Gelato H1 2023 Roadmap

Throwback to 2022

In 2022, Gelato experienced a surge in adoption by leading web3 projects such as MakerDAO, Optimism and more, which culminated in the project acquiring 78% market share in the decentralized smart contract automation market. With over 4 million transactions executed and over 3,000 unique addresses using Gelato, the need for a decentralized backend for web3 projects is more apparent than ever before.

Despite the market downturn, Gelato remains very well capitalized, with usage continuing to increase, and we have carved a clear path to network decentralization and sustainability.

As we move into 2023, Gelato is poised to make even more exciting advancements.

Despite notable advancements, web3 is still a long way from fulfilling its promise to democratize the internet. Some of the key hindrances to mass adoption are:

1. Complicated onboarding processes that prevent new users from entering web3
2. Isolation of blockchains from the rest of the digital world, limiting the features and thus the use cases that projects offer to users
3. Projects compromising on decentralization & trustlessness to provide a better onboarding and user experience

The first problem exists because the current web3 UX is too complex for most users. To use web3 apps, they have to buy crypto, create a wallet, write down a seed phrase, and more before they can even start to interact with the application itself.

Secondly, EVM blockchains like Ethereum were designed to be entirely deterministic, meaning that if you replayed the entire history of the network locally on your computer, it should always end up with the same state. As the rest of the internet is non-deterministic and evolves over time, this makes it inherently incompatible with public blockchains.

Gelato’s mission as web3’s decentralized backend is to accelerate the adoption of web3, and with it, the democratization of the web. In an effort to achieve this, we are building the infrastructure that enables developers to create augmented smart contracts that are automated, gasless & off-chain aware without sacrificing on decentralization and censorship resistance.

With this missing infrastructure, developers will be fully equipped to onboard the first billion users to web3 by offering them a superior UX and a new generation of off-chain aware applications.

Our roadmap for the first half of 2023 focuses on cementing Gelato as web3’s core decentralized backend by focusing on 3 key areas: utility, usability, and user experience.

Roadmap TL;DR

1. Web3 Functions - Setting a new standard for usability for web3

Web3 Functions enable projects to augment their smart contracts by accessing off-chain data and computation, providing a means for projects to connect their smart contracts to the rest of the internet using decentralized serverless computation. Developers can build more robust and trust minimized web3 applications. Find out more here.

2. Gasless Wallet SDK - Providing a web2-like UX with account abstraction

Our upcoming Gasless Wallet SDK provides developers with the tools to onboard the first billion users to web3 by completely abstracting away the complexities of blockchains. This powerful SDK consists of Gelato Relay, smart contract wallet (i.e. Safe), and a user-friendly onboarding solution. Find out more here.

3. $GEL Staking & Network Decentralization - Delivering on utility

Gelato Node operators will soon be required to stake $GEL to participate in the network and provide off-chain computation and transaction execution services. In return, they will receive a share of the network’s revenue, increasing decentralization and enhancing data integrity and availability for users.

Web3 Functions

Web3 Functions (formerly known as “Off-Chain Resolvers”) offer a new way for developers to augment their smart contracts with off-chain data and computation.

Similar to how web3 projects currently run cloud functions on centralized services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud, developers will be able to run Web3 Functions on Gelato, call arbitrary APIs to fetch data, enforce custom data integrity rules and run computation on the data.

Web3 Functions can be combined with Gelato Automate to allow transactions to be automatically executed on over 12 different EVM blockchains based on this off-chain computation.

Common use cases for Web3 Functions include the ability to access:

• Data from subgraphs (e.g. Opensea, Aave, Uniswap)
• Trading data providers (e.g. Coingecko, Coinmarketcap)
• Self-hosted databases
• Decentralized storage solutions like IPFS
• State on other blockchain networks

Web3 Functions allow developers to connect their web3 apps to real-world, trust-minimized data which enhances the user experience and enables them to build powerful and sophisticated apps without sacrificing decentralization.

Join our private beta here to be among the first to test Web3 Functions.

Gasless Wallet SDK

Our Gasless Wallet SDK streamlines the process of building web3 apps that can onboard the first billion users to web3, offering a seamless experience for all users.

