Ethereum Merge Live | Abacus Rebrands to Hyperlane | Starbucks Odyssey on Polygon | DogeChain Native Bridge Exploit & More!

Last Week In The Multi-Chain Ecosystem (12th to 18th Sept 2022)

Sep 19, 2022

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

Bridge Updates

1) DogeChain Native Bridge Exploit ❌

The DogeChain devs detected a bug in the bridge contracts and paused the chain to perform maintenance. According to the team, no Dogecoin was affected by this bug, nor were any funds affected, as devs successfully reverted the unwarranted minting of wDOGE on Dogechain.

2) Abacus Rebrands to Hyperlane 💪🏻

Abacus has refreshed its identity with an “intergalactic rebrand” to Hyperlane as their vision for The Interchain expands. Learn more about Hyperlane.

3) Synpase Revamps Its Brand and UI 👏🏻

Synapse has introduced a refreshed logo, a new landing page, and a fully-redesigned product experience to symbolize exactly what Synapse does best: connecting blockchains in the most seamless way possible.

4) Nomad Recovery Progress Update 🤔

The Nomad team provided the community with an update on their recovery process post the $190M hack on Aug 1, 2022. The team has recovered over $36m in hacked funds and completed the design for bridge restart and funds distribution, and began the audit process. A bridge restart update will be provided soon.

5) Allbridge Announces Allbridge Core 🧐

Allbridge introduces Allbridge Core, a new product that enables cross-chain swaps of native stablecoins between Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Tron. The team plans to add support for Solana soon. (Note: the product is in beta, use with caution)

Multi-Chain Ecosystem Updates

1) Ethereum Merge Live, PoS Activated 🐼

Ethereum has successfully completed its transition from PoW to PoS. As per the developers, the Merge is projected to reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by 99.9%.

If you need a refresher on why the Merge is so significant, check out this thread:

LI.FI - Powers any cross-chain strategy 🦎 @lifiprotocol

The Ethereum Merge is scheduled for June’22. That’s only 3 months away. The Merge could be one of the most historical events in Crypto history. Today, we’d like to inform our readers why the event is so significant. A thread! 🧵

2) Starbucks Odyssey on Polygon 💜

Starbucks announced that it’s working closely with Polygon to build Starbucks Odyssey, a Web3 experience that introduces Polygon-based NFTs to Starbucks’ loyalty program. US-based Starbucks users can now earn and purchase digital collectible stamps in the form of NFTs.

3) USDT Launches on Near Network 💪🏻

Tether announced the launch of USDT on Near Network, making Near the 13th blockchain to host USDT. USDT is now live on Algorand, Avalanche, Bitcoin Cash’s Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP), Ethereum, EOS, Kusama, Liquid Network, Omni, Polygon, Tezos, Tron, Solana, and Statemine.

4) Uniswap v3 on Aurora and zkSync? 🦄

To support Uniswap’s multi-chain mission and expand cross-chain experiences, the Uniswap community dropped two new temp checks to expand v3 to Aurora and zkSync 2.0

5) Introducing Nitro — Solana’s First Scaling Solution 🚦

Nitro is an L2 scaling solution for Solana. It will serve as the gateway between Solana and Cosmos as it features SVM compatibility that enables developers to easily launch their Solana dApps on Nitro and access the broader Cosmos and IBC ecosystem.

What’s Popping on Twitter?

It’s been a glorious week for the crypto community — Ethereum successfully transitioned from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake smoothly, lowering its energy usage by 99.9%.

Before we look at what’s next for Ethereum, we must pay homage to the Ethereum miners without whom we could not have reached here.

L Ξ O 🦇🔊 @calebini

@BanklessHQ thank you for your services, gentlemen 🫡

The miners’ investment hasn’t totally gone to waste as they are now moving onto other PoW chains like ETH Classic, ETH PoW, Revencoin, and others.

With the Merge successfully completed and PoS activated and finalized, a new era has now begun for Ethereum. So what’s next for Ethereum?

Shanghai — With features such as staking withdrawals and EIP-4844, Shanghai is the next upgrade on Ethereum’s roadmap. It is expected to take place in the next 6-12 months.
Sharding — A multi-phase upgrade to scale Ethereum, Sharding is expected in 2023-24. This would make rollups even cheaper, enabling them to offer much lower transaction fees to users.

According to Vitalik, the road towards proof-of-stake has been long and arduous for the community, however, the network is only 55% complete post-Merge. There’s still a long road ahead in Ethereum’s development; Vitalik’s flow chart of the Ethereum roadmap highlights what’s been done and what’s next for Ethereum: