The Cross-Chain Roundup #20

Week Roundup (April 03 - 09, 2023)

Apr 11, 2023

What’s new you may ask, well Bridge Stats are back! Welcome to the latest dollop of cross-chain news. Yes, it’s the Swing newsletter, your weekly digest of what’s been happening in DeFi, zk-land, and all along the crypto trenches. For those too lazy to Google and too busy to longform, this is your shortform summary of breaking developments that will have a lasting impact on the industry.

While analysts continue to pick over the bones of FTX, there’s a glut of more positive developments to report on from elsewhere in crypto. Naturally, we’ve got the pick of them for your perusal. In we go…

📰Cross-Chain Updates

New Avalanche Subnet Will Cater to Financial Institutions

Avalanche is releasing Evergreen Subnets, a suite of blockchain deployments, tooling and customization services for financial institutions. This will allow businesses to pursue their blockchain strategies on private, permissioned chains with known and approved counterparties, while retaining the ability to communicate with other subnets through AWM.

BabyFi Launches Cross-Chain Bridge With Celer Network

BSC metafi project BabyFi has now got its own bridge, integrated with the aid of Celer Network. Built into BabySwap Exchange, the bridge covers more than a dozen EVM chains including Optimism, Arbitrum, and zkSync Era. The increasing integration of whitelabel bridges such as Celer’s is making cross-chain asset transfers a formality for DeFi users. Celer has also integrated with SyncSwap on zkSync this week, providing further ways to move funds to the zk network.

Trader Joe Launches Capital Efficient Liquidity Book v2.1

Trader Joe has released the latest version of its AMM and it promises a raft of improvements including greater capital efficiency. V2.1 includes optimizations that will reduce gas costs by 30-40%, permissionless pools, and, in phase three, the introduction of autopool farms and limit orders. Autopool strategies are executed using off-chain and can be dynamically updated, enabling optimization for market conditions.

Rubic Integrates Stargate Bridge Into Its Cross-Chain Ecosystem

Cross-chain tech aggregator Rubic has connected Stargate’s LayerZero bridge into its ecosystem.This will provide access to the seven chains that Stargate supports, with competitive rates for swapping native stablecoins. Stargate connects Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Fantom.

0xSifu Loses $3.3M ETH in SushiSwap Smart Contract Bug

DeFi users were reminded of the need to revoke approvals for smart contracts they’re not actively using after 0xSifu lost $3.3M of ETH. The issue occurred due to a bug in one of SushiSwap’s smart contracts. Because AMMs are often deployed on multiple chains, a single bug can theoretically be exploited on numerous blockchains, increasing the potential losses and requiring revocation on all chains where it is active.

Ethereum Re-Staking Protocol EigenLayer Launches on Testnet

Testnet news isn’t usually news, but when it’s a protocol as hyped as EigenLayer, we can make an exception. EigenLayer aims to become a decentralized marketplace for Ethereum node operators and validators to earn fees on additional services. It allows them to restake assets they received in exchange for staking Ether on platforms such as Lido (stETH) and RocketPool (rETH). The assets can be reused to validate and secure other networks, such as sidechains or non-EVM blockchains. The testnet may be live but Eigen’s mainnet isn’t expected until Q3.

Allbridge and Euler Hackers Return Majority of Stolen Funds

We’ve reported recently on the trend for blackhats in possession of stolen crypto to return most of their ill-gotten gains due to a combination of greed and fear. Fear of getting caught and greed in some cases because they’re offered a generous bounty for giving back what they stole. In addition to 90% of the Allbridge funds being returned, Euler Labs has confirmed that it’s received all recoverable funds from the tranche it lost on March 13.