ACX Token Launch | Maker Teleport Grant Program | 100k+ Unique Users on LI.FI | LayerZero Introduces OFTs & More!

Last Week In The Multi-Chain Ecosystem (14 - 20 Nov 2022)

Bridge Updates

1) ACX Token to Launch on Nov 28 ⏳

Across announced its plans to launch the ACX token on November 28. The token will be distributed to early users, LPs, community members, and participants of the Bridge Traveler program.

2) Iron Bank Integrates LI.FI’s Widget 🦎

LI.FI announced an exclusive partnership with Iron Bank to launch its newly redesigned widget. As Iron Bank has embedded the LI.FI widget directly on the Iron Bank website, users can now swap and bridge any token in the EVM-compatible world to Ethereum, Optimism, Avalanche, or Fantom in order to take advantage of yields directly on app.ib.xyz.

3) Maker Teleport Grant Program 💸

Maker has launched Teleport, a multi-chain infrastructure built by the MakerDAO Engineering Core Unit. The team has also set up a 10,000 DAI grant for builders who integrate the Maker Teleport with a functional UI.

4) 100K+ Unique Users Milestone for LI.FI 🔥

LI.FI announced that it has achieved a new milestone of enabling 100K+ unique users to successfully move funds cross-chain through the platform.

5) Hyperlane V2 Upgrade & New Features 👏🏻

Hyperlane, an arbitrary messaging bridge, released a thread with its newly released feature and announcement of a V2 upgrade planned for December ‘22. New features on the platform include: message explorer, interchain accounts, interchain query system, unified liquidity interface, and permathon.

Multi-Chain Ecosystem Updates

1) ATOM 2.0 Proposal Rejected 🚫

The ATOM 2.0 proposal (Proposal 82) concerning the future of the Cosmos Hub has been rejected with 37.4% NoWithVeto votes. In the future, the community could relaunch Proposal 82 as multiple proposals instead of one.

2) NIKE to Launch NFTs on Polygon 💜

Nike has launched .SWOOSH, the home for all Nike’s virtual creations, such as virtual shoes, jerseys, and accessories. The platform will offer Polygon-based NFT products. Registrations are now open.

3) Arbitrum Releases Decentralization Update (💙,🧡)

Arbitrum announced that it has expanded its validator set, responsible for securing the Arbitrum chain. The broadened group of organizations securing the chain now include: Consensys, Ethereum Foundation, L2BEAT, Mycelium, Offchain Labs, , P2P, Quicknode, Distributed Ledgers Research Centre (DLRC), Unit 410.

4) Introducing Superform: The Universal Yield Marketplace 🧐

Superform, a non-custodial yield marketplace, announced the launch of its closed beta on November 28. The platform uses Socket (for value transfer) and LayerZero (for data transfer) across chains and, at launch, will deploy on Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Fantom, Avalanche, and BSC.

5) StarkNet Token Deployed on Ethereum 🔥

As another step towards decentralization, the StarkNet Token (STRK) has now been deployed on Ethereum Mainnet. STRK will be used as a staking token for participation in StarkNet’s consensus mechanisms, as a governance token, and for paying transaction fees.

What’s Popping on Twitter?

Bridges were built to unify the fragmented liquidity across several blockchains. However, with so many active bridges and 100s of non-native wrapped assets spread across the ecosystem, we’ve reached a point where instead of unifying liquidity, bridges have just moved the isolated silos from blockchains to token and contract standards. 

Yes, it’s easier to move assets from one chain to another, but is it as easy to use those assets across dApps across any DeFi ecosystem? Perhaps not, and this primarily comes down to having wrapped or canonical tokens of an asset that are not fungible with another.

TLDR: Bridges mint their own assets, which are not fungible with each other, i.e., you cannot swap USDC minted by Multichain 1:1 for USDC minted by Wormhole.

How do you tackle this lack of composability among tokens?

Last week, LayerZero launched Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT), an extensible token contract that enables tokens to be externally composed in any type of dApps, across any DeFi ecosystem, just like an ERC-20. This means tokens can now have a unified standard for all protocols and blockchains, making it seamless for users to swap cross-chain and use the token on any dApp on any chain.

The first use case of the OFT standard is BTC.b, a token representing Bitcoin on Avalanche and automatically bridged (transferred cross-chain) in Core.

Since BTC.b is an OFT, it offers the following benefits to the users:

• Users can immediately use their native Bitcoin on dApps as BTC.b and quickly convert their BTC.b back to native Bitcoin. For example, users can transfer Bitcoin using Core and receive BTC.b, which can be used across Avalanche DeFi dApps.

• Users can use LayerZero’s Bitcoin Bridge to transfer BTC.b to any supported LayerZero blockchain, such as Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Aptos, etc.

For token issuers, the OFT standard enables composability across the ecosystem and the ability to own their contracts, security, and fees explicitly.

Such innovations are key to achieving a truly composable and efficient multi-chain ecosystem. Congrats to the LayerZero team on building this and the Avalanche team for showcasing the first use case with BTC.b (learn more about the integration here).

What are your views on the Omnichain Fungible Token standard? Comment and let us know.

Bridge Analytics

Here are key data insights from the bridging ecosystem in the past week (14 to 20 Nov):

• Total bridge volume ➡️ ~$1.11B (down 42.18% compared to last week)

• Day with most volume ➡️ 14 Nov ~255.97M

Bridge volume breakdown on Nov 14

• Bridge with most volume ➡️ Multichain ~214.5M

 Bridges in order of 7 day volume

— powered by DeFiLlama’s Bridge Dashboard

Interesting Reads

1) With Bridges, Trust is a Spectrum: Quantified Framework

2) Crypto Doesn’t Have a UX Problem

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