With this in mind, the SDK includes gasless transactions, in-wallet automation, credit card payments and more user-friendly features.

Gelato’s Gasless Wallet SDK brings the benefits of Account Abstraction to users on all chains, along with advanced gas sponsoring and payment systems designed for the multichain environment! To provide users with the most battle-tested smart contract wallet, we have partnered with Safe. This partnership unlocks a whole new set of powerful features for web3 users, as they can use Safe as their primary account instead of storing their assets in Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs).

Smart contract wallets are special due to their programmability, allowing builders to extend the wallet’s functionalities and sponsor transactions for their users, enabling NFT purchases using a credit card and more. To learn more about Account Abstraction check out our tweet thread.

By combining a decentralized relay service, smart contract wallet, and user-friendly onboarding functionality, we can enable Account Abstraction out of the box. This is a key step in furthering adoption of smart contract wallets as the primary accounts for projects.

Our Gasless Wallet SDK will help frontend developers access the following features:

• A smart contract wallet (Gnosis Safe)
• Gasless transactions out of the box using Gelato
• A simpler way to sponsor users’ transactions using the 1Balance multichain relay payment system
• A social login option using (Facebook, Google) for users to sign up and connect to Ethereum accounts without having to remember private keys
• In-wallet automation for improved UX and security

This eliminates the need for users to send transactions, pay for gas and remember private keys, making web3 adoption easier than ever!

$GEL Staking v0.1 & Decentralization

Gelato was built to be a self-sufficient, decentralized network of Node Operators that augment the missing functionalities of public blockchains, including smart contract automation, gasless transaction relaying and access to off-chain data. The more projects utilize Gelato for computation, transactions and onboarding new users into web3, the more revenue the network generates from charging network service fees.

In 2023, the network will finally realize this vision by allowing Gelato Node Operators to stake their GEL in order to participate in the network. By doing so, Gelato Node Operators earn fees by providing off-chain computation resources and executing transactions.

In order to access this revenue, Node Operators bearing the cost of providing these services are compensated in stablecoins (e.g. USDC) and network tokens (e.g. ETH) from web3 projects that use Gelato. To increase the work allocation and revenue generation, they must increase their GEL stake in the staking contract. The more GEL they stake, the higher their share of the total revenue pool. Thus, as the network revenue of Gelato increases with more projects using its services, more node operators will stake GEL to join the network and turn a profit. All node operators must continuously acquire and increase their GEL stake to retain their proportion of the increasing network revenue. If they act maliciously by running computation that does not adhere to the protocol, they will be penalized by having their staked GEL slashed.

For now, the Gelato DAO will still have to whitelist each new Node Operator before they can stake GEL and participate in the network. Our ultimate goal is to enable Node Operators to stake their GEL tokens without the need for approval from the Gelato DAO.

In future, more GEL token holders will be able to participate in the network through methods such as stake delegation, where non-Node Operators can delegate their GEL to Node Operators in exchange for a portion of their revenue. Our first step towards this, GEL token staking v0.1, is set to launch in H1 2023 and will establish the foundation for Gelato to become the unstoppable decentralized backend of web3.

More information around staking will be available soon.

Gelato is a Web3 Cloud Platform empowering developers to create automated, gasless, and off-chain-aware Layer 2 chains and smart contracts. Over 400 web3 projects rely on Gelato for years to facilitate millions of transactions in DeFi, NFTs, and gaming.

• Gelato RaaS: Deploy your own tailor-made ZK or OP L2 chains in a single click with native Account Abstraction and all Gelato middleware baked in.

• Web3 Functions: Connect your smart contracts to off-chain data & computation by running decentralized cloud functions.

• Automate: Automate your smart contracts by executing transactions automatically in a reliable, developer-friendly & decentralized manner.

• Relay: Give your users access to reliable, robust, and scalable gasless transactions via a simple-to-use API.

• Account Abstraction SDK: Gelato has partnered with Safe, to build a fully-fledged Account Abstraction SDK, combining Gelato's industry's best gasless transaction capabilities, with the industry's most secure smart contract wallet.

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