Announcing the Polkadot Index Network Token by StakerDAO, developed by ChainSafe & Stateless Money

Authored by Timothy Hao Chi Ho

Get all of the developer blogs and latest updates on the Polkadot Index Network Token from the PINT Substack here.

Care to share a PINT with us? 🍻

ChainSafe will be building PINT, or the Polkadot Index Network Token, in conjunction with Stateless Money!

The PINT token's source code is now public and can be found here.

Between December and early February in 2021, the StakerDAO community reached out to ChainSafe and Stateless Money to begin research for the feasibility of an index token representing the Polkadot ecosystem. The research was extensive and included design documentations, an engineering project plan, and developing a proposed architecture and design for what would become a MVP of PINT.

All this work culminated in a StakerDAO governance proposal, which was formally submitted by staking provider Stateless Money on March 31 for ChainSafe to become the primary development partner for PINT. With the proposal officially approved by the StakerDAO community in early April, we are beyond excited to bring this StakerDAO product to life and share the journey ahead with the wider Polkadot ecosystem!

The benefits of holding index funds are already well-touted in the TradFi world, where investors get exposure to a basket of underlying assets. Similarly, the PINT token will be an on-chain DeFi index token that provides diversified exposure to the top projects within the Polkadot ecosystem. More importantly, parachains may choose to allocate a portion of their tokens to PINT, which in turn will give them additional benefits:

• It hedges a project's token volatility while betting on the overall boom of the Polkadot ecosystem without the need for active capital management

• Access to financing from the PINT treasury for Parachain Lease Offerings (PLO), which can be expensive in many cases

PINT will be split into four organizing partners:

• Stateless Money will be responsible for overall coordination efforts around PINT

• ChainSafe will be the primary development partner for PINT

• A PINT council made up of 7 Polkadot ecosystem experts will be governing the index including responsibilities such as: referenda, composition of index, and selecting members of the Constituent Committee

• A Constituent Committee, made up of one representative from each project with assets in the index, will be responsible for evaluating - and possibly vetoing - council decisions

As of this writing, 6 projects have given soft commitments to being included on the index and becoming representatives in the Constituent Committee including: Acala, Equilibrium, HydraDX, Litentry, Moonbeam, and Plasm.

In terms of development work, ChainSafe will be responsible for the development of the PINT Substrate pallets and runtime. The work will be separated out into four successive milestones to be completed over 3 months:

1. Initial development of the PINT pallets based on ChainSafe's PINT Design Doc

2. Implementation of additional XCMP dependent pallets

3. Joining ChaChaCha and/or Rococo testnets

4. Launch mainnet

ChainSafe is excited to get the project underway together with Stateless Money, and help develop a new DeFi standard for the Polkadot ecosystem!

I mean, the project is also just cool! I mean this is exciting! We are excited! This excites us!

You can read more from Stateless Money in their official Medium announcement.

About StakerDAO

StakerDAO is the cross-chain asset factory and enables the vibrant future of decentralized finance. StakerDAO is a "Decentralized Autonomous Organization" that is self-governed by its token holders. Through their unique approach to governance, they launch and manage financial assets at scale for the expanding DeFi ecosystem.

About Stateless Money

Stateless.Money is an independent staking service provider with around $150 million in staked assets within the Polkadot ecosystem. They invest in and operate technology infrastructure for Web 3.0.

Get Involved

Want to work with ChainSafe? COME JOIN US!!! Check out the new Careers section of our website and our open positions, and get in touch with us at careers@chainsafe.io if you are interested!

If you want to get involved with the project, check out our Github. If you would like to get in contact with one of the PINT team members, feel free to drop by on Chainsafe's Discord, or email info@chainsafe.io. We would love to know more about you, your team and your project!

For more details on PINT, please head to our documentation site.

Learn more about ChainSafe by visiting our website, through our Medium, via Twitter, or by visiting the ChainSafe GitHub.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to David Ansermino & Dustin Brickwood. Your contributions were invaluable to the making of this article.