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Skate's Infrastructure

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Kernel vs Periphery model

  • Kernel: The stateful core of the protocol — responsible for maintaining canonical data such as liquidity states, bonding curves, positions, and accounting.
  • Periphery: The stateless action layer — a collection of modular “action boxes” that interact with the Kernel by constructing and sending messages (transactions). Periphery modules handle user interactions such as swaps, adding/removing liquidity.

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Why stateless design matters

Traditional DeFi protocols tightly couple state and execution logic, making upgrades risky and integrations complex.
  • Interoperability - Simplifies cross-chain message passing — only actions, not state, travel between chains.
  • Scalability - Periphery actions can be deployed or scaled independently of Kernel state.
Most existing multichain protocols replicate entire state machines across chains — each chain maintains its own pools, liquidity, and accounting. While this design simplifies deployment, it fragments state, splits liquidity, and complicates synchronization. The Kernel–Periphery model solves this by consolidating all canonical state into a single Kernel, while Peripheries act as lightweight action relayers on any chain or execution environment.

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Comparisons to traditional multichain

Most existing multichain protocols replicate entire state machines across chains — each chain maintains its own pools, liquidity, and accounting. While this design simplifies deployment, it fragments state, splits liquidity, and complicates synchronization. The Kernel–Periphery model solves this by consolidating all canonical state into a single Kernel, while Peripheries act as lightweight action relayers on any chain or execution environment.

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Unified Liquidity Layer

In traditional multichain deployments, liquidity is replicated — e.g., USDC-ETH pools exist separately on Chain A, Chain B, and Chain C. Each has its own reserves and bonding curve, leading to:
  • Thin depth per pool
  • Inefficient capital use
  • Cross-chain price discrepancies
By contrast, a Kernel state architecture aggregates all liquidity into a single global pool:
  • The bonding curve, tick data, and fee accounting live in the Kernel.
  • Any Periphery (on any chain) can route liquidity to that same state.
This creates a shared liquidity surface — every participant contributes to and benefits from the same pool, regardless of where the transaction originates.

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Consistent Pricing Across Chains

Because the Kernel holds the canonical bonding curve, all price calculations reference the same state snapshot. This eliminates chain-level price drift and reduces arbitrage inefficiency.

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Higher Capital Efficiency

  • Liquidity is aggregated, not siloed.
  • LPs earn yield from global trade volume, not just local activity.
  • The same TVL supports cross-chain flow without needing redundant pools.

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Frictionless Cross-Chain Interaction

Since Peripheries are stateless, a transaction initiated on any chain only needs to relay an action message — not mirror or replicate state. Liquidity effectively becomes omnichain, managed by a single, coherent Kernel.