On April 5, the 51st Binance Launchpool was opened. Two days later, 13.8 billion funds had participated, making Saga the largest Launchpool in Binance’s history.
So today we will take a look at who is Saga, the big shot that has enabled 185,800 people to come up with 13.8 billion yuan to participate in IEO in a short period of time.
I. Introduction
First, let’s look at the motivations behind the $13.8 billion in funding to participate in Binance Launchpool:
1. Get free chips
Token Name: Saga ($SAGA)
Initial circulation: 90,000,000 $SAGA (9% of the maximum token supply)
Total Token Supply: 1,000,000,000 $SAGA
Binance Launchpool Allocation: 45,000,000 $SAGA (50% of initial circulation)
From the perspective of token economy, the largest channel for SAGA to obtain free quotas is Binance. You only need to pledge BNB or FDUSD on the platform to share 45 million tokens for free. This is much lower risk than private placement. So if it were you, as long as you have some reserve funds, you would pledge here. The more you pledge, the more chips you get and the greater the rate of return.
(II) Payment chips
Private placement quotas may be difficult for many people in the cryptocurrency circle to access, but exchange IEOs are open to everyone.
If you happen to not have stablecoins, but only high-quality assets such as BTC or ETH, and you don’t want to exchange them for stablecoins for the time being, but you don’t want to miss this IEO, then you will need to use DeFi lending.
Binance's current annualized interest rate for stablecoin lending is 16.84%, and the average annualized rate of return for the first ten phases of Binance Launchpool is 116%. It is safe and problem-free to use the remaining two days for arbitrage.
2. Project Introduction
1. What is Saga?
Saga is a Layer 1 blockchain based on Cosmos, mainly targeting the gaming and entertainment fields, allowing developers to self-launch parallel and interoperable dedicated chains.
It uses the cosmos SDK to create an integrated modular infrastructure, borrowing its comprehensive toolset and SagaOS platform to introduce dedicated scalable blockchain Chainlets for deploying smart contracts.
Translated into adult language:
Saga wants to be an L1 of the application chain. Developers only need to pay a very low fee to create their own applications on the platform. Just like AWS, Alibaba Cloud, and Tencent Cloud of Web2. After paying the management fee, you can develop your own independent website, APP, entertainment platform, game platform, WeChat applet and other front-end work, and leave the back-end security, payment, data and other matters to the Saga platform.
Saga has developed its own proprietary blockchain Chainlets, on which developers no longer need to spend too much time deploying code. They can build applications on dedicated chains or small chains and only need to bear a small part of the deployment costs.
(II) Saga Service Analysis
If it weren’t for staking TIA for the Saga airdrop, many people might not know about the Saga project. As a Web3 infrastructure, Saga has provided automatic aggregation functions for Celestia for nearly a year.
The Saga protocol functions like a Dapp-specific service. In other words, Saga is an infrastructure for easily launching other blockchains, similar to WAS in the web2 world. Saga is a blockchain service provider.
In order to avoid too much technical content in this article, which would cause the article to be incomplete, I will first introduce Saga from the service level.
(1) Web3 Dapp development team, existing pain points
For blockchain developers, the first key issue to develop a Dapp is how can users interact smoothly in your Dapp, and how can your product attract players on different public chains?
If you want to bypass L2 with its not-very-secure multi-signature bridges and centralized sequencers, then as a developer you have two options:
Develop your own products into smart contracts and deploy them on L1;
Create your own blockchain from scratch
Using a single chain to solve the consensus, execution, settlement, DA and other aspects of the blockchain is called a single chain. Ethereum is the earliest and most successful single chain, and also the earliest L1. If you develop a smart contract and deploy it on L1, you will face a bad user experience such as network congestion and increased gas fees.
In the past few years, in order to solve various problems of smart contracts, developers have come up with various ways, such as modularization, multi-chain, application chain, etc. to solve the various drawbacks of L1. A commonly used solution now is the "application chain" theory.
Pioneered by Cosmos and subsequently followed by Polkadot, the idea behind this model is to build a dedicated blockchain for one application, which provides sovereignty and full customizability from blockchain to application compared to smart contract solutions.
This solution involves several important factors to consider, it requires managing the chain’s infrastructure, ensuring its own security, attracting validators, and designing a token economic model that can align the interests of validators, stakers, and application users.
To build a team that meets these factors, you need to recruit people such as:
Engineers with Golang experience who can leverage the Cosmos SDK;
Engineers with Rust experience are needed to extend smart contract functionality to the blockchain;
Researchers experienced in distributed consensus and light client architectures may also be needed to fully leverage the strengths of Tendermint Core and IBC;
In addition to the engineering requirements, a large number of validators need to be recruited to run independent nodes to support the blockchain.
