Introduction
2021 was a fruitful year for Metis. Our development team completed numerous iterations of our testnet, culminating in the launch of the Metis Dragonfire testnet in September, followed two months later by the Andromeda mainnet. Andromeda immediately exploded in popularity, surging to $500 million TVL in the first eight weeks after launch. Metis has already attracted 75 ecosystem partners, with many more DApps deployed on Andromeda.
2022 will be an even more spectacular year for Metis’ growth. Our team is ready to deliver on key milestones, and we’re ready to unveil our ambitious mission roadmap, outlining our expansive vision.
The blockchain world moves at lightning speed, which makes long-term projections nearly pointless, given how quickly the landscape can change. With that in mind, we will now publish our roadmap for the first half year of 2022 first.
Scope of Vision
Metis was born out of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin’s original vision for a decentralized economy. Now, we are ready to expand the scope of that original vision much further:
a) Decentralization — Metis’ unique “EVM Equivalence + Ranger” Optimistic Rollup solution will keep Layer 2 decentralized, with no compromises.
b) Scalability — Metis’ multi-chain, multi-VM solution will unleash dynamic, flexible, almost infinite scalability supporting DAC-based DApps.
c) Functionality — Metis will integrate decentralized storage features to the mainnet, as promised in the technical whitepaper. Integrated decentralized storage will not only improve performance but also add much needed functionality space to enable exciting new Web2- + Web3-hybrid DApps, as well as the Metisverse virtual platform.
d) Usability — Metis’ vision of a thriving DAC economy calls for new users, builders, and innovators to participate without the hardship of blockchain development. For that purpose, Metis will implement its Polis middleware framework and plug-and-play DAC initiation process. We expect a magnitude more participants to join our network in 2022.
Infrastructure
Memolabs-based decentralized storage
Our Memolabs-based decentralized storage feature is scheduled to be released and integrated into our Andromeda mainnet at the end of Q1 2022.
Distributed storage is used for rollup data and fraud-proof challenge processes, so a much larger number of transactions can be rolled up at once, resulting in a significant reduction of transaction costs — from a current cost of about $2-$3 to just cents once the new storage layer goes live.
This native, IPFS-like distributed storage solution will support all types of API frameworks for easy integration with DApps that would like to leverage the benefits of native storage on Metis’ Layer 2 network.
In the 2nd quarter of 2022, any community member will be able to provide their own storage to join the decentralized storage solution and get incentives. As with all transactions executed on Andromeda, Metis tokens will here too be used as both the gas fee and incentive rewards.
Peer Network
As a network grows, people naturally wonder if heavier transaction volume will result in congestion and slower transactions, which is what happened to networks such as Polygon and BSC. Another key question: How will Metis avoid the single point of failure issues that have hit networks such as Solana and Arbitrum again and again?
The answer: Metis has been developing a Peer Network as a key solution to these potential challenges. As a Peer Node, it will act like a real node, handling both read and write functions. In addition, network traffic may be directed into different peer nodes in case of high traffic volumes. In this way, TPS capacity can be adjusted dynamically.
The node can be deployed by anyone, anywhere, as a community-based, decentralized mechanism. That way, people don’t have to worry anymore about AWS or other servers going down.
Also, the peer node will act as a verifier, comparing state submissions with the blocks it produces. It will also become part of the sequencer pool, ready to be deployed as a sequencer at any time, based on verification consensus.
This unique architecture lies at the core of the Metis Advantage.
Ranger System
The Metis Ranger feature is scheduled to be released and integrated into our Andromeda network at the end of Q2 2022.
Right now, two months after our mainnet launch, our verification process is still single-layered, limited to the participating peers. The Metis Ranger system is the feature that will decentralize the process. Rangers work for those peers, by staking and making themselves available for on-chain verification jobs.
Each batch of transactions will be verified by multiple Rangers, similar to our current verifier system. The Ranger system will be powered by our DAC infrastructure, and operating on our Layer 2 network.
Rangers add an extra layer of security and decentralization to our network, verifying the verifiers; Rangers need to wait for two batches of verifications to occur, in order to get Metis token rewards. These cycles are marked in a smart contract on our Layer 2 network, where different peers can notify when a batch has been verified.
The launch of the Metis Ranger System also means the start of mining for 5 million reserved tokens — half of our lifetime token supply. These 5 million tokens will be distributed over the next 9 years, based on contributions from these Rangers. A detailed token economy yellow paper will be published along with the launch of Ranger System, at the end of Q2 2022.
NFT Bridge
At the moment, most NFTs are minted and traded on Ethereum Layer 1, resulting in high transaction fees and even congesting the Ethereum network at times. Layer 2 networks like Andromeda solve the problems of high transaction fees and network congestion, making them the obvious choice for users to mint and trade NFTs.
Based on our previous research as well as discussions we published at ETHResearch, Metis is now developing a native NFT bridge. We’re delighted to announce that the first version of our NFT bridge will launch at the end of February, enabling users to transfer their NFTs from Ethereum mainnet to Metis Layer 2, and back. Users will thus be able to trade NFTs at low cost on Metis Layer 2, while maintaining the uniqueness and excitement of the emerging NFT universe.
