Architecture
ClayMain
ClayMain upgradable contract (aka ClayMatic for MATIC or ClayGraph for GRT) is the core contract that acts as a liquid staking pool aggregator. It is responsible for token deposits, minting and burning liquid staking tokens (csTokens), staking/unstaking funds to the validating nodes and applying fees.
On a regular basis an off-chain service calls the public method autobalance triggering the staking of funds into the validating nodes. Any contract or user can call this method.
Exchange Rate
The exchange rate of the underlying token to csToken (e.g. MATIC to csMATIC) is calculated as the total amount of tokens (deposits + rewards) divided by the supply of csTokens. The value of the csToken will increase over time with respect to the base token.
On some chains, where slashing is enabled, a particular validator may be penalized due to missing validation checkpoints or misbehaviour, and thus a portion of the staked funds on that given validator is slashed. This will in turn cause the exchange rate to decrease.
Rewards
As the staking rewards are distributed to the validators, ClayMain will account for such rewards, while a percentage will be transferred to the ClayStack treasury in accordance to the current fees.
Flash Exit & Liquidity Pool
As part of the staking process, the contract will reserve a portion of the funds to act as a liquidity pool, thus enabling the feature "Flash Exit". During a Flash Exit transaction, no unstaking from the validating nodes takes place, instead funds come directly from the contract's token balance.
Nodes
Nodes are pre-approved by ClayStack as trusted validators. Their selection is based on their performance record validating transactions, their fees and their SLA.
csToken
csToken is a standard non-upgradable ERC20 token. At deployment time, ownership is set to ClayMain, and thus ClayMain is the only contract or entity allowed to mint and burn csTokens.
RoleManager
The protocol implements Openzeppelin's AccessControl contract to determine roles and limit access on methods to ClayMain. The roles implemented are:
TIMELOCK_UPGRADES_ROLE: Role to upgrade ClayMain through a TimeLock contract
TIMELOCK_ROLE: Role to execute ClayMain operations functions through a TimeLock contract
CS_SERVICE_ROLE: Role to execute daily operations on ClayMain without the need of TimeLock
TimeLock
Implements Openzeppelin's TimelockController to introduce time delay on some given functions in ClayMain.