Welcome to the Core ($CORE) blockchain
What this article is and what it isn't
This post is meant to be a starting point for your journey learning about the Core blockchain. It's not meant to be a comprehensive guide, but rather a guide on how to get started. It will include a lot of links for further reading and research.
There's a lot of good material out there already and I am not looking to duplicate that but rather help you find it.
I am myself very early to Core so I'm still very much learning as I go. Please keep that in mind as you read this.
An Introduction To Core
I'm going to start with a quote directly from the Core Whitepaper Introduction section about naming conventions.
It's important to highlight as it can get a bit confusing otherwise as you move through the wealth of material that follows.
Naming Convention - For the sake of clarity, the name of the blockchain network and smart contract platform is “Core,” which can also be known as the “Core chain,” “Core blockchain,” “Core blockchain network,” or “Core network.” The “Core ecosystem” denotes the broader set of applications and protocols built on top of the Core chain. Core DAO is the decentralized autonomous organization responsible for the development of the Core blockchain ecosystem. The native token of the Core blockchain network is written as “CORE” or “$CORE”, with capital letters, to differentiate it from the “Core” network.
https://docs.coredao.org/core-white-paper-v1.0.5/introduction
The Whitepaper & Developer Docs
The place to start with Core is the whitepaper itself. It's not too technical but there is enough technical details in there for those looking to dig into the mechanisms at play.
Key here is that Core is leveraging Bitcoin for it's consensus mechanism BUT it's actually an EVM compatible chain NOT a Bitcoin compatible chain.
https://docs.coredao.org/core-white-paper-v1.0.5/
Core uses a hybrid system of both P0W (Proof of Work) and PoS (Proof of Stake), which uses DPoW (Delegated Proof of Work) and DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) to create what they call Santoshi Plus consensus (see https://docs.coredao.org/core-white-paper-v1.0.5/satoshi-plus-consensus)
It's a bit complex and does require careful reading but it's all explained well in the whitepaper (above) and in much greater technical in the developer docs (see below).
https://docs.coredao.org/developer/introduction/getting-started
In particular I want to highlight these couple of sections about the consensus mechanism from the whitepaper. At a high level this is how the $CORE token and the Bitcoin blockchain fit into the ecosystem.
Bitcoin Miners - Bitcoin miners secure the Bitcoin network via PoW, and can delegate their PoW to a Core validator by including certain information in the coinbase transaction of a block as it’s in the process of being mined. This delegation is non-destructive, meaning that they’re re-purposing their existing work, not choosing between securing Bitcoin and securing Core.
Relayers - Relayers transmit Bitcoin block headers to the Core network. Anyone can become a relayer by registering and locking up a refundable CORE deposit.
CORE Stakers - All holders of Core’s native CORE tokens are able to underwrite the network’s security by delegating their token holdings to a validator.
Verifiers - Verifiers are responsible for reporting malicious behaviors on the network. Successful verification flags may result in slashing a malicious validator’s rewards or stake, or by jailing them outright, and verifiers are compensated for this monitoring activity when block rewards are dispensed. Anyone can act as a verifier on the Core network.
https://docs.coredao.org/core-white-paper-v1.0.5/satoshi-plus-consensus/major-components-roles-and-workflows
I'm not go into any more detail apart to recommend you also read their Medium blog as it summarises a lot of the mechanisms at play and will give you a great overview of the project's progress so far.
https://medium.com/@core_dao
I'm going to be recommending blogs posts from here later on as good guides to getting started with various components in the ecosystem.
https://www.coredao.org/
Getting onto Core
The best way to learn anything is to get your hands dirty and do it.
Getting onto Core is fairly straight forward but I'll let you in on a few tips and tricks I learned the hard way (so you don't have to!).
Head to the Ecosystem page on Core DAO to see all the ways you can onboard to Core and stuff you can do on there.
We are going to be entering via the LayerZero bridge with Metamask.
https://www.coredao.org/explore/ecosystem
Add Core Blockchain Mainnet to your Metamask wallet https://chainlist.org/?search=core
Head to the Core Bridge (powered by LayerZero) and bridge funds to Core.
In this example you can see I've bridged USDC from Optimism to Core.
Don't worry about not have $CORE for gas fees on Core. As per the bridge FAQs (below) as long as you get some $CORE allocated to your wallet as long as you bridge more than $10 USD in value.
DO NOT USE IceCreamSwap to swap your tokens. Especially not USDC. It has very low liquidity at the moment and as a result I had to use up to 5% slippage to get a trade through.
USDT is better but still not a lot liquidity over there.
SushiSwap has much more liquidity so if you're doing swaps from USDC (or any other stables) I recommend going there.
So I'm on Core... What now?
Honestly? There's not that much to do yet on Core. It is pretty early. But being early is often very advantageous as we've seen time and time again in this space.
You have a chance to be an early user of key apps in the ecosystem so use this opportunity
to explore and try some things out.
Go to Core DAO and join up to their Discord and their social channels.
Have a a look through the ecosystem apps page.
Here's what I did on Core
Core have just recently released LSTs. You find them at https://stake.coredao.org/stcore
See the blog post announcing them for more details https://medium.com/@core_dao/launching-liquid-staking-on-core-introducing-stcore-657171f52a9f
I've stake a bit of my $CORE into $stCORE. No defi partnerships yet, but I imagine those won't be far away one should think.
Bear in mind there is a 7 day unstake period if you do convert to $stCORE (which is fairly common on PoS blockchains).
Obviously some $stCORE/$CORE LPs won't be far away for this reason.
Core have just launched their governance on Snapshot (see? Told you it's super early).
Only $CORE is counted towards voting at this stage (I have asked about using $stCORE instead on the Discord as the 7 day unlock will protect voting to a degree).
More about this from the announcement post here https://medium.com/@core_dao/core-governance-how-to-cast-your-vote-8a9988054779
I was going to do some LPs but IceSwapSwap was weird and didn't recognise some of my token amounts and SushiSwap was all V3 pools and I am horrible at maintaining them (I get wiped out so regularly when I try I have given up trying).
I found a lending protocol on Core called Aquarius Loan through their token $ARS https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/aquarius-loan/ which had some of the highest liquidity in the LPs on SushiSwap after the stablecoin/$CORE pairs and also some of the highest trading volume.
Check out their socials and Discord for further information about them.
I staked some $ARS in their single sided vault. Minimum stake period is 12 weeks.
I also staked in their LP staking tool. It's all on rails for you which is pretty sweet.
They'll make the LP for you out of your $CORE balance and then you can stake it for 1-12 months (for increasing rewards) and manage it right there in the dashboard as it unlocks and rewards are earned.
I locked for 12 months. It wasn't much money and I'm keen to see how this plays out. I'm mostly in this to learn though.
I wouldn't recommend locking any significant amounts of money here as it's a very new protocol on a very new chain.
And that was about all I could find to do. I expect there'll be more coming soon. I'm looking forward to engaging more in the community on the Discord and on their other socials.
Over to you
Have you played around on Core?
What do you think about how they integrate Bitcoin? Good idea or overly complicated?
Maybe you were one of the very early $CORE stakers (non LST). I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments if you were!