Polis Middleware
Metis is building a middleware layer called Polis. Powered by smart contract templates, Polis is the key to connect end users, people with no blockchain experience, and Web2 developers with the Web3 world. In short: Any company or group of people will be able to reap the benefits of blockchain thanks to Polis, whether it’s an existing blockchain company, a non-blockchain powerhouse like Nike or Samsung, or a group of 20 friends who want to trade NFTs with each other.
More than that, Polis is the tool that will facilitate a cohesive and explosive multi-chain future, which is the key to blockchain mass adoption. On the Metis Layer 2 network, every large business/enterprise will be able to have their own chain with a unique chain ID (for better privacy and real business operation requirements). Polis is a vital component of that multi-chain vision, enabling users to use various applications without worrying about changing networks. Meanwhile, developers can build and deploy their applications in a unified environment, without switching to a different network.
Between now and June 30, Polis will focus on optimizing user experience to facilitate the user onboarding process, supporting more connection methods, mobile devices, dashboards, etc. In addition, Polis will continue to work on smart contract templates and deployment. The APIs will be automatically generated after deployment, and automatic domain API documentation (swagger) will be provided for easy integration.
As the interface for entering the Web3 world, there is another very important area we need to highlight: our Reputation Power System. In the Web3 world, it’s not enough to simply have a wallet address. To protect against potential bad actors (and reward reliable ones), Metis is building a Reputation Power system — a continuous, programmable NFT-based system that records each user’s on-chain track record. That track record is then used as a passport for the Web3 world, a social contract and decentralized business credential that builds trust and enables collaborations.
We will soon publish a separate whitepaper to describe how Metis will enable this kind of blockchain track record and how we plan to build it, so that everyone in the Metis ecosystem will benefit from building their Reputation Power.
DAC Framework
Eight years ago, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin introduced the concept of Decentralized Autonomous Companies (DACs), decentralized businesses that would run their entire operations on blockchain. Since then, Decentralized Autonomous Companies (DAOs) have emerged as a way for groups to organize under the banner of decentralized voting and governance. But no one picked up the DAC baton proposed all those years ago.
At least, not until now. Today, Metis is building DACs with Buterin’s vision in mind…and a lot more. The Metis vision of a DAC is as the hub of the Web3 economy, where every individual, team, group of similar minds, community, or small business can create their own decentralized enterprise and collaborate with others in the Web3 world.
While traditional companies are restricted to a limited circle of people and resources, DACs break the boundaries of traditional companies, enabling every individual to create their own decentralized business and collaborate with others in the decentralized world, with blockchain as the central infrastructure and tokens as the incentive mechanism. A DAC can be as small as only one person, or as big as tens of thousands of community members collaborating with each other.
The Metis Layer 2 network provides the infrastructure for on-chain transactions to be conducted in a fast, low-cost way. Metis DACs will include all of the functionalities of a real-life company. We are taking the best open-source versions of those tools — enterprise software, payroll management tools, messaging platforms, and more — and integrating them into templates to accommodate all kinds of different businesses. We believe that successful operation of decentralized businesses requires more than just tools, however. In this trustless world, we are still missing the mechanism to build trust and incentivize people to behave in a cooperative, reliable way.
As a result, Metis will focus on the design of collaboration mechanisms, constitutions, processes, templates, and APIs. The common denominator for all of these will be our Reputation Power (RP) system. RP will be the cornerstone for DAC collaborations, opening the door for anyone within the community to submit their own applications (developed based on open-standard APIs) to the DAC App Store and gain rewards based on how popular their application is.
In this way, we plan to release a community-oriented DAC template at the beginning of Q2. This will enable community members to create their DAC, manage membership, mint tokens and NFTs, manage multisig safe wallets, make investment or operation decisions collectively, manage payrolls, and much more. More DAC templates will be released soon afterwards.
Metisverse — The Metis Ecosystem and Metis Family
The Metis Layer 2 network is an open protocol, one that encourages any project to deploy its DApp on a permissionless basis. That said, Metis also pursues strategic partnerships with projects that provide a strong use case and real tech utility to our community.
Some of the benefits of joining the Metis Family include:
- Technical support
- Marketing
- Community
- Builder Mining
- Genesi Ecosystem DAC funding
- Metis Family Collaborations
- Helping Web2 companies to migrate to Web3
Decentralization
Last year, we published our decentralization roadmap, becoming the first Layer 2 network to do so. As discussed in that roadmap, here are the milestones you can expect between now and the halfway point of 2022:
Q2 2022: Verifiers will conduct real-time verifications, thus shortening the finalization window for transactions. Instead of a week or more for withdrawals from Layer 2 to Layer 1, L2-L1 withdrawals using Metis will take just a few hours, and eventually just a few minutes.
Also in Q2, the Metis Sequencer Pool will open for community participation. All the verifiers will be added into the Sequencer Pool automatically. A challenge and voting mechanism will be implemented to choose which one can be the next sequencer, ensuring that Sequencer positions rotate efficiently.
Conclusion
At Metis, we see the future of blockchain being multi-chain, backed by multiple interconnected Metaverses. We are building our infrastructure to backbone the vast, prosperous economy of Web3, and those Metaverses. Our journey is just beginning. Join us.
