and intends to integrate with Polkadot as a parachain after Polkadot's main net launch. Edgeware introduced a novel token distribution mechanism called a lockdrop- a modified version of an airdrop that requires participants to send ETH (or other cryptocurrency) to a personalized timelocked contract in order to receive an EDG allocation. Edgeware contains mechanisms for community members to establish on-chain identities, as well as vote on changes to the protocol and allocate communal treasury funds.

The lockdrop began June 2019, and distributed 90% of 5,000,000,000 initial coins to participants who either timelocked their ETH for a period of time (3 months, 6 months or 12 months), or signaled an address. Signaling took a snapshot of an ETH address balance and did not require locking up ETH. Participants generated their own timelock smart contracts, and are able to received 100% of their ETH back after the lockdrop contract expires. Unlocked ETH is retrieved by sending a zero-value transaction to the personal lockdrop contract.

The Edgeware lockdrop took place over three months, beginning June 1st, 2019 at 00:00 UTC and ending August 31st, 2019 at 23:59 UTC. There were tiered lockup bonuses based on the time participants locked up and the duration of the lockup. Participants who locked up earlier and for longer periods of time received larger allocations of EDG per ETH. The lowest tier of participation was for signaling. Signalers received 20% of the token allocation that they would have received had they chosen a 3 month lockup, with 75% of their EDG allocations locked until a year after main net launch. Ethereum smart contract owners were able to signal on behalf of their deployed contracts, and were eligible to submit a generalized lock appeal, which is a request to consider a signal as a 3 month lockup. In order to bootstrap the network, participants were also able to register as Edgeware genesis validators on-chain when deploying their lockdrop contracts.

Although the Lockdrop contract was audited and verified by third parties such as Quantstamp, a vulnerability was discovered after the lockdrop began that allowed for potential Denial-of-Service attacks to preemptively block participants from deploying their lockdrop contracts.Because this exploit did not affect anyone that had already locked up their ETH, a new contract was deployed with the bug patched and initial EDG distribution was calculated based on both contracts.

By the end of the lockdrop on September 1st, 2019, 1,199,728 ETH had been locked and 4,346,544 ETH had been signaled, and over 4000 EDG addresses registered. Relative to the total supply at the time (107,568,123 ETH), this equated to approximately 1.12% of total ETH in existence locked and 4.04% signaled. Notable participants include Binance, who signaled on behalf of users holding ETH in their accounts and intend to distribute EDG accordingly.

The original Edgeware main net launched on September 15th, 2019 at 00:00 UTC. Several issues were identified with initial EDG balances and validator slashing, prompting the relegation of the network to a test net and a relaunch. The new Edgeware main net launched on February 17th, 2020.

Initial coin supply was allocated as follows:

• 90% (4,500,000,000 EDG) distributed to lockdrop participiants
• 4.5% (225,000,000 EDG) allocated to Commonwealth Labs
• 3% (150,000,000 EDG) allocated to Parity Technologies
• 2.5% (125,000,000 EDG) reserved to compensate open-source contributors to the project and early community members

Edgeware currently has a 158 EDG block reward with a 6-second target block interval. This equates to roughly 997,220,160 EDG emitted annually. 50% of newly minted EDG is allocated to a treasury that community members may use to fund further development of the Edgeware ecosystem. Similar to Dogecoin and Grin, there is no planned reduction in block reward, however a constant emission rate reduces inflation percentage over time and may eventually result in deflation when accounting for coins inevitably lost by misplaced or deleted private keys. A high initial inflation rate also incentivizes lockdrop participants to stake their coins in order to avoid dilution of their holdings. Using Edgeware's on-chain governance, this emission rate is subject to change if the community votes in favor of a new inflation policy.

Edgeware users are given the opportunity to create on-chain identities. In order to establish an on-chain identity user must link their Edgeware address to an external accounts. The identity needs to be verified by addresses that meet a minimum EDG balance requirement before a user can participate in certain identity-based votes.