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4 minutes read

Chain Relay Bonding Launch

Learn how you can help secure the Kadena Chain Relay by bonding KDA!

Today, the Kadena Chain Relay Bonding Program launches on Kadena Mainnet and is ready to accept bonders. This is an important first step to establish robust economic security for bridging activities like wrapping Ethereum tokens on Kadena. When the full bridge launches later this summer, bonders will operate software that proposes and endorses bridged data. Bonders are rewarded for their participation with fees in the form of an APY risk fee and a per-operation activity fee for operating the bridge. In this pre-launch phase however bonders will earn APY for establishing the initial economic security only.

How can I participate in bonding?

Bonders can participate in two ways: either by bonding the full amount on-platform and operating the relay software when launched, or working with delegation services.

Bonding on-platform

To bond on-platform, go to relay.chainweb.com to create a new bond. Bonds are fixed-size at 50,000 KDA. Initial participants can earn up to 30% APY with a 5 KDA activity fee. Your bond will be locked up for 30 days. After this period you will be eligible to receive rewards by renewing your bond for another 30 day period, or by unbonding after a 20-day cooldown period.

Relay Bonding App
Relay Bonding App

Bonding is easy!

  1. Simply connect your wallet to the KDA account with bonding funds.

  2. To create a new bond, you can use your KDA public key or supply a different one, hit the “+” button, and click “New Bond” to kick off the transaction signing process.

  3. When the transaction is done you will see your **bond name **in the “Result” field. The bond name is your KDA account plus the UTC date of your bond. Thus if your account is “abcd1234” and the date is July 2, your bond will be “abcd1234:2021–07–02”. We’ll be adding a bond explorer UI in the coming days, but for now keep track of your bond name.

  4. After your bond expires, you will type/paste the bond name into the “Unbond/Renew Bond” field to perform those actions.

Operating the Relay Software

The relay software is a small, automated application in the form of a Docker container. Operating the software is quite simple and when the bridge launches, we will provide full details on its configuration and deployment. For now, bonds initiated or renewed before bridge launch will earn APY in return for locking up funds, without needing to operate the software. After the bridge is launched the minimum activity requirement will be enforced for new or renewed bonds, so running the software will be required to receive fees.

Bonding with Delegation Services

Bonding participation will also be available via *delegation services *that allow different/smaller commitments, or not having to run the software, etc. CoinMetro will be launching delegation in early July.

Developer info for bridging data from Ethereum

Developers can get ready to bridge assets over from Ethereum by using the Chain Relay to validate header data. We’ll be publishing a Developer Deep Dive on this but you can already see live code of an example wrapper kERC on testnet! Check out the relay app as well at relay.chainweb.com to see how to automate the bridging process for your asset.

By Stuart Popejoy