A Beginner’s Guide to Oasis

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Oasis Foundation

16 min readMay 17, 2021

Welcome to Oasis! We are building the future of data privacy on the blockchain, and enabling a world where data is used securely, fairly and responsibly. Since our inception, the Oasis ecosystem has quickly grown to include a number of essential pillars and moving parts, so we created this guide for anyone interested in understanding what Oasis is and how to interact with our technology and community. This guide is for privacy advocates, potential partners, developers, new contributors, interested community members, marketers, and anyone else interested in seeing how our innovative blockchain solutions are changing the world.

In this guide you’ll learn about how Oasis started, how our technology works, how to contribute to our ever-growing community and so much more. And you can consider this a living, breathing guide that’s constantly kept up to date, so you’ll always have the most relevant information on Oasis.

Before we get started, here’s a quick snapshot of what is covered in this guide.

The Basics of Oasis
The Technology
The ROSE Token
Oasis in the Real World
Fostering Innovation
Why Oasis Will Succeed
The Path Ahead
Want To Get More Technical?
Learn More About Oasis and Stay Connected

The Basics of Oasis

It all started when our founder Dawn Song, envisioned a new paradigm where true data privacy could exist online in a secure way, and where people could control their data responsibly while having the option to extract monetary value from it. Then in 2018, Dawn founded Oasis Labs, where the foundational work for the Oasis Network was laid. In an interview with the New York Times Dawn describes a critical part of Oasis mission by saying, “As we talk about data as the new oil, it’s particularly important to develop technologies that can utilize data in a privacy-preserving way.”

We believe that data should be viewed as property and that it can propel the global economy in ways the world has never seen — however our data is also more at risk than ever before. So the Oasis Network was born to change the status quo of how things are done in the crypto space and on the web, and the Oasis team driven by this vision has built the protocol to bring this mission to life and empower our users.

The Oasis Network

For starters, Oasis is a Layer 1 privacy-first proof-of-stake decentralized network. It is a privacy-enabled, scalable blockchain built for decentralized finance and a responsible, user-owned data economy.

The main shortcomings with most blockchain solutions are their high fees, low throughput, and the lack of privacy, so the Oasis Network is built to include:

A high level of scalability and low gas fees.
Advance privacy features that allow us to work with DeFi and more sensitive data that is encrypted for example.
Token monetization.

What you often see out there in the crypto space is that most projects go head on with Ethereum by trying to offer a general-purpose alternative to what they do, however we see things much differently. What Oasis offers is a real alternative to existing solutions, which is confidentiality and decentralization combined into one, and we believe there are a plethora of use cases, such as tokenization of sensitive information and privacy enabled DeFi, that can only happen when you approach things the way we do at Oasis.

Oasis is also Ethereum compatible, as our ParaTime is designed with support for EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and has support for the entire solidity toolchain but with better performance and lower gas fees than Ethereum.

Our technology is already being used in the real world by the likes of Binance, Google, BMW and many others, and later in this guide, we’ll jump into some exciting use cases. First, though, it’s important that you get a high-level view of our entire ecosystem, as this will help you better understand how Oasis works, and it will also give you a clear understanding of how you can get involved with us.

Who or What Makes Up the Oasis Ecosystem?

Our ecosystem is vast and includes a number of critical moving parts. So in this section, we’ll describe each part and how it fits into the big picture of Oasis.

