PINT Community Update #1

Authored by Timothy Hao Chi Ho

The following is a cross-post from the PINT Substack on May 3, 2021. Stay tuned for the latest PINT developer blogs and project updates by subscribing to the PINT Substack newsletter!

A quick reminder - PINT is an index token representing a diversified basket of Polkadot ecosystem projects. It is a StakerDAO community initiative being built by ChainSafe and Stateless Money. You can read more about PINT in the announcement here. PINT is funded by the StakerDAO Community Treasury, and is an initiative intended to benefit the entire Polkadot ecosystem. We'll be releasing periodic project updates to keep the community informed in a transparent, open manner. As always, you can follow our open-source work by taking a look at our PINT Github repo, or by reading our Gitbook docs. Contributions are always welcome! :)

Greetings everyone! After the announcement of the Polkadot Index Network Token (🍺 PINT) we've seen a great response from an excited community.

Since announcing PINT in April, the ChainSafe PINT team has been furiously chipping away at our first milestones. [For the complete implementation design of the PINT protocol, please refer to the design docs.] As previously mentioned in our original announcement, our focus has been on the initial development of the custom pallets that make up the PINT runtime:

Index management in the PINT runtime

In our previous sprint, the team was able to begin development on the AssetIndex pallet. The AssetIndex pallet is responsible for tracking a set of assets and representing them in the form of an index. You can think of this as the index management component of the PINT runtime. It allows the PINT council to interact with the index on-chain, and users/liquidity providers to contribute DOT, and mint/redeem PINT tokens. The functionalities of the AssetIndex pallet include being able to add & remove assets; deposit & withdraw PINT; and query prices from external acting data feeds.

While investigating the development of the AssetIndex and RemoteAssetManager pallets the team has decided to extend PINT's polkadot-launch configuration to include the use of [statemint](https://github.com/paritytech/statemint) for token minting. Statemint is considered a common-good parachain for generic assets, which PINT intends to leverage for token transfers. The rationale for using statemint is to bootstrap the initial PINT minting process and provide instant access to various kinds of assets for PINT.

Developments with other custom pallets

Although the AssetIndex pallet was our primary focus this sprint, we also completed work on several other core components to the PINT runtime, including additional work on index management, governance, and treasury. We explain each one in brief detail below:

The LocalTreasury pallet may hold a balance, and is used to collect fees (in PINT) for various operations and may be utilized at the PINT governance council's discretion. This is in contrast to the RemoteTreasury, which allows the PINT council to remotely control assets on other parachains via XCMP. Development for both of these pallets has now been completed.

The SAFTRegistry, or the Simple Agreement for Future Tokens registry, tracks a collection of SAFTs and their value, and is used to manage active SAFTs to be reflected in the index. SAFTs are common ways for accredited investors in the blockchain space to partake in an investment contract for some agreed amount of future tokens - in this case, PINT.

The Committee pallet allows the PINT council to vote and execute governance proposals on-chain. For this sprint, we have added functionality for a "Constituent Committee". This will eventually lead to the development of council selection functionality so that representatives from each asset on the index can be selected as well as have voting/vetoing power against decisions from the PINT council.

In order to exchange assets for PINT, the value of those assets as well as PINT's Net Asset Value (NAV) must be computed in a trust-minimized way. As such, the Chainlink price oracle pallet has been selected to act as the price feed service for the PINT runtime. Initial development on this has already been completed, with support for asset pair identifiers included - this allows for fetching of the necessary price data using a (base/quote) format.

Finally, the Dockerfile construction was written. These are represented as the Dockerfile and polkadot-launch configs.

Next sprint

For our next sprint, we intend to remain focused on integrating with Statemint for token transfers, completing the AssetIndex and RemoteAssetManager pallets, as well as including the missing council selection feature for the Constituent Committee within the Committee Pallet. We will also begin documenting the polkadot.js interactions which provide instructions on how to use the library to add and remove assets or SAFTs.

With work well underway on the custom pallets that will eventually makeup the PINT runtime, we now turn to additional questions and research to find areas of optimization on cross-chain asset transfers and testing withdrawing and depositing via XCMP.

Timeline

We can't share the date that PINT will go live. After audits have been completed and the codebase is ready, we will wait for the minimum number of assets in the index to become live, operational parachains before launching. PINT is being created for those who want to "go long" on the Polkadot ecosystem. Please bear with us while we take the time to ensure PINT is ready to go.

Get Involved

We are eager to evolve PINT into an inclusive community project. If you believe you can help in any way, please join us on the PINT channel within the StakerDAO discord and introduce yourself. Once the index is live, we intend to utilize the PINT treasury to compensate those who add value to the project.

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 their website, through Medium, via Twitter, or by visiting the ChainSafe GitHub.

Learn more about StakerDAO by visiting their website, via Twitter, or on their Discord.

Learn more about Stateless Money their our website, or support us by nominating our validators on Polkadot and Kusama.

Please be wary of scams

There will never be a PINT "Pre-Sale" or a way to "invest in PINT" pre-launch. Anyone claiming otherwise is trying to steal your hard earned DOTs.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Dustin Brickwood, Matthias Seitz, and Tim Ho. Your contributions were invaluable in the making of this article.