When discussing ‘Decentralised Finance’ in the blockchain space a lot of people will instantly think of MKR and Dai, as they rightly should, with the platform accounting for just over 75% of the space according to https://defipulse.com/ at the time of writing.

This will of course come as no surprise to anyone and there is a lot of information circulating about the ecosystem. One potential issue though, in particular with the ‘product’ of it which is Dai, is that it still relies on the ethereum network for transactions. Whilst this is not an issue for moving funds around, it could pose as a barrier to wider adoption in terms of speed and cost of transactions – especially when one of the accepted benchmarks for crypto adoption is “Can I buy my beer with it?”.

Enter one of the decentralised finance sector’s best kept secrets – the xDai chain!

xDai is a bridged chain introduced by the POA network that allows users to readily exchange their Dai for xDai via a seamless bridge, and then utilise the ‘essentially instant' and ‘essentially free’ transaction capacity brought about by the ‘Proof of Authority’ consensus used in the xDai chain. Whilst this is technically less decentralised than a full proof of work chain, this is offset by the fact that it is run by trusted parties(https://forum.poa.network/t/who-are-validators-of-xdai-chain/1768) which can be elected and serves to provide a huge increase in convenience and potentially pave the way for more frictionless adoption!

This means that there is a huge opportunity for adoption of Dai where speed and cost can be an issue whilst maintaining a high degree of trust! In order to improve this process, the POA team have worked to create:

https://xdai.io/ - Burner wallet which serves as a bridge between Ether, Dai and xDai and works easily on the browser of a mobile phone. A great tool for demonstrating the power of such a blockchain without having to carry out a lecture on private keys and seed phrases first!

https://poketto.cash/ - As the site says, a wallet you can actually show to your parents! This is in the early stages but will be developing further solutions to improve user experience.

In conclusion, I personally believe this opens up the doors to a huge step in ‘mainstream adoption’ whereby people may not even realise they are using a blockchain, and the issues such as relatively high fees and waiting times will be eliminated! This means it’s no longer necessary to explain to new users that they sometimes have to compromise if network load is high, and instead they be shown how ‘blockchain’ is just as convenient but much more transparent and secure!

I hope this article has helped shine a light on a lesser known project today, yet one that could undoubtedly drive the path to acceptance and adoption for everyday use!

Sign up and join the journey if you are optimistic about the future!