The Cross-Chain Roundup #17
The Cross-Chain Roundup #17
Week Roundup (March 13 - 19 , 2023)
Well…where to start? It seems like only yesterday we were fretting over USDC’s inability to maintain its peg. No one’s talking about fiat currencies and dollar-denominated stables now: it’s all about crypto, which is ripping hard. Admittedly, exogenous events (collapsing banks; US fiscal policy) may be partially responsible, but we said we weren’t going to talk about fiat this week: just pure crypto.
In the past seven days, the industry has seen Balaji’s bitcoin bet go viral, the Arbitrum airdrop confirmed, and the market shrug off the banking crisis and rise to new yearly highs. What else? Oh yes, a bunch of cross-chain news that’s Bullish with a capital B. Here’s our curated take on the top stories that broke this week.
📰Cross-Chain Updates
On March 14, KYVE successfully launched its mainnet. Having started out as an Arweave smart contract, KYVE has evolved into a layer-1 chain built with the Cosmos SDK. Its network aims to solve the data roadblocks facing dApp developers. The chain layer secures the network with DPoS, governance, and maintains the overall structure. KYVE’s protocol layer, meanwhile, acts as a decentralized data lake, where protocol nodes can participate in fetching, storing, and validating data.
Polygon has confirmed that Polygon Wallet Suite, its all-in-one front-end solution that allows 100,000 users last month to safely bridge, swap, and manage their assets, will be available on Polygon zkEVM. Polygon Wallet Suite users will be able to transact within the rollup with fast finality and if they want to withdraw on Ethereum, they will be able to claim their funds on L1 in 30-60 minutes.
Last week at ETH Denver, Axelar Network hosted Interop Summit for web3 developers. There, Axelar’s Sergey Gorbunov revealed a simple interface that will allow anyone to deploy tokens across multiple ecosystems in one click. It’s currently on testnet, where keen developers can put it through its paces.
Filverse has released a trustless collaboration platform for everyday online activities. Described as an onchain space for file management, collaboration, and communication, it’s essentially a decentralized Google Workspace. Portal, as it’s known, allows anyone to customize it with plugins to create their ideal collaboration space.
You’ve probably heard of ERC4337, the Ethereum standard for account abstraction. It supports social recovery of wallets (no seed phrase required) and also allows dapps to subsidize the cost of gas for new users, who can transact for free. Biconomy has been one of the first companies to deploy live solutions that make use of ERC4337 and it’s now confirmed that it will be bringing the service to Polygon’s zkEVM. The result? Better UX and easier onboarding.
DefiLlama, the cross-chain data aggregator and swap service, has mutiny in its ranks. On March 19, developer 0xngmi claimed that he was part of a group forking DefiLlama, writing: “There is an ongoing attempt to launch a token that does not represent us. We don't want to be associated with it.” Unless they can patch up their differences, it seems there will be two DefiLlamas moving forward: the original site and the forked version, llama.fi. Andre Cronje has ridden to the defense of DefiLlama co-founder Charlie.
The date for Ethereum’s long-awaited Shanghai upgrade has finally been set for April 12. This will, of course, enable staked ETH to be withdrawn. Many observers have been speculating on what this will mean for the price of ETH and where unstaked capital will move to next. It will unleash a significant amount of liquidity, not just on Ethereum, but also adjacent chains such as Polygon where LSD platform Lido recently integrated.
MultiversX has launched its cross-chain bridge. It will support interoperability, accessibility, and making transfers seamless and hassle-free. BNB Chain integration is already in place, with Polygon to follow in the coming weeks. The integration comes with added support for three new tokens originating from BNB Smart Chain: USDC, BUSD, and USDT.
📜Interesting Reads
Crosschain Interoperability and Security (50-page report)
Critical Infrastructure: Secure Engineering of Blockchain Bridges
Pros and Cons of Using Popular Blockchain Bridges (thread)
🐦Twitter Spaces
NFT Finance: Current State and the Future of Tokenized NFT Assets
Pastel x ArtZero: The Future of NFT Security and Marketplaces
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