The Cross-Chain Insider — LI.FI’s Weekly Cross-Chain Newsletter
The Cross-Chain Insider — LI.FI’s Weekly Cross-Chain Newsletter
Last Week In The Multi-Chain Ecosystem (25th April to 1st May 2022)
Bridge Updates
1) Celer Inter-chain Messaging is Now Live 🚀
Celer has launched its Inter-chain Message framework on mainnet. With the IM framework, it is now easier to build inter-chain dApps. It also simplifies inter-chain interactions for users of Celer-enabled dApps.
2) Klima Cross-Chain Staking 😍
Etherspot and LI.FI have removed the borders between EVM-compatible chains, making cross-chain Klima a reality. Users can now stake Klima on Polygon from any EVM chain within minutes and from a single interface.
Some use cases of the Etherspot + LI.FI SDK includes:
Yield aggregators can build cross-chain strategies
NFT Marketplaces can go cross-chain
Any protocol with pools/vaults can attract liquidity from any chain seamlessly.
If you’re a developer working on any of these use cases, join our Discord, and let’s brainstorm to take your project cross-chain!
3) Bridge to Evmos via Nomad 🥳
Nomad is now live with support for Ethereum to Evmos bridging. Users can now bridge their stablecoins (USDC, USDT, DAI, FRAX), wBTC, and wETH to Evmos.
4) Celer’s Cross-chain NFT Solution 👏🏻
Celer launched its cross-chain NFT solution package on mainnet. It is built with Celer’s IM framework and allows developers to issue NFTs with cross-chain mobility that can be transferred easily between Celer-supported chains.
5) Connext Adds Support for Evmos 🤝🏻
Users can now transfer assets to and from Evmos from any EVM chain using the Connext Bridge.
The Rainbow Bridge (Near <> Ethereum) was attacked, but the attacker failed and ended up losing 2.5 ETH. The attack was prevented automatically by the bridge’s security architecture — The Rainbow bridge watchdogs flagged and challenged a fraudulent block. This stopped the attack and ensured user funds were safe.
7) Hashflow Bridgeless Cross-Chain Swaps are Live 🚀
Hashflow, a decentralized exchange, has launched bridgeless cross-chain swaps built with LayerZero. Users can now swap assets on Ethereum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, and Polygon.
8) Binance Bridge 2.0 is Now Live 🎉
Binance Bridge 2.0 currently supports nine tokens that users can deposit on existing supported networks and withdraw the corresponding BEP20 tokens (BTokens). Ultimately, Binance Bridge 2.0 will support the bridging of listed assets on Binance.com and select unlisted assets.
Multi-Chain Ecosystem Updates
1) Maple Finance is Now on Solana 👏🏻
Maple Finance, an institutional lending protocol, has expanded to Solana. The team also announced a $45 million fund to support ecosystem growth.
2) Stader’s Liquid Staking Pools Live on Fantom 💸
Stader Finance, a liquid staking protocol, has launched sFTMx on Fantom. Liquidity pools on all major Fantom DEXs such as SpookySwap, Spirit, and Beethoven will go live soon.
3) Optimism Collective and OP Token Announcement 🎉
Optimism announced its two-house governance approach and the $OP token as part of the next chapter in its journey. The first airdrop of the $OP token will see 5% of the total supply distributed across 250,000 eligible addresses.
4) Uniswap on Celo Proposal 🥳
Blockchain at Michigan and Celo Foundation initiated a proposal to launch Uniswap on Celo. The vote succeeded with 59,556,015 / 40,000,000 for the proposal, mainly led by a16z’s support.
5) Evmos is Live (Again!) 🚀
Evmos, a Cosmos-based EVM chain, has relaunched after the network halted on the original launch date. Users can now claim their rektdrop.
What’s Popping on Twitter?
It was a crazy weekend in crypto. One with hacks, network downtimes, and network congestion, enough to ruin an entire year, let alone a weekend.
However, one event stood out, one that makes us optimistic about the future of bridges and security! Yes, it is the failed attack on the Rainbow Bridge.
Before we dive deeper into what happened, it’s essential to know that the Rainbow bridge is a light client bridge going to Near and an Optimistic bridge going to Ethereum. With this, let’s see what went down:
The bridge attacker got some ETH from Tornado Cash and deployed “a contract to become a valid Rainbow Bridge relayer and send the fabricated light client blocks” — This was possible because the NEAR block header to Ethereum is permissionless, and anyone can become a relayer.
Independent watchdogs exist in the bridge architecture to protect the bridge from such attacks. They are responsible for monitoring NEAR headers and flagging/challenging any headers with invalid signatures (malicious intent).
One of the bridge watchdogs figured out the malicious transaction and challenged it. However, anyone can be a watchdog, including MEV bots. One such MEV bot front ran the watchdog transaction to gain 2.5 ETH.
The MEV bot transaction succeeded and rolled back the fabricated block of the attacker — The attack was successfully stopped, and the attacker lost 2.5 ETH, which was paid to the MEV bot.
As a result, even though the bridge got attacked, the fraud proofs submitted by watchdogs on an optimistic bridge saved users from losing funds and prevented a potentially billion-dollar attack.
In recent times, we’ve seen many bridge attacks where the Root of Trust in the bridge was compromised. It is great to see such examples of trust minimized bridges that have considered different types of attacks and have added security measures in their bridge design to secure user funds.
We hope that this is where the future of the cross-chain ecosystem lies — one with secure bridges with robust best practices to ensure that funds are safu.
Interesting Reads
1) LI.FI: With Bridges, Trust is a Spectrum
2) Back to Building: Ronin Security Breach Postmortem
3) Paradigm Shift in Multi-Chain Transactions
4) Current Security Assumptions and Potential Concerns with Stargate
Additionally, here’s a podcast about bridges that you can check out!
Bridging and Its Benefits with Nomad and Connext
<a href="https://medium.com/media/b3ce5c1f5c4e22964890e9df0d7b2110/href">https://medium.com/media/b3ce5c1f5c4e22964890e9df0d7b2110/href</a>
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Disclaimer: This newsletter is only meant for informational purposes. While many projects featured in the newsletter are our partners, we encourage you to do your own due diligence before using or buying tokens of any protocol mentioned above.
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The Cross-Chain Insider — LI.FI’s Weekly Cross-Chain Newsletter was originally published in LI.FI Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.