On April 6, Binance's new coin mining project Saga posted on the X platform that more than $13 billion of funds had participated in staking mining within 24 hours, making SAGA the largest Launchpool in Binance's history.
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So, what exactly does Saga do? And what makes it unique?
1. What is Saga
In a nutshell: Saga is a modular one-click blockchain platform based on Cosmos for the gaming field.
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Do you remember why dYdX migrated from Ethereum to the Cosmos ecosystem?
The reason why dYdX migrated to the Cosmos ecosystem, in addition to scalability, gas fees and other reasons, is mainly because it has more autonomy.
Because dYdX has transformed from a DApp in the Ethereum ecosystem into a Layer1 chain, namely dYdX Chain. When a DApp application is upgraded to a chain, it has more autonomy. For example, it can build its own nodes, use its own platform coins as tokens to pay gas fees, and even build its own ecosystem.
Now let's talk about Saga, which is a Layer 1 protocol developed based on Cosmos. It allows developers to develop parallel, interoperable dedicated chains for different virtual machines - "Chainlets", providing unlimited scalability for applications.
Simply put, Saga is a Layer 1 protocol that implements the one-click chain launch function. Through Saga, a dedicated chain, namely Chainlets, can be quickly built.
Each Chainlet has the same validator set and security model as the Saga mainnet.
Compared with other common chains, what are the unique features of Chainlet?
2. Unique Features of Chainlets
The Chainlet built using the Saga mainnet has the following main functions:
1. Unlimited horizontal scalability
All Chainlets are parallel and do not compete with each other for Ethereum network resources like DApps in the Ethereum ecosystem, which results in problems such as extremely high gas fees and very slow transaction confirmation during peak hours of the Ethereum network.
And, because these Chainlets run in parallel, Saga allows them to elastically scale to their peak performance and speed.
2. Free choice of charging model
As we all know, DApps in a public chain ecosystem are often restricted when paying gas fees, and are generally forced to use public chain platform tokens rather than DApp’s own tokens.
Therefore, most of the value brought by the development of DApp itself will be captured by the public chain platform tokens rather than the tokens of the DApp platform itself.
However, in the Saga ecosystem, these Chainlets are completely free to choose the tokens to pay for gas (or other purposes), and do not need to use Saga as the token for gas payment. For example, they can choose the platform's own tokens, stablecoins, fiat currencies, or even tokens from another ecosystem.
In other words, SAGA's charging model is different from other public chains. Users do not need to pay network fees directly. Project parties (Chainlets) can decide the charging method on their own (such as subscription, buyout, advertising charges or even completely free).
In addition, SAGA adopts a unique “musical chairs pricing”, which can be simply understood as: different validators reduce the block confirmation fee through internal bidding, that is, let different validators continue to roll up their sleeves, so as to minimize the block fee.
3. Automation
Developers can build a Chainlet by simply clicking a button in the Saga WebApp.
4. Interoperability and fast bridging
In the Saga ecosystem, not only Chainlets and Sagas, but also different Chainlets can automatically interoperate, such as quickly transferring assets.
Additionally, since each Chainlet provides fast transaction finality, users can also take advantage of fast bridging to other chains.
5. High degree of autonomy
In the Saga ecosystem, developers can enjoy their own dedicated chains. Each Chainlet is an exclusive chain, and project owners can customize functions based on their specific business. However, developing a DApp on a public chain is often subject to many restrictions.
3. Financing
According to data from the rootdata platform, Saga has raised a total of US$11.5 million through seed rounds and extended seed rounds.
Among them, on May 19, 2022, it received US$6.5 million in financing with a valuation of US$130 million.
The most recent round of financing was on November 20, 2023, and this round received a total of US$5 million in financing.
Investors include Placeholder, Maven11, Longhash, Samsung, Com2uS, Polygon, Merit Circle, Figment, etc.
4. Ecological Development
Since Saga was launched at the end of March 2022, two years have passed, and there are already more than 350 projects in the Saga ecosystem.
Among these more than 350 projects, 80% are game projects, NFT and entertainment account for 10%, and the other 10% are DeFi projects. Therefore, Saga is also known as a modular one-click chain launch platform for the gaming field.
Additionally, Saga has partnered with Polygon, Avalanche, MarbleX, Com2uS, and Celestia to automatically scale their infrastructure using Chainlets:
Polygon: Saga will automate the Polygon CDK chain;
Avalanche: Saga will automate the Avalanche subnet;
Celestia: Saga will automatically perform decentralized rollups with Celestia DA;
MarbleX: Saga will provide scaling infrastructure for the MarbleX chain;
Com2uS: Saga will provide scaling infrastructure for the Com2uS chain.
5. Tokens
The total number of Saga tokens is 1 billion, of which the ecosystem and development fund, foundation reserves, core contributors and investors account for 80%.
In addition, Binance Launchpad accounts for 4.5% and airdrops account for 15.5%.
The initial circulation of SAGA is 90 million pieces, which means that the initial circulation volume is only 9%, which is still relatively small.
Among them, Binance’s IEO accounted for 4.5% this time, which means that Binance Launchpad accounted for 50% of the initial circulation.
SAGA tokens are mainly used in the following scenarios:
1. Payment of Chainlets: Developers pay SAGA tokens to network validators.
2. Staking: Stakers help secure the network and receive rewards in SAGA tokens and tokens of projects built on the Saga protocol.
3. Governance: SAGA token holders will be able to vote on network governance decisions.
VI. Conclusion
In short, as a modular one-click chain launch platform, Saga allows developers to build a Chainlet by simply clicking a button in the Saga WebApp, greatly reducing the threshold for project parties to launch chains.
With the continuous development of blockchain technology, one-click chain issuance will become a major trend in the future. Compared with Chain and DApp, DApp is often subject to more restrictions of the public chain platform (for example, the payment of gas requires the use of public chain platform coins), but Chain has greater autonomy. Project parties can flexibly configure the environment and customize their business according to their own business needs.
For example, Chainlet’s charging model can be more flexible, with the option of using fiat currency, stablecoin, or even free of charge, which is getting closer and closer to the charging model of Web2.
Therefore, as the threshold for creating a chain becomes lower and lower, and Chain has significant advantages over DApps, more developers will choose the chain model to create projects in the future instead of using the DApp model.
If dYdX's migration from Ethereum to Cosmos and the creation of its own dYdX Chain marked the beginning of this trend, then Saga's explosive growth will undoubtedly make this trend clearer.
In addition, Saga not only hits the hot trend of modular blockchain, but also closely fits with GameFi, which will explode in this bull market. Saga is expected to stand out in these two major fields and become a leader in leading the development of the industry.