……
Even if you have built a team of high-quality engineers, and they have spent seven or eight months to help you build your Dapp, and have recruited a large number of validators, there is no guarantee of success, for example:
Netflix’s servers crashed on the day of the launch, and the blockchain was halted due to technical issues;
Evmos — a blockchain network built on the Cosmos technology stack — collapsed within days of its launch due to a “serious security vulnerability”;
Osmosis — another Cosmos-based blockchain that sits at the center of IBC — was down for a few days due to a critical bug in its liquidity pools.
You see, if you haven’t made any money yet on a Dapp, you need to spend seven or eight months to build a team. Having a product doesn’t mean it’s successful, and you still need to do a lot of backend operation and maintenance work.
What if there is a service-type L1, that is, an "application chain", which has solved all kinds of problems that may be encountered in the backend? You only need to pay a part of the rental fee and build your product directly on its platform. It is as simple as building a personal website in AWS and building a WeChat applet on the WeChat public platform. You only need to do front-end operations. Isn’t it great?
(2) Saga is the AWS of Web3
Let's think back to Web2. The emergence of AWS makes it easier for Web2 companies to host Web applications. If you want to build various Web2 application terminals, such as e-commerce personal websites, web pages, apps, etc., you don't need to do too much backend work, nor do you need to build a computer room or server. You can build it directly on AWS. Users all over the world can log in to your terminal through email and become your consumers. Domestic SaaS platforms such as Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and Huawei Cloud also do similar things. You can build WeChat applets on Tencent and do live broadcasts in the applets...
Saga aspires to do the same for blockchain and Web3 projects. Saga’s technology is “chain to launch chains”. The Saga protocol functions like an application-specific blockchain as a service and is a key part of the infrastructure for automatically launching new blockchains.
In other words, Saga is a blockchain used to easily launch other blockchains, called "Chainlets" in the Saga ecosystem. Chainlets are protected by the Saga blockchain and its validators through a mechanism called Interchain Security, a well-known shared security system in Cosmos.
Chainlet launched by Saga is completely permissionless (Application Chain launched by Saga), and developers only need to pay the cost of setting up and maintaining Chainlet with $SAGA tokens to start Chainlet. This is similar to the services provided by AWS and other SaaS platforms, except that the subscription fee here is paid with SAGA tokens to create and maintain Chainlet.
To understand how to start a chain from Saga, let’s look at the following technical analysis:
3. Technical Analysis
Since many people say that my post is too long and contains too much technical content, making them dizzy after reading it, in order to alleviate your pain, we will focus on the key points of Saga technology.
Let’s take a look at how Saga has established itself as the Amazon Web Services (AWS) of Web3.
1. Technical Concept
Ethereum has developed into a very mature L1, capable of independently running core components in the blockchain, such as consensus, execution, settlement, DA, cross-chain communication, etc.
This is like the early PC era, when the CPU was the universal solution for all calculations, and all operations were performed by the CPU, such as Intel Pentium, Celeron (or AMD) and other processors. However, with the development of technology, people's demands for computer functions have become higher and higher, and various applications have been developed. If you listen to music, play games, or use QQ, your Pentium CPU will be overloaded and the computer will freeze...
Analogously to the blockchain, ETH is an integrated module that can do everything, so we will find that ETH transactions are sometimes very slow, sometimes an NFT may not arrive for several days, and there are serious delays in playing games on the chain. Is it also overload? If the computer is overloaded, it will crash. If the blockchain is overloaded, there will be problems such as extremely high gas fees and slow blockchain confirmation.
In the PC era, hardware engineers also thought of many ways to deal with the problem of insufficient CPU computing power, but crashes still occurred. Even if you used the most advanced i9, it would still crash if you used integrated modules. So later, additional dedicated modules outside the CPU appeared. For example, graphics and image applications would be pushed to the GPU, audio applications would be pushed to the sound card, and network loads would be pushed to the network card. These dedicated modules have undergone many improvements and iterations, and finally achieved standardization and commercialization.
Nowadays, applications on PCs are trying to be compatible with specialized modules on the market (such as graphics cards, sound cards, etc.). This is called a modular solution. Once these modular solutions are fully optimized and standardized, it is usually more effective to reintegrate them into a single software package. Most processors and SoCs found today are integrated products that can handle some combination of general computing, graphics computing, audio computing, and network computing.
Likewise, many modules of the modular blockchain architecture will be integrated to improve efficiency.
Once all block production components are moved off the mainnet, just like how CPUs integrate various computing modules into a single SoC for efficiency, future blockchain architectures will also integrate block production modules into a single module, all of which will be split and executed off the mainnet. Saga expects that off-mainnet DA, execution, and settlement logic can be reintegrated into a single component.
Saga builds an infinitely scalable architecture by modularizing the entire off-mainnet block production module and introducing the ability to automatically start these off-mainnet modules.
As shown in the figure below, in Saga's architecture, the main network is called Saga Platform Chain, and the block production component outside the main network is called Chainlet. After these prices are built, it is a new application chain. Developers only need to develop front-end applications on it and do not need to do too much post-computing and operation and maintenance work.
With the technical concept in mind, let's take a look at the technical architecture Saga uses to implement this process.