The Oasis Network — Designed for the next generation of blockchain, the Oasis Network is the first privacy-enabled blockchain platform for open finance and a responsible data economy. Our blockchain integrates with a number of wallets, DeFi applications, node operators and much more.
ROSE Token — The ROSE token is used to fuel the Oasis Network — and that includes all transactions, staking, and delegation. If you’re interested in learning more about the ROSE token and staking them to help secure the network and earn rewards, we’ve got a handy staking guide right here to help you get started.
Oasis Labs — This is one of earliest contributors and it’s where much of the core development of the Oasis Network took place. The Oasis Labs team also spearheads the creation of our products like SDKs, as well as performing network upgrades and so much more.
The Oasis Foundation — The goal of the Oasis Foundation is to empower the ecosystem around the Oasis Network. The Oasis Foundation’s main activities include, supporting and bringing people together to build vibrant and creative communities, facilitating and funding various community-driven activities like grants and hackathons, expanding communities into global regions, promoting transparency, governance and decentralization of the Oasis Network, and ensuring that everyone is informed about ongoing activities, product features and projects.
Developers — Oasis was founded with a vision of making privacy available to everyone and app developers are a core element to realizing this goal. We realize developers need world-class tools and nimble API solutions, so tools like our Parcel SDK bridge the gap between complex privacy solutions and the everyday app developer.
The Oasis University Program — With over 25 founding members, the Oasis University Program is the largest university program on a Layer 1 blockchain network in the world. As active members of the Oasis ecosystem, university program members build apps, run validators, and engage in governance on the Oasis Network. We foster an incredible community of node operators and if you’re interested in applying for the program as well, you can get more info and sign up here.
Ambassadors and Contributors — Oasis no doubt has a big mission and we realize that it’ll take a legion of evangelists, influencers, technologists and dreamers to help make it happen. If you’re interested in becoming an ambassador while earning rewards for your efforts, you can get more information on how to get started here.
Broader Community — We are so thankful for the incredible community of supporters and followers we’ve amassed in such a short time. Everyone from the developers to holders of our ROSE tokens, to network validators and article translators, there are so many great people that contribute to our ecosystem, and we’re always open to connecting with more people that are passionate about privacy. If you’d like to be part of our mission, be sure to connect and give us a shout via our Telegram and Twitter.

Why Are We Doing This Work?

We believe that online privacy is both a right and essential for a free and responsible society. However, given the current state of the internet, our data and privacy are more at risk than ever. Further, data has become one of the most valuable assets in the world and for the first time in history, the right technology and solutions can give us total control over the use of our data.

Until now, blockchains have simply lacked adequate privacy — something we believe to be a prerequisite for properly managing and consuming sensitive data with decentralized technology. The explosion of personal information shared on the internet has made privacy one of the biggest challenges in relation to the future of technology and the blockchain, so we are developing solutions to power the next generation.

The Technology

Any blockchain is only as good as the technology behind it. So the Oasis Network is designed to be highly scalable, privacy-first and versatile, and what makes the network unique is that it separates consensus operations from computing into two main layers — the Consensus Layer and the ParaTime Layer.

The Consensus Layer is a scalable, high-throughput, secure, proof-of-stake consensus run by a decentralized set of validator nodes.
The ParaTime Layer hosts many Parallel Runtimes (ParaTimes), each representing a replicated computer environment with a shared state.

So you might be wondering why the separation of the consensus and computation is so important, and here’s why.

Separating consensus and execution into two layers — the Consensus Layer and The ParaTime Layer — allows for better scalability and increased versatility.
Separation of consensus and execution allows multiple ParaTimes to process transactions in parallel, meaning complex workloads processed on one ParaTime won’t slow down faster, simpler transactions on another.

Here are some additional highlights of the Oasis Network:

The ParaTime Layer is entirely decentralized, allowing anyone to develop and build their own ParaTime. Each ParaTime can be developed in isolation to meet the needs of a specific application, such as confidential compute, open or closed committees, and more.
The network’s sophisticated discrepancy detection makes Oasis more efficient than sharding and parachains — requiring a smaller replication factor for the same level of security.
The network has broad support for confidential computing technology. The Oasis Eth/WASI Runtime is an open source example of a confidential ParaTime that uses secure enclaves to keep data private while being processed.

The Benefits of Oasis

The benefits of the Oasis technology stack are that it is:

Highly scalable
Privacy-focused
Extremely versatile

For example, with the Oasis-Eth ParaTime developers can now enjoy a powerful dApp development environment, which is entirely backwards compatible with Ethereum. With that, Oasis has quickly become the ideal environment for developers to build applications as they benefit from a whole host of features including transaction fees that are 99% lower than Ethereum’s as well as a much higher throughput — 1,000 transactions per second.

In addition to that, our Parcel SDK, which is privacy-first data governance SDK that distills years of privacy research and expertise into an easy-to-use solution, is something developers will love as it allows them to expand their app’s capabilities to include powerful data privacy and governance features.

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg as our solutions are currently used by the likes of Binance with the Crypto Safe Alliance, Google with their cloud platform, BMW, Nebula Genomics and more.

The ROSE Token

The ROSE token is used to fuel transactions, staking, and delegation on the Oasis blockchain, and you can get ROSE tokens either by earning them as rewards or finding on exchanges like Binance, Kucoin, and others listed on Coingecko.

A fun fact about why we chose a “rose” as our symbol and token name is that historically roses often represented secrecy, and that fits perfectly into our mission of enabling powerful privacy-focused decentralized applications.

ROSE Tokenomics

Newcomers to the crypto space often wonder why one cryptocurrency or token is more valuable than another. In short, it comes down to it’s token economics, otherwise known as tokenomics. So in this section, we’ll look at things like the token utility, supply, distribution, and circulation schedule for the ROSE token so you have a better understanding of its current and long-term value.

First, let’s start with the hard facts.

Supply: The ROSE native token has a capped supply fixed at 10 billion tokens.

Token utility: The ROSE token is used for transaction fees, staking, and delegation at the Consensus Layer.

Staking rewards: ~2.3 billion tokens will be automatically paid out as staking rewards to stakers and delegators for securing the network over time.

Token Distribution and 10 year circulating supply of the ROSE token are as follows.

Staking and Validating

By staking ROSE, you help secure the Oasis blockchain and you earn rewards in the process. You can earn up to 20% annualized staking rewards for “staking” your crypto on the network, and you have the option of “cold-staking” so you stay in control of your crypto. If you’re interested in finding out how to stake your ROSE tokens, check out our handy staking guide here. Whether you’re new to staking or not, this guide will serve as a road map to understanding the importance of staking for the Oasis Network, and how you can benefit from it.

The ROSE token has great utility and if you’d like a more detailed deep dive into its tokenomics, including change logs, fundraising history and more, we encourage you to check out our Token Metrics and Distribution article.

Oasis in the Real World

By now you’ve got a high-level view of the Oasis Ecosystem, a look at the ROSE token’s utility, and a look into what’s possible with our technology stack. But you might be wondering how all this translates into the real world.

For starters, Oasis provides powerful, yet user-friendly tools for developers to build world-class dApps, which is a big reason you see legions of developers and real-world companies already taking advantage of the Oasis Network’s unique capabilities.

In this section, we’ll describe a few of these projects, but we also encourage you to keep up to date with new projects and partnerships we form, as well as our developer grants page if you are a developer looking to build great applications on Oasis.

So, here are just a few examples of projects developed on the Oasis Network.

Binance CryptoSafe Alliance

Crypto theft and attacks are on the rise, and exchanges need a platform to identify and ban bad actors. The CryptoSafe Platform was developed by Oasis Labs and Binance to allow exchanges to share threat intelligence data. Because of the Oasis Network’s support for confidential compute, exchange data is kept confidential even while it’s being compared.

Nebula Genomics

Nebula Genomics wants to differentiate their product from other competitors and through our partnership, the Oasis framework is used to enable customers to retain ownership of their genomic data and Nebula Genomics can run analysis on the data without seeing the customer’s raw information.

Google’s Confidential VMs

Our partnership with the Google Cloud Platform allows us to bring their confidential computing product, Confidential VMs, to our platform — enabling us to provide flexible secure computing technology as part of our solutions that in turn provide end-to-end confidentiality to our customers. Find out more about this exciting initiative here

BMW

Oasis Labs is working with the BMW Group to test applications of differential privacy in their internal systems. All accesses can be persisted on a ledger to enable consent-based audit, and all access policies can be checked with high integrity by the Oasis Labs platform prior to running queries and returning results. You can find out more about how Oasis is working with BMW to build the next generation of data privacy technology here.

The Music Fund

To make funding decisions, The Music Fund uses data from artists as input to our streaming revenue forecasting algorithm. They believe that the data belongs to the artist and that the artist should control access and see when their data is used. To achieve that goal, Music Fund used the Oasis Parcel SDK to easily and securely store artist credentials on the Oasis privacy-preserving blockchain.

And these are just a handful of the incredible projects built on the Oasis Network. We encourage you to check out our medium page for more and to also stay tuned for future updates as we announce new projects and developments.

Fostering Innovation

As an organization on the forefront of innovation, we also understand the importance of fostering the next generation of top developers, leaders and innovators. That’s why we take an active role in providing a platform for up and coming talent to shine in the broader crypto space.

Community Building and Mentorship

We periodically put on events that provide mentorship and opportunities to underserved communities. One such example was our Female Blockchain Leaders event that focused on providing mentorship opportunities to people interested in getting into blockchain, but who otherwise might not have the opportunities to meet top experts. This is just one example and we’ll have many more coming in the future.

Grant Program

We also have a grant program that gives developers with great ideas the chance to develop on the Oasis Network with our support. The amount of support can vary from project to project, but generally, proposals will be eligible to receive anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 USD in ROSE tokens. Further, we provide technical support and additional funding for eligible projects that wish to continue longer term. If you are part of a team that would like to apply for an Oasis grant please visit our Bloom Grants page.

