By Hayden Tsutsui 

Introduction  

Jito Foundation is excited to announce that Pipe Network will integrate with Jito (Re)staking to power its liquid staking implementation and bolster token functionality. The LovePIPE stakepool is live, which means users can now stake PIPE to Pipe Network.

Pipe Network

Pipe Network is a decentralized content delivery network (CDN) built on Solana. Whereas traditional CDNs are centralized, costly, and deliver content at high latencies, Pipe Network leverages a distributed set of nodes to cache and serve high quality content (such as video streams to end users) closer to the end user. The result: high quality content delivered at lower latency and cheaper costs. 

Pipe Network has three components: a decentralized CDN, a decentralized storage network (FireStarter), and a software-defined routing layer over the public internet (P1). The CDN delivers data, FireStarter stores data, and P1 routes data. Each of these components interacts with each other, and altogether Pipe Network is a permissionless full-stack cloud. 

Solana serves both as the coordination network underneath, facilitating payments and finalizing network states, and the decentralized Internet Capital Market for trading PIPE and LovePIPE.

LovePIPE on Jito (Re)staking

Jito (Re)staking is staking infrastructure that enables anyone to build networks with custom staking mechanisms and models (i.e. anyone can build their own version of JitoSOL), directly on Solana.

LovePIPE is a liquid staking token (LST) for staked PIPE, powered by Jito (Re)staking. It is a receipt that represents a user's share of PIPE deposits and rewards in a stakepool. These deposits are delegated to node operators in Pipe Network, according to a criteria of performance metrics that optimizes for properties such as latency, throughput, cache hit, and error rate. The more stake a node has, the more high value content it gets to serve. Nodes share rewards and fees for their work with their stakers. More information on PIPE token economics can be found here. 

How it works is simple: 

1. Users deposit PIPE into the stakepool and receive LovePIPE. 
2. When node operators join Pipe Network, they set up an account on Solana and initialize as an operator with the restaking protocol.
3. The stakepool delegates staked PIPE to registered node operator accounts measured by latency, throughput, and cache efficiency via onchain tickets that symbolize staked connections between LovePIPE and operators. These tickets can be activated (warmed up) or deactivated (cooled down). 
4. Nodes receive rewards for participating in the network and share them with stakers. 

The full implementation will be gradually rolled out over the coming months. Stay tuned for more details.

Liquid Staking Infrastructure on Solana

Using our experience building liquid staking protocol for JitoSOL and coordinating the largest set of delegated validators on Solana, we will be working with Pipe Network to accelerate their liquid staking protocol and design. We’ve built the most battled-test, transparent, and decentralized liquid staking infrastructure in crypto, and have extended our framework into staking infrastructure for any SPL token so that anyone can do the same and more. We look forward to working with Pipe Network to accelerate building liquid staking protocol on Solana.