ABOUT
ORBS
Combining scalability, low fees and isolation between virtual chains with a top-grade developer experience, online IDE and smart contracts in familiar languages, Orbs provides developers the perfect mix of performance, cost, security and ease of use.
Orbs is a public blockchain infrastructure designed for mass usage applications and close integration with EVM-based L1’s such as Ethereum and Binance SmartChain. Unlike private and permissioned blockchain solutions typically used for such applications, the Orbs infrastructure is open and permissionless. The Orbs protocol is decentralized and executed by a public network of permissionless validators using Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus. The Orbs protocol relies on the ORBS token used for the settlement of fees related to app execution and provides the system of incentives used to elect validators (who are referred to as “Guardians”) in a secure and decentralized manner.
SERVERLESS CLOUD FOR APP DEVELOPERS
The Orbs platform is a decentralized serverless cloud allowing developers to build backend services (applications) that are then deployed to be executed by the Orbs Gurdians. The main offerings of the platform include compute under consensus (execution of “smart contracts”) and storage under consensus.
Applications running on public blockchain are unique in their ability to facilitate trust by providing blockchain-backed guarantees to their users. Whereas many popular public blockchain solutions like Ethereum are designed primarily for purely decentralized applications (dapps), Orbs expands the offerings of public blockchains by also supporting permissioned applications developed by existing for-profit businesses.
The Orbs project is currently focused primarily on DeFi applications, where Orbs’ independent consensus layer can be used to enrich DeFi contracts on EVM-based L1’s such as Ethereum - where most existing liquidity in DeFi resides. For example, consider an EVM-based DeFi vault where external Guardians act as oracles over EVM data and allow EVM contracts to make external decisions that are impossible to implement in the EVM alone.
Orbs offers the winning blockchain stack, providing the perfect mix of performance, cost, security and ease of use, while harnessing the power of community, decentralization and distribution.
COMPLETE BLOCKCHAIN STACK
The Orbs project includes a full blockchain stack designed and implemented from scratch by the core team, and is not a fork of any existing solution. The project is active on open source with about 150 repositories publicly available on Github.
The codebase provides an end-to-end developer experience with everything needed to create and execute blockchain applications including:
Founded in 2017, Orbs is being developed by a dedicated team of more than 30 people out of its offices in Tel Aviv, Israel, London, UK, Singapore, Tokyo, Japan, and Seoul, South Korea. Orbs was named Gartner's “Cool Vendor in Blockchain Technology” for 2018.
London, Uk
Tel Aviv, Israel
Tokyo, Japan
Singapore
Seoul, South Korea
TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION
Orbs developed a set of advanced technologies to make its vision possible: Virtual Chains, PoS over Ethereum, Cross-Chain Interoperability, Smart Contracts in Any Language, Non-Deterministic Execution and Web Oracles and Off-Chain Interoperability.
Virtual Chains - application and businesses have the option to operate their own virtual chain, with all decisions made by stakeholders of that specific application, while still running on top of a shared physical infrastructure. Each virtual chain maintains its own separate chain of blocks, state, and runs its own concurrent instance of consensus. All Orbs Guardians run all virtual chains in parallel, making the permissionless pool of Guardians completely shared and staked across the full network. This provides applications with the security and decentralization of the entire network while maintaining a strong degree of independence.
PoS over Ethereum - Orbs is designed as a hybrid blockchain, maintaining both an independent blockchain and PoS architecture, as well as utilizing the Ethereum network as an external objective blockchain for the PoS logic. ORBS token, staking, delegation and voting operate over Ethereum contracts. This PoS over Ethereum architecture provides multiple advantages, including a high level of transparency, ease of subscription payments and staking, additional security and ensuring the integrity of elections.
Cross-chain Interoperability - Orbs smart contracts provide seamless cross-chain access to Ethereum state under consensus, thus allowing applications to read the Ethereum state directly using the above mechanism. This allows applications running on Orbs to leverage the power of Ethereum directly without leaving the platform. An example of this technology is autonomous swap, a secure mechanism that allows developers to move part of the base-layer assets (ex: ERC-20 tokens) to run on Orbs for their utility while keeping other parts on the base-layer for trade.