Why Oasis Will Succeed

The most powerful asset of the digital age is data, and data itself is quickly becoming its own asset class that will likely one day rival mainstays like land and even money. However many people do not realize that we, the people, create these data assets, yet often do not own or control them. When you couple these facts with the reality that our data is more at risk than ever, you quickly get a sense of why the work we do at Oasis is so important.

All that said, below, we outline just a handful of reasons we believe Oasis will not only succeed, but effectively change how things are done in the crypto space along with the lives of millions, and possibly billions of people around the world.

The Need To Own and Control Our Own Data — We currently live in a world where the vast majority of people do not own their personal data. It’s a bit of a paradox that we create digital representations of ourselves with all the online activity we partake in, yet we don’t own those very digital representations. Rather corporations and entities do, and they are the ones who usually extract the value from it. That’s why Oasis is hard at work enabling a world where people can control their own data responsibly and extract value from it as well.
Oasis is the First Privacy-Enabled Blockchain — The Oasis Network is the world’s first scalable, privacy-enabled blockchain. ParaTimes on the Oasis Network can leverage confidential computing technology such as secure enclaves to keep data confidential — unlocking new use cases and applications for blockchain.
A Growing Need for Data Tokenization — We are on a mission to create a responsible economy using data tokenization. With the Oasis Network we’re working toward bringing the internet back to the core principles and values it was founded on like openness and inclusiveness, while empowering individuals to retain ownership and extract value from their personal data.
The Lack of Scalability, Privacy, and the High Fees Associated With Current DeFi Solutions — The Oasis Network’s privacy-first design can expand DeFi beyond traders and early adopters — unlocking a new mainstream market. Further, many DeFi solutions are plagued by high transaction fees and limited throughput — both which are addressed head on by Oasis.
The Power and Usability of Our Developer Tools — Developers who use Oasis can take advantage of tools that let them build powerful dApps, but are at the same time extremely user friendly and flexible. On top of that, developers can enjoy a powerful dApp development environment via the Oasis-Eth ParaTime, which is entirely backwards compatible with Ethereum.
Incredible Backing and Support — The Oasis Network is backed by respected VC firms and investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Binance and many others. The Oasis Network has a thriving and rapidly growing ecosystem consisting of industry-leading app developers, blockchain infrastructure teams, node operators, universities, and more.
An Incredible Team — We’re so grateful to have so many smart, passionate people on our team. The Oasis Team is made up of top talent from around the world with backgrounds from Apple, Google, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Harvard and more — all committed to growing and expanding the impact of the Oasis Network.

Our Oasis Foundation Technical Advisory Committee Members:

Additional Oasis Foundation Team Members

Oasis Labs

The Path Ahead

Although we’ve made some incredible progress since Oasis Labs was first founded in 2018, our entire ecosystem continues to push the envelope toward our mission of creating a responsible data economy.

In 2021 we launched Parcel Beta, which is an all new privacy SDK developed to bridge the gap between these powerful (yet complex) privacy solutions and the everyday app developer, and we also released our first major mainnet upgrade that sets the foundation for unlocking the network’s full DeFi capabilities. You can read more about these major upgrades here

We also continue to hold a number of Hackathons to support our developer community and open the door to innovative new ideas to be built on the Oasis blockchain..

The future is extremely bright from our vantage point and we’re so excited about the projects we’re working on and look forward to sharing them with you. Be sure to watch this space for upcoming major announcements as we continue to upgrade the network and build out new and exciting features.

Want To Get More Technical?

This guide was meant to get you started with Oasis and included high level details and roadmaps to get started with our community. However, if you consider yourself slightly more technical and want to get into the weeds of Oasis, here are some very useful resources below.

Learn More About Oasis and Stay Connected

Whether you’re a supporter of the project, want to become an ambassador, an investor, developer, or you’re a member of the press, we encourage you to reach out and keep in touch with us! We’re always happy to connect and expand our ecosystem.

How to Reach Us

We’re really active on our Telegram channel as well as on Twitter, and you can find a lot more information on Oasis and all the things we’re working toward and building using these links below.

Oasis Website

Oasis Foundation YouTube Channel

Of course, you’re always welcome to dive into more content on our Oasis Medium Page as well.

Thanks so much for your interest in Oasis! If you’ve got any questions, want to reach out to share your ideas or just want to stay connected to our community please give us a shout. We’d love to hear from you.