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Connext Amarok Live | Ren 1.0 to be Sunset | LI.FI Expands to Aurora | zk Sync 2.0 Audit | LI.FI's Wallet Integration Galore | & More!

Last Week In The Multi-Chain Ecosystem (21 - 27 Nov 2022)

Arjun Chand

and

kram.eth

Nov 28, 2022

Welcome to LI.FI’s Cross Chain Insider newsletter. If you want to join this community of cross-chain aficionados learning about bridges, interoperability, and the multi-chain ecosystem, subscribe below:

You can also check out LI.FI’s research articles, and follow us on Twitter!

Bridge Updates

1) Ren 1.0 to be Sunset 🚫

Ren protocol announced that as the project moves towards launching a fully community-controlled network, Ren 2.0, the team will subset its 1.0 within 30 days. Ren-asset holders are recommended to bridge back their assets (such as $renBTC) to their native chain as soon as possible.

2) Synapse Now Supports Canto 🤝🏻

Synapse protocol has added support for Canto blockchain, making it the 18th chain interconnected by Synapse’s cross-chain messaging system and its first entry into the Cosmos ecosystem. Users can now bridge stablecoins to Canto from any Synapse-supported blockchain that hosts a stableswap pool.

3) LI.FI Now Supports Aurora 🔥

LI.FI now supports bridging and swapping to Aurora. This integration is made possible via Multichain and cBridge, and enables Aurora users/dApps to interact with all (16) other LI.FI-supported EVM-compatible chains.

4) Celer x Sei Network 💪🏻

Celer, a blockchain interoperability protocol, has partnered with Sei network, a DeFi-focused L1, and will deploy Celer cBridge and Celer Interchain Messaging Framework (IM) into Sei’s ecosystem. The integration will enable a one-click cross-chain user experience on Sei.

5) LI.FI Announces 4 Wallet Integrations! 👏🏻

LI.FI announced three wallet integrations in the past week:

Obvious, a natively multi-chain wallet, integrated LI.FI’s SDK to power bridging and swapping inside the wallet.
BlockWallet introduced BlockWallet Bridges powered by LI.FI, enabling hassle-free, fast, and low-cost bridging across 9 EVM chains directly inside the wallet.
Jwallet, an EVM-compatible browser extension wallet that allows you to buy, send, and gift crypto, integrated LI.FI’s SDK, enabling bridging and swapping assets across several EVM-compatible chains.
Redefined, a non-custodial, cross-chain wallet focused on user experience, integrated LI.FI’s SDK to supercharge its bridge and swap feature.

Multi-Chain Ecosystem Updates

1) Introducing Paddle - a Move Virtual Machine (MVM) Rollup for Cosmos 🧐

Paddle is a rollup for Cosmos, settling to Sei Network. It provides a sandbox environment for deploying smart contracts written in Move, enabling users/developers to leverage Sei's underlying DeFi ecosystem and connectivity with the broader IBC ecosystem.

2) zkSync 2.0 Audit 👏🏻

zkSync recently announced a partnership with OpenZeppelin, which included security feedback on-demand and in-between audits. The team has now announced that OpenZeppelin’s first security audit as part of the partnership has been completed, and it found that the code’s design for zkSync 2.0 is sound, with no critical security issues identified.

3) Stratos and Quix NFT Marketplaces Winding Down ❌

Stratos and Quix, sister NFT marketplaces on Arbitrum and Optimism, announced that they're winding down, citing infrastructure costs, low protocol revenue, and the team's lean operations (team of 3). Quix's code, which also powers Stratos, will be open-sourced, and user transitions will be directed onto OpenSea.

4) Polygon x UQUID 💜

Uquid, a web3 and metaverse-focused smart shopping market, has integrated into Polygon "to optimize the shopping experience in Web3 and form the future of shopping behaviors." Uquid will add MATIC tokens as a payment method for its 85M products.

5) Consensys Updates Privacy Policy 🦊

Consensys, an Ethereum software company, recently updated its privacy policy. Under the new policy, when users use Infura (a service offered by Consensys) as the default RPC (Remote Procedure Call) provider in MetaMask (Consensys' wallet), Infura will collect the user's IP addresses and Ethereum wallet addresses when sending a transaction.

What’s Popping on Twitter?

Sometimes, things don’t go as planned, and we need to find an alternative solution. That’s exactly what the Connext team has done, and finally, their much-awaited Amarok upgrade is live on Mainnet!

Connext | The 🏠 of ✖chain @ConnextNetwork

Conne❎t is Live

The original plan

In April 2022, Connext announced their Amarok upgrade, involving extensive changes made to the core protocol design to solve challenges faced by the different types of stakeholders in the network, such as the end users, developers, and routers. To make this possible, Connext chose to partner closely with Nomad, the team that invented the Optimistic Bridge model.

The detour

However, on August 2, 2022, Nomad was exploited due to an implementation bug, and $190M in liquidity was drained from the protocol. While Connext’s belief in the optimistic approach toward building bridges remained undeterred, the team took a pragmatic approach to launch the Amarok upgrade. Instead of waiting for Nomad to restart operations and keeping thousands of users and developers waiting for the Amarok upgrade, the team decided to look for alternative solutions.

The alternative approach

The Connext team has years of experience and was one of the first to work on layer 2 research. While the unfortunate Nomad exploit derailed their plans, just like any strong team, Connext came up with an alternative approach to build Amarok that would minimize the delays to their original timeline.

Arjun | xcall me maybe @arjunbhuptani

Deploying Amarok upgrade to mainnet. Steady lads.

The new approach leverages existing Arbitrary Messaging Bridges (AMBs) and follows a hub and spoke model to relay messages across chains. You can read more about the alternative approach in detail here.

Most importantly, the team found an alternative solution that ensured their key design goals remained uncompromised and, at the same time, the network's stakeholders remained unaffected by the change.

Congratulations to the Connext team on the launch of Amarok on Mainnet! We look forward to integrating the upgrade on LI.FI soon after the launch and making it available to users via TransferTo.xyz and developers/dApps via the LI.FI SDK and Widget🦎

Bridge Analytics

Here are key data insights from the bridging ecosystem in the past week (21 to 27 Nov):

Total bridge volume ➡️ ~$1.31B (up 18.18% compared to last week)

Day with most volume ➡️ 23 Nov ~$233.22M
Bridge volume on 23 Nov
Bridge with most volume ➡️ Multichain ~$238.17M
Bridges in order of 7 day volume

Interesting note: As Across’ ACX token launch is scheduled for 28 Nov and the team incentivised volume based interaction with the bridge to earn ACX tokens through activities, the bridge saw a significant increase in volume this week with $236M in 7 day bridged volume.

— powered by DeFiLlama’s Bridge Dashboard