Announcing Ham Chain

Ham
4 min readJun 5, 2024

We are thrilled to introduce Ham Chain, an Ethereum and Superchain aligned Layer 3 (L3) blockchain with novel features like onchain social data and social tipping functionality. Built using the OP Stack and Celestia on Base, Ham Chain uses ETH as its native gas token. Ham Chain provides users and developers with fast, low-cost transactions and a robust platform for creating novel onchain social experiences.

Syndicate has played a crucial role in the deployment of Ham Chain, providing key technical expertise and innovative new L3 infrastructure to help the chain grow and succeed long-term, with critical support from underlying partners including Caldera for the rollup and Decent for the bridge.

What is HAM?

Ham is a decentralized social company at the forefront of social tipping and is creating new, novel ways to interact online. Ham has created a system that allows you to tip your friends and favorite content creators directly in your social feed with currency-backed emojis called Floaties. Ham is deeply embedded into the culture on Warpcast and has been one of the most popular Warpcast communities since its inception. It’s channel /lp has over 38,000 followers, and over 380,000 Floaties have been sent to date. Ham is a leader in the nascent social tipping scene, pioneered Floaties, and is building novel social experiences on top of decentralized systems.

Ham Chain will provide a way for projects to deploy their own Floaties and build on the first chain with onchain Farcaster social data, opening the door to create new innovative products.

Key Features of Ham Chain

Floaties System and Ham Tips Onchain: Ham Chain is pioneering in the social tipping landscape by putting its unique Floaties system and Ham Tips onchain. This enables custom tipping experiences to emerge and make social interactions more dynamic and engaging. Since the bridge (more details below) supports all Floaties tokens, Ham will soon move the existing Floaties tipping system onto the L3. Once enabled, when you purchase Floaties on Base L2, your Floaties tokens will be automatically bridged to the L3. When you tip Floaties in Warpcast or X, your tokens will be sent to the recipient on Ham Chain automatically. This will increase Floaties liquidity on Ham Chain and make it easier for new users to onboard. Updates on this will be shared in the coming weeks.

Bridging of ETH, $PHAM, and 38 Floaties: Custom work was done by Decent and Syndicate to extend the typical utility of the OP Stack canonical bridge to support the bridging of ETH, $PHAM, and all 38 Floaty tokens on Base (L2). For example, users can swap and bridge $USDC on Base to ETH on Ham Chain, or WETH from Optimism Mainnet (L2) to ETH on Ham Chain.

Social Data Onchain: Ham will be adding social data natively onchain that builders can access in their smart contracts. Ham will start by adding Farcaster IDs to wallet mappings and vice versa. It will then expand on that system and start adding more robust data from Farcaster and other sources.

L3 Scalability and Innovation: As an L3, Ham Chain better enables the scaling of Floaties and the development of new social products. This scalability ensures that the platform can handle a growing number of users and transactions over time, and by integrating new L3 infrastructure from Syndicate and others, Ham Chain will continuously innovate and break new ground.

Ethereum Aligned and Superchain Aligned: Ham Chain aligns Ham with the goal of scaling Ethereum and uses ETH as the native gas token. Also, by using the OP Stack, Ham Chain becomes a part of the Superchain ecosystem, benefiting from its extensive network, technologies, and shared resources.

Developers and Projects on Ham Chain

Ham Chain has already attracted a diverse array of developers and projects, including:

  • SudoSwap: An onchain NFT marketplace supporting Ham Chain.
  • Mint Club: Facilitating the creation and trading of Bonding Curve Tokens and NFTs with Automated Liquidity on Ham Chain.
  • ProxySwap: A Uniswap v3 fork supporting Ham Chain.
  • Ham LP NFT Collection: This collection, backed by $PHAM, provides exposure to six Base memecoins, marking the first index-style asset of its kind.
  • Ham Punks: 10,000 NFT collection fully stored onchain.
  • Airstack: Indexing and providing easy-to-use APIs for Ham Chain data
  • Once Upon: A Farcaster-native block explorer, with powerful filtering and human-readable context.

This is just the beginning. New NFT projects, social experiences, and more are ready to deploy on Ham Chain. We can’t wait to see what the Ham community builds.

How to Get Started with Ham Chain

For developers and projects interested in building on Ham Chain, you can start by visiting this docs page on our website.

Join us in pioneering the future of social tipping and onchain experiences. Follow us on our journey and become a part of the Ham Chain community. For more details, visit our website or connect with us on Farcaster and X.

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