Omni Network: A Unified Solution to Rollup Fragmentation

Project Overview:

Introduction

Omni serves as an interoperability layer on Ethereum and an L1 network, aimed at facilitating connections among various Roll-ups like Optimism, Arbitrum, zkSync, and Starkware. It provides developers a simple way to scale their applications while maintaining Ethereum’s security attributes by leveraging foundational technological innovations such as re-staking through Eigenlayer, and consensus via the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint. Omni allows developers to manage global application states across all integrated domains and aggregate liquidity, creating a seamless product experience for users.

Ethereum Fragmentation Issue:

With the growing popularity of Roll-ups, such as Arbitrum and Optimism, Ethereum’s biggest existential threat is the fragmentation caused by Roll-ups. Ethereum’s users and their capital are increasingly dispersed into isolated ecosystems, diminishing the global network effect. Omni addresses this issue by integrating all Roll-ups into a cohesive, interoperable network.

Optimizations Made for Ethereum Sharding:

Cross-Rollup Communication

• Omni allows users and applications to interact across various Rollups as if they were part of a single, cohesive network.

Unified Liquidity Pool

• By facilitating cross-aggregation transactions, Omni helps to aggregate liquidity, enhancing capital efficiency and reducing slippage for users.

Simplified User Process

• Users can enjoy a smoother experience, being able to move assets or execute operations across aggregators without the need for complex procedures or multiple steps.

Developer-Friendly Platform

• With Omni’s standardized communication protocols, developers can confidently build applications that are operable across the entire Rollup ecosystem.

Universal Gas

• Users can conduct transactions seamlessly, regardless of whether their funds are held in Ethereum, Optimistic Rollup, ZK-Rollup, or any other connected network, without worrying about the specific Gas tokens of each network.

Project Highlights

Omni introduces a novel network architecture specifically tailored for low-latency Cross-Rollup communication and global compatibility with the entire Ethereum Rollup ecosystem, grounded on the cryptographic economic security of re-staking $ETH. Integrating technologies like CometBFT, ABCI++, and the Engine API, Omni achieves sub-second verification of cross-aggregate messages, leveraging Ethereum’s industry-leading cryptographic economic security budget. Additionally, Omni is designed for easy integration with any rollup architecture and native rollup applications, and also provides a programmable state layer for managing cross-rollup application deployments.

Key points include:

• Dual Staking Model: Omni is a proof-of-stake network protected by the total value of re-staked ETH and staked OMNI.
• Sub-second Verification: Omni nodes process cross-aggregate messages and Omni EVM transactions within a second using CometBFT consensus. With alternative finalization mechanisms like pre-confirmation and transaction insurance, Omni offers sub-second finality for cross-aggregate messages.
• Diverse Aggregation Support: Omni’s design has minimal integration requirements to ensure compatibility with any aggregation virtual machine, programming language, and data availability architecture.
• Backward Compatibility: Applications can integrate with Omni without modifying existing smart contracts. Instead, applications can use modified front-end directives to send cross-aggregate messages through Omni.

Core Components of OMNI:

Ethereum Restake on Omni Network:

The Omni Network consists of validators who re-stake ETH and certify aggregated state updates to facilitate global interoperability. These ETH-based validators provide the foundational security for the network.

Tendermint Speed and CometBFT:

Leveraging the Tendermint Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus, our validators can achieve consensus on the aggregated state significantly faster than Ethereum’s first layer.

CometBFT is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism designed to ensure network protocol resilience and efficiency in distributed systems, even in the presence of failures or malicious nodes, making it an ideal choice for Omni.

EVM Compatibility:

The execution layer of Omni is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), powered by Ethermint (the EVM module on Cosmos), allowing developers to work in Solidity using familiar tools. The execution layer includes built-in functionalities for accessing state, messages, and applications from integrated aggregators, thus creating a seamless experience for users and liquidity across these aggregators.

Capabilities of Omni:

Message Propagation:

• Applications can simply request to send messages to targets like Arbitrum, and Omni securely relays these messages to trigger corresponding application logic. Omni provides superior security, offering more than just simple message propagation.

Multiple Message Propagation:

• Given Omni’s capability to host various applications, a single transaction on one Rollup could trigger multiple outbound messages. For example, if Alice posts 10 $ETH to an automated protocol to ensure her DeFi positions across all Rollups never fall below a 200% collateralization ratio, Omni might observe this transaction and automatically send messages to Polygon’s zkEVM and Starknet to increase Alice’s positions. If her positions are currently above the specified 200% collateral threshold, no outbound messages would be sent temporarily. However, if her positions fall below this threshold, the automated protocol would start sending messages over multiple weeks to adjust her account on each Rollup.
• This illustrates a fundamental difference between Omni and projects that merely provide interoperability—Omni facilitates interoperability between Rollups and, as a programmable general EVM, it can do much more.

State Updates within Omni:

• Users can interact with portal contracts to purchase tokens or NFTs on any Rollup in the entire Ethereum ecosystem and acquire them directly on the original Rollup, without going through Omni.

Multichain DeFi Liquidity Sharing:

• For instance, create a margin account on OMNI, stake on Chain A, and then borrow on Chain B, sharing the funds in the margin account.

NFT Interoperability Across Chains:

• Projects can deploy on the Omni Network, and with the help of Omni, users on any chain can mint NFTs, and these NFTs can also be “teleported” or moved between chains.

Project Team

Omni, formerly known as Rift Finance, is a DeFi protocol that provides financial services for Web3 projects.

Austin King—Co-founder and CEO of OmniNetwork, Austin founded his first company, Strata Labs, while studying computer science at Harvard University. Strata Labs expanded its high-performance payment network to handle over 10 billion transactions before being acquired by Ripple, where he previously worked as a software engineer. Omni is the second cryptocurrency network he has built.

Tyler Tarsi—Co-founder and CTO of OmniNetwork, Tyler previously worked as a quantitative trading strategist at Stovell AI Systems and studied at Harvard University.

Financing Details

On February 8, 2022, the company raised $18 million in a funding round led by Pantera Capital.

Other investors include Two Sigma Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Spartan Group, Defiance Capital, Hashed, Jump Capital, Vessel Capital, and Morningstar Ventures. Angel investors include Terra’s Do Kwon, Aave’s Stani Kulechov, Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal, and Joseph Naggar from Goldentree Asset Management.

Project Progress

Q1 2022—Omni completed a $18 million funding round led by Pantera Capital.

Q2 2023—Omni Network released its first technical architecture document.

Q3 2023—Testnet 1: Omni Origins was completed.

Q4 2023—Testnet 2: Omni Overdrive was completed.

Q1 2024—Omni became the first Active Validation Service (AVS) to secure a $1 billion ETH re-collateralization commitment from leading industry liquidity re-collateralization protocols such as EtherFi, Renzo, Puffer, Kelp, Swell, EigenPie, BedRock, and Rio.

Q2 2024—Mainnet launch

Ecosystem

AutoFarm - The first DApp launched on the Omni Network testnet, allowing users to automatically move funds to the highest yielding pool on any chain, thereby redefining liquidity mining. This is facilitated by Autonomy’s features, which optimize users’ APY.

As Omni’s mainnet has not yet launched, the ecosystem’s focus is currently more on announcements, collaborations with various projects, and deployments on the testnets.

Tokenomics

$OMNI is the native token of the Omni Network, primarily used for:

• General Gas: OMNI is used as a payment mechanism to compensate the relayers who submit transactions to the target aggregator.
• Gas for Omni EVM: OMNI is the native currency used for processing transactions on the Omni EVM.
• Governance: OMNI stakeholders will be responsible for various governance decisions, such as protocol upgrades and other developer functions.
• Staking: The Omni protocol implements a dual staking model to ensure economic security. Security is a function of the total value of OMNI staked and ETH re-staked.

Token distribution

Total Supply: 100,000,000

Initial Circulation: 10,391,492 (10.39% of total supply)

Private Sale: 20.06%

Ecosystem: 29.5%

Team Share: 25.25%

Community Share: 12.67%

Advisors Allocation: 3.25%

Public Sale: 5.77%

Binance Launchpool: 3.5%

Token release

Genesis Airdrop

The Omni Foundation is set to launch $OMNI as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, with a total supply of 100,000,000 tokens; of which 3,000,000 (3% of the total $OMNI supply) will be distributed as part of the airdrop.

Airdrop eligibility has been retroactively set from April 3, 2024. Users have 45 days to claim their $OMNI rewards, after which all unclaimed tokens will be returned to the Omni Foundation for future community activities.

The main beneficiaries eligible for the genesis airdrop include:

• Omni Community Members: Early testnet users, builders, and key contributors within the Omni community.
• EigenLayer Stakers: The top 10,000 re-stakers in EigenLayer are eligible to receive $OMNI Genesis rewards.
• Individual Beacon Chain Stakers: 5,000 individual Beacon Chain stakers will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis—the first 5,000 addresses to claim the airdrop will each receive 60 $OMNI.
• Milady Maker and Redacted Remilio Babies NFT Holders: 3,682 addresses holding Milady Maker NFTs and 2,865 addresses holding Redacted Remilio Babies NFTs are eligible for $OMNI Genesis rewards.
• Pudgy Penguin NFT Holders: 4,609 addresses holding Pudgy Penguin NFTs are eligible for $OMNI Genesis rewards.
• Ninjas NFT Holders: 1,585 addresses holding Ninja NFTs are eligible for $OMNI Genesis rewards.
• Strategic Partner Protocols: 25 protocol organizations that have collaborated with Omni and contributed to its early development, such as Ether.Fi, Monad, Berachain, and EigenLayer, are eligible for $OMNI rewards.

Token Launch Details

$OMNI is set to go live on Binance spot at 20:00 (GMT+8) on April 17, 2024. Currently, it is possible to participate in mining in the Binance Launchpool, and this mining period will last for four days. The BNB participation has reached 18,486,900 BNB, with early participants benefitting greatly.

The project raised $18.1 million through two rounds of private token sales, with 9.1% of the total OMNI token supply sold at $0.18/OMNI during the seed round and 11% at $1.50/OMNI during the Series A round, totaling 20.1% of the total OMNI token supply sold in private rounds.

In the whales’ OTC market, the price reached $40, though the depth is not very strong, so the reference value is not very high. Generally, the better the depth, the stronger the reference significance.

The initial circulation of the project is 10,391,492 (10.39% of the total supply), with a total supply of 1 billion. Considering various fundamental aspects of the project (investment institutions, founding team, social media data, etc.), I believe that OMNI is stronger than the previous Binance Launchpool project, SAGA. Currently (as of April 45, 2024), SAGA has a circulating market value of $369 million, which is the price after a recent pullback, considering that the market has been unstable in recent days and public sentiment has been dampened. This adverse factor needs to be adjusted downward. I personally think that the initial circulating market value of OMNI could be around $300-400 million, but this is just a range, and new token openings generally fluctuate a lot, so please make sure to do your own research (DYOR)!

Project Summary:

The OMNI network is an interoperability protocol that operates across various Rollups. It functions as a first-layer public blockchain and is the first Accountable Virtual Space (AVS) on the Eigenlayer. OMNI leverages Eigenlayer’s re-staking feature to share Ethereum’s security and employs the Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanism, enabling it to handle a large volume of transactions while maintaining low latency. The founding team consists of Harvard University graduates with backgrounds in the blockchain industry, led by investment from Pantera Capital, with participation from Jump and Coinbase, making for an impressive lineup of investors. With further developments in account abstraction, chain abstraction, and intent-focused enhancements, the project is situated in a promising field. It aims to aggregate liquidity from various rollups and simplify user operations to address the issue of fragmentation. The project’s fundamentals are solid.

However, the project has not yet launched on the mainnet; the experience is currently limited to its early testnets. Many of the described visions, aspirations, and sub-second verifications will need to be validated after the mainnet launch. Currently, $OMNI has also been listed on Binance Launchpool, which has increased the project’s liquidity and visibility. In summary, the project has strong fundamentals, and its future development and user adoption will depend on the team’s ongoing operations and the completion of the product. It is worth continuing to monitor!

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