2. Technical framework
The Saga Realms framework allows developers to launch customizable features on Saga, such as technology stacks, security sources, and various obligations. Officials say that under the Realms framework, Saga can link 1,000 public chains. Let's take a look at how these are achieved:
Saga's components are divided into three items: Security Chain, Platform Chain and Chainlet. Security Chain and Platform Chain together constitute the Saga main network.
1、Security Chain
Security Chain is constructed using Cosmos-SDK and is one of the Saga mainnet operating modules. Saga nodes are deployed at this layer, and token minting, staking, and destruction are all carried out at this layer.
One of the challenges of deploying application-specific chains based on Cosmos is the complexity of how to protect the chain. Each application chain needs to collect validators, distribute staking tokens, and design a token mechanism that helps protect the chain. Saga removes this barrier to entry by using a shared security approach. Each Saga Chainlet is protected by the shared security of validators on the Saga mainnet.
Saga uses a model called "Optimistic Coordination", similar to the cross-chain staking used in Cosmos Hub version 1, to ensure the security of each Chainlet. On the Saga mainnet, each validator must verify the configuration of each Chainlet, and the validators reach a consensus on the configuration and maintenance of the Chainlet, including a series of SLAs (service level agreements) such as timely deployment, guaranteed computing power, shortest running time, honest participation in consensus, and inter-chain communication relay.
2、 Platform chain
The official words are: Platform chain is where developers start and maintain their Chainlets. Saga uses a modified version of Cosmos' original cross-chain verification CCV to achieve cross-chain verification of multiple security aggregation and forwarding.
This can realize the shared security capabilities mentioned above. If a malicious attack occurs in Chainlets, it will eventually be transferred back to the Security Chain through the Platform chain and confiscated.
In the future, the Saga Platform chain will receive security from other sources, such as our partners at Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and other stakers and validators.
3、Chainlet
Chainlet is a proprietary chain developed by Saga, which runs a single smart contract with a virtual machine module. It is the AWS service on Web3 mentioned above, which is an application chain for developer users.
Each Chainlet contains only the smart contracts that the developer or team wants to deploy on a single chain, so developers have a flexible and available development environment.
Issuing a project on Chainlet is as simple as deploying a smart contract. In principle, you can deploy applications on Chainlet after paying Saga tokens as service fees. However, Chainlet has built-in IBC. You can choose any token to pay for Gas, or you don’t have to pay for Gas (but you have to bear the node cost of the Security Chain).
Developers can use Chainlet components such as VM modules, SDKs, and Tendermint Core to upgrade independently of other applications and the Saga mainnet;
Saga supports other technology stacks besides Cosmos SDK and Tendermint, including Polygon Edge. Finally, Saga can also provide support for other technology stacks besides Cosmos SDK and Tendermint.
Background of the project
Saga was formerly known as Project Sagan. It was established at the end of 2021 and is an incubation project of Ignite (formerly known as Tendermint). Saga is one of the high-quality projects successfully incubated by Ignite.
Ignite is the developer behind Cosmos. IBC, SDK modules, and TypeScript of Cosmos are all completed by Ignite and its parent company. So it is not surprising that Saga uses many parts of Cosmos.
Token Allocation
In the first phase, $SAGA tokens are launched on the Saga security chain. The total supply of Saga is 1 billion tokens, distributed as follows:
Core Contributors (20%), tokens have a 3-year lock-up period, and a 1-year cliff lock-up period starting from TGE;
Private placement investment (20%), 10% has been allocated so far, and the remaining 10% will be used for future fundraising. Tokens have a 3-year lock-up period, and a 1-year cliff lock-up period starting from TGE;
Ecosystem and Development (30%)
Foundation Reserve (10%)
Airdrop (20%)
$SAGA tokens will be distributed to builders, stakers, holders, and end users who demonstrate useful behavior to the Saga ecosystem. The 20% allocation will be distributed across multiple phases:
6% of the total token supply will be airdropped in Phase 1, the TGE airdrop (60,000,000 tokens)
4% of the total token supply will be airdropped from Phases 2 to 6 (40,000,000 tokens);
10% of the total token supply will be airdropped through multiple airdrop events after Phase 6;
Online price estimate
According to the calculation of the previous BNB pool, the average annualized rate of return of the first ten periods is 116%. Assuming that the annualized rate of return of this mining is also 116%;
Based on 4 days of mining, the token price is 3.8 USDT
Based on the minimum yield of 48%, the guaranteed price is 1.5 USDT.
Based on the fair price, Saga's initial market capitalization is $342 million and its FDV is $3.8 billion;
Based on the guaranteed price, Saga's initial market value is US$135 million and its FDV is US$1.5 billion.
In summary, the reasonable opening price of Saga ($SAGA) token is between 2.5–4u. I think the opening price is likely to be above 3U. If it is lower than 3U, I might buy some depending on the situation.
Token prediction excerpt from BitWu:
