In Martini 2, the 8-particle cholesterol layout was connected via a dual-frame virtual site approach . This approach consisted of two triangular frames of constraints (ROH, R3, R4 & R3, R4, C1) sharing an edge (R3 -R4) where they were allowed some freedom to hinge on . The remaining cholesterol core beads (R2, R1, R5) were implemented as virtual interaction sites, where their positions were specified as a function of the position of their corresponding constraint frame beads. This topology was intended to improve numerical stability when compared to its predecessor -which was modeled as a stiff mesh of bonds and linear constraints . At the time, a dual-frame topology was chosen over a single-frame alternative due to its shock absorbing properties. The hinge between the two triangular constraint frames effectively worked as a shock absorber that prevented rigid-body displacements from spanning the length of the molecule when simulating at large time steps (40 fs), thus increasing stability at multi-microsecond timescales. Additionally, each of the dual-frame triangles was less acute than the single-frame alternative. This meant the frames' centers of mass became located farther from any one edge, thus avoiding rotation axes with very low moment of inertia (a likely source of the destabilizing high amplitude displacements observed with the singleframe model). However, CG MD lipid bilayer simulations using the highly constrained dual-frame topology have since been shown to cause artificial temperature gradients between molecule types when using standard Martini simulation parameters in GROMACS . Loosely solved constraints in the cholesterol dual-frame topology were identified as the source of this temperature difference, which was seen to impact phase separation, area compressibility, and lipid tail order . This temperature gradient could be suppressed by modifying the LINCS parameters to improve the convergence of the constraint algorithm, but not without impacting performance by 10 to 25 % depending on the system 55 .