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 (1st to 8th May 2022)
Bridge Updates
1) The $HOP Drop 🐇
Hop Protocol announces $HOP token airdrop intending to decentralize its governance. With the release of the token, Hop will turn to the community as Hop DAO to guide its future. Check eligibility here.
2) Synapse x DFK Heroes 🎉
Synapse now allows DeFi Kingdom users to bridge their Heroes between realms on Harmony and DFK Chain. This is Synapse’s first cross-chain NFT integration.
3) Swim Protocol Integrates Wormhole’s Portal Bridge 🤝🏻
Swim Protocol, an AMM bridge for transferring tokens across chains via multi-token liquidity pools, has integrated Wormhole’s Portal bridge for the underlying bridging function.
4) Vesta’s Cross Chain Minting with LayerZero 👏🏻
Vesta Finance introduces cross-chain minting (XMint) of VST tokens. Currently, XMint uses LayerZero’s communication protocol for cross-chain messaging which allows VST to be minted across multiple ecosystems.
5) Multichain x BitTorrent 🤝🏻
Multichain extends support for BitTorrent blockchain network. Users can now bridge $USDT between the BitTorrent Chain and 9 other blockchains.
Multi-Chain Ecosystem Updates
1) Raiden Network is Now Live on Arbitrum 👏🏻
Raiden Network, an Ethereum scaling solution, is now live on Arbitrum. Raiden can be used on Arbitrum to lower the setup costs and for developers and enable cheaper and faster p2p payments.
2) OP Stimpack Announced 🔴_🔴
Optimism announces OP Stimpack, a 230 million OP tokens (5.4% of the token supply) incentive program which will be distributed to Optimism projects for ecosystem growth.
3) Algorand x FIFA Partnership ⚽
FIFA has announced a partnership with Algorand — Algorand will become the official blockchain of FIFA to empower the global football community. Algorand will provide the official blockchain-supported wallet solution.
4) Parachain Messaging is Here 🚀
The recent Polkadot community vote brings parachain-to-parachain messaging over XCM, the Cross-Consensus Messaging format. XCM allows communication between parachains, smart contracts, dApps, and substrate pallets.
This also brings the DOT token to the Moonbeam DeFi ecosystem — Moonbean now supports xcDOT, allowing DOT holders to deposit their tokens on dApps in the Moonbeam ecosystem.
5) Alchemix is Now Live on Fantom 🥳
Alchemix, a lending protocol, is expanding to the Fantom Network. Users can now use DAI/USDC/fUSDT as collateral to borrow alUSD on Fantom. Additionally, users will also be able to trade on earn yields on BeethovenX, Spookyswap, and Spiritswap.
What’s Popping on Twitter?
The crypto markets might not be looking good right now, but there’s no shortage of events and narratives in the ecosystem. One of these is the Layer 2 summer — Ethereum’s layer 2 ecosystem is about to explode. The tokens are coming!
In the past few weeks, we’ve seen major developments in the Layer 2 ecosystem 🔴_🔴
The OP token and Optimism Collective
Connext Network’s NEXT token
Hop Protocol’s HOP token
$230 million Optimism stimpack for ecosystem growth
This is just the beginning. As we’ve seen with Optimism, all L2s will most likely have a token — ZkSync confirmed its token in their recently updated FAQ, and Arbitrum could be soon to follow.
Many chains, bridges, bridge aggregators, and wallets don’t have tokens yet 👀 More importantly, most of them have at some time claimed that there would be a token; they just don’t know when. And this is an opportunity you simply cannot miss! Here’s what you can do to maximize it:
Arbitrum — Bridge to Arbitrum via LI.FI or its native bridge and try out different dApps like Hashflow, Cozy Finance, Slingshot, Twister Cash.
zkSync — Bridge to zkSync via Orbiter Finance and use dApps like ZigZag Exchange and the Argent wallet.
Optimism — Bridge to Optimism and use dApps like Pika Protocol, Polynomial Protocol, Clipper as there’s still 14% of the OP token supply left to be airdropped.
DeFi Dashboards and Wallets — Make swaps on DeFi dashboards like Zerion, Zapper and wallets like MetaMask, Phantom.
While these are great opportunities, it is essential not to try and ‘game’ these airdrops. Our best chance of getting an airdrop is always by using dApps that we genuinely want to. This is becoming increasingly critical as projects are coming up with stricter criteria. For example — Hop disqualified all wallets engaged in Sybil attacks trying to game the $HOP drop.
If you’re here for the long term, this is the period you need to maximize. The prices will take care of themselves; there’s not much we can do about them. But, we can make the most of the opportunities available to us, and when the time comes, we’ll be ready to claim our airdrops!
Interesting Reads
1) Crosschain Communication: Axelar Network vs. LayerZero
2) Across Bridge Deep Dive
3) Nomad Deep Dive
4) Changing the DeFi Primitive for EVM Chains
Additionally, here are some podcasts you can check out!
1) Everything You Need to Know About Cross-Chain Bridges
2) Interoperability with Alex Smirnov — deBridgeFinance
If you Liked What you Read
Follow us on Twitter for daily updates and announcements 👐🏻
Join us on Discord to hang out with other UX Maxis 🙌🏻
Join us on Telegram for your weekly dose of the multichain ecosystem! 🌌
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.
P.S. if you found the content to be useful, pls gib x50 claps 👏🏻
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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.