Smart Contracts In Any Language - Orbs pioneers the paradigm of smart contracts as a library in any language, like Go and JavaScript, instead of dedicated languages like Solidity. This flexibility allows existing teams to transition to blockchain development and existing tools and libraries to be reused. Smart contracts are deployed on-chain as source code, making them easier to read and thus safer, and compiled locally on-demand by Guardians. Implementation challenges include efficient sandboxing and dealing with non deterministic outputs that cannot undergo consensus.
Non-Deterministic Execution - Since execution engines of standard languages are not deterministic in nature (eg. heap addresses), dealing with non-determinism is a core requirement of the platform. Starting from fail-safe mechanisms in the consensus algorithm itself for failing transactions where consensus is impossible, to APIs defining acceptable thresholds for consensus when the results for each Guardian differ (while storing each Guardian’s result for future audit), the Orbs Network employs a variety of methods for solving these issues.
Web Oracles and Off-Chain Interoperability - Providing non-determinism as a feature opens up new use cases for smart contracts such as accessing web oracles and off-chain data that isn’t straightforward to access under consensus. The benefits are clear, as many real-world applications require the ability to interoperate with existing systems or databases that are not on-chain. Native support for direct query of external data by Guardian nodes makes reliance on dedicated oracle nodes, that often become the weak links in the system, obsolete.
Orbs Ltd. has applied for patents for certain of its technological innovations, including: its system and method for decentralized management of private cryptographic keys, decentralized key generation over blockchain and method for blockchain accesselartion by stateless valdiation.
PROOF-OF-STAKE ECOSYSTEM
The Orbs PoS Universe is the backbone of the Orbs network and the Universe that is being created. Orbs’ current PoS model - “Orbs Universe V2.5: The Age of Guardians”, empowers the Orbs Universe Guardians to take an active role in building and maintaining a secure, scalable network, that will be the first choice for blockchain adoption. In V2.5, the POS ecosystem is centered around two core roles – Guardians and Delegators. Their roles are as follows:
Below are some of the main key features of the updated V2.5 Orbs PoS Universe:
Rewards, Fees &
Bootstrap Fund
Guardian Validator
Nodes Streamlining
Minimum Self
Delegation
Election
Committees
Revamped Delegation
Mechanism
In response to the recent surges in the value of ETH, V2.5 includes updates to address the rise in gas prices. Inspired by state of the art contract design patterns that are gaining popularity in yield farming contracts, the team designed a new architecture for reward distribution. Among other things, V2.5 optimizes gas costs by ensuring that reward distribution will be done on an ongoing basis by the protocol directly to both Guardians and Delegators, rather than in multiple transactions.
The proof-of-stake system was also updated in 2020 to provide for a locking period of 14 days for all staked tokens, which improves the network's security and performance.
The PoS ecosystem hit a major milestone in 2020, reaching over 1 Billion Orbs Tokens locked in the staking contract.
For additional information about Orbs’ PoS ecosystem, please see the following links:
After completing the primary development work on V2 of the Orbs mainnet in August 2020, Orbs announced a shift in focus to DeFi for the near future, since DeFi has become one of the most successful use-cases for decentralized infrastructure. We see a lot of potential for Orbs to interact with the DeFi space, as it is an ERC20 token that can be integrated easily with other Ethereum-based DeFi projects, while providing variety to the DeFi space as one of the few proof-of-stake blockchain tokens running on Ethereum. With our recent launch of a bridge to Binance SmartChain via multichain.xyz, the potential for integration with the BSC wing of the DeFi world is even greater.
As a result of the above, currently the Orbs project is focused on ways to leverage the unique features of Orbs and its potential to expand on the limitations of the EVM, as well as its unique interconnection with the Ethereum ecosystem, to develop and create value for DeFi. The primary goal is furthering the integration between Orbs to EVM-compatible chains such as Ethereum and BSC - as these are the chains that hold most liquidity in the market today.
For more on the thought process behind this shift, see Orbs technical Co-founder Tal Kol’s blog posts -
ORBS GRANT PROGRAM
In August 2020, the Orbs team announced the Orbs Ecosystem Grant Program (OEGP), which is intended to involve even more developers and teams in the development of the Orbs ecosystem.
Any team or individual can submit a proposal to receive a grant for DeFi projects that may integrate with Orbs ecosystem. Such projects include among others: Liquidity pools, collateral-backed loans, oracles, and more. Once submitted, the Orbs team will evaluate the proposal and approved applications will have the means to carry out their project in collaboration with the Orbs team.
The first grant under the OEGP was announced in October 2020, which will be in the field of liquidity provisioning and liquidity pools.
One grant recipient, Paradigm, has launched an Orbs Defi Portal explaining the current available ways to interact between Orbs and the world of DeFi: https://blog.orbsdefi.com/.
In January 2021, the Orbs team announced that it was teaming up with Binance, the global blockchain company behind the world’s largest digital asset exchange, to promote innovation in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space by serving as the first core sponsors of the DeFi.org accelerator, which bootstraps new projects and DeFi protocols.
The DeFi.org Accelerator is dedicated to supporting research, development of open-source software, and community engagement. The accelerator looks for projects that are built on the principles of fair distribution, community ownership, innovation, responsible approach to risk, sustainable economics and composability with the broader ecosystem.
Participants get a variety of benefits, including mentorship, funding opportunities, and market exposure. In addition, DeFi.org Accelerator participants will receive special consideration if they apply to participate in Binance’s seed fund for Bridging DeFi and CeFi or receive a grant under the Orbs Grant Program.
In the first months since the accelerator started its work, it received many applications. Many of the projects presented a strong and motivated team, as well as some great ideas and innovations in the DeFi space. The DeFi.org Accelerator has already chosen its first batch of participants, with three companies (Benchmark Protocol, Peanut and Tozex) being chosen to participate.
Orbs Liquidity Nexus
Utilizing our expertise in bridging the gaps between the centralized world and the new decentralized one, Orbs recently introduced the concept of the Orbs Liquidity Nexus. The Orbs Liquidity Nexus creates a pathway for CeFi-sourced liquidity to enter DeFi by matching their capital denominated in stablecoins to that of crypto natives denominated in more volatile cryptocurrencies, and combining those to engage in yield farming strategies that neither would be able to access on their own.
This project, and other similar ideas that could be developed on Orbs, have the potential to both solve many of the obstacles currently facing the broader world of DeFi as it expands, while also bringing significant value and usage to the Orbs Network itself.
For more detail on the Orbs Liquidity Nexus and the vision of single-sided farming, see the following blog posts:
Orbs on Binance Smart Chain
The ORBS token is now available on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and can be swapped from the Ethereum mainnet to the BSC mainnet and back. This integration is a result of work done by multichain.xyz utilizing the cross-chain bridge infrastructure they have developed. The multichain.xyz platform is based on Anyswap SMPC Network and is jointly developed by the Anyswap team and yearn.finance (YFI) founder Andre Cronje.
Tools
Transperancy
Orbs recently added several tools to enable Orbs Universe participants to track and analyze token and PoS activity
Orbs PoS Universe
Analytic
Orbs information is now easily accessible on the Ethereum Naming Service
500 Terry Francois Street,
San Francisco,
CA 94158
A development kit for setting an AWS instance with gamma server and prism may also be downloaded from AWS marketplace:
Tetra has now also been made available through a variety of other platforms, enabling the community to stake with even greater ease, including:
All code used in the Orbs Network is open source and is
located at https://github.com/orbs-network.
Community Console
Since the beginning of 2021, there has been an ongoing major expansion of the project’s ecosystem. The current ecosystem includes these major components:
Ecosystem Expansion
Founders
Orbs currently has approximately 30 team members worldwide.
Tal Kol
co-founder and director
Tal co-founded Appixia, a mobile app startup acquired by Wix.com, and was Wix.com Head of Mobile Engineering. He is an expert in blockchain consumer applications, and former Head of Engineering in Kin by Kik Interactive. Tal is an open source enthusiast, contributor to the React ecosystem and conference speaker. He holds BSc summa cum laude in Computer Engineering from the Technion and is a veteran of an elite section of the IDF 8200 unit.
Daniel Peled
co-founder, director and president
Daniel was the co-founder and CEO at PayKey, an Israeli Fintech startup with investors such as MasterCard and Santander InnoVentures. He is also a veteran member of the Israeli Bitcoin community and the first person in Israel to ICO a blockchain company. Daniel holds a LL.M and BS in Economics.
Netta Korin
co-founder and director
Netta served as Sr. Advisor to Gen. Mordechai on special projects in the Ministry of Defense, and as Sr. Advisor to Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Dr. Michael Oren in the Prime Minister’s Office. Netta currently chairs IMPACT! one of the largest scholarship programs in Israel, which has helped produce over 7,000 graduates and 4,000 students in Israel. For over 15 years Netta has served on multiple boards in Israel and America, holding high level positions in Executive Committees.
Uriel Peled
co-founder and advisor
Uriel was a key advisor for several notable crypto projects and was named one of Israel’s top 25 blockchain influencers. Prior to Orbs, Uriel co-founded Visualead, an AR/VR startup that was acquired by Alibaba. He is a former team leader at Mellanox, a leading Israeli high-tech company. Uriel holds a BSc summa cum laude in Electrical Engineering from the Technion. Uriel stepped down from his active full-time role at Orbs in February 2020 to build a digital asset investment management firm, Moment Capital, and is currently serving as an advisor to the Orbs project.
Orbs Leadership
Nadav Shemesh
Chief Executive Officer
Nadav was previously Professional Advisor to the Minister of Finance in Israel, responsible for reforms, policy and execution in the Finance & High Tech sector. Prior to that he was Deputy CEO of Babylon Software. Before his business career, Nadav was an F16 Pilot in the IAF. He has a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from Tel Aviv University. His philanthropic activities have included teaching physics for graduation exams in a low-income high school.
Ran Hammer
General Counsel and Corporate Development
Ran currently leads Corporate Development, Marketing and Communities for Orbs as well as being in charge of Legal and Compliance.
Prior to joining Orbs and after specializing as a corporate lawyer in the fields of high-tech, venture capital and cross border M&A, Ran founded the blockchain, cryptocurrency and digital coin practice in GKH Law Offices and was established as one of Israel’s leading blockchain law practitioners. Ran holds an LL.B. summa cum laude from the University of Haifa.
Nechama Ben Meir
Chief Financial Office
Nechama has over 20 years of experience in senior financial and operational positions in the Israeli high-tech industry. She was Head of Accounting and Taxes at CheckPoint, responsible for the company’s global financial operations, and before that, CFO & COO at Crescendo Networks Ltd. and Director of Finance at Radware. In her spare time, Nechama is involved in activities improving the position of women in society.
Token Name and Symbol
Orbs Token; ORBS
Token Supply: 10,000,000,000
Token Type: ERC-20
Token Contract Address: 0xff56cc6b1e6ded347aa0b7676c85ab0b3d08b0fa
Primary use of token:
As the native token for the network, the Orbs platform relies on the ORBS Token to fuel network operation and provide the means to pay the fees involved with operation of the consensus layer, execution of smart contracts and consensus-based storage, which are the three primary services provided by the platform. ORBS Tokens can also be used to participate in the network’s proof-of-stake ecosystem.
20%
Team
(vesting over 36 months from TDE)
5%
Advisors
(vesting over 12 months from TDE)
20%
Private Token Sale
(no Vesting/lockup)
ORBS Token
Name: Orbs Token; Symbol: ORBS
Token Supply: 10,000,000,000
Token Type: ERC-20
Token Contract Address: 0xff56cc6b1e6ded347aa0b7676c85ab0b3d08b0fa
Primary use of token:
As the native token for the network, the Orbs platform relies on the ORBS Token to fuel network operation and provide the means to pay the fees involved with operation of the consensus layer, execution of smart contracts and consensus-based storage, which are the three primary services provided by the platform. ORBS Tokens can also be used to participate in the network’s proof-of-stake ecosystem.
20%
Team
(vesting over 36 months from TDE)
5%
Advisors
(vesting over 12 months from TDE)
20%
Private Token Sale
(no Vesting/lockup)
For additional details (including wallet addresses for each of the pools), see here:
https://www.orbs.com/orbs-token-distribution/.
As of May 10, 2021, 2,551,987,055 Orbs Tokens have been released from the initial pools.
Exchange Listings:
The ORBS Tokens are currently listed on FTX, KuCoin, Gate.io, Bittrex International, Upbit, Bithumb, OKex, Coinone, IndoDax, Coinsbit, P2PB2B, BHEX, bibox and Huobi Korea.