Altair is now in your hands
The latest runtime upgrade on Altair has removed the sudo key, making Altair a community operated chain fully controlled by AIR holders!
Community Operated Real-World DeFi
Altair Runtime Upgrade 4 (RTU4) passed the on-chain democracy vote by AIR token holders yesterday to remove the sudo key — a superuser account with access to governance functions. This was the final step in the launch process to hand over full control of the network to AIR holders. It is a big step for Altair, and a key milestone on the path to bringing real world assets (RWAs) to the Kusama ecosystem.
The Batch 2 auctions for parachains on Kusama were the tightest race of all. It was a nail-biting conclusion, and we were one of the protocols with the most contributors — over 11,000 — in a competition dominated by whales.
This was an amazing testament to the power of community. Now with RTU4 and the continuing decentralization of Altair, we are excited to see what the community will bring to the Altair ecosystem. With its launch Altair is joining other great Kusama projects like Moonriver, Kilt, Karura, and more, in building the Kusama ecosystem together.
Altair is ready to become the home for tokenizing experimental assets to push the limits of DeFi on Kusama. Altair combines the industry-leading infrastructure to finance RWAs on Centrifuge, with the newest experimental features — before they go live on Centrifuge. Since Centrifuge launched in May 2020 it has led the way in building the infrastructure the DeFi ecosystem needs to bridge to RWAs — including a custom substrate chain, the Tinlake dapp, and integrations with leading DeFi projects like Maker and the RWA Market on Aave.
Even once Centrifuge is fully live on Polkadot, Altair on Kusama will be used for minting art NFTs, financing undiscovered assets, and whatever else the Altair community brings to the table. The design space is wide open and it will be community members that lead the charge of Altair. Read on to learn more about how to get involved building Altair through governance.
So, how did our community get us here? You’ve supported us since Centrifuge Chain launched back in April 2020! From our initial validators, Tinlake investors, and Kusama crowdloan participants — our community has been there every step of the way.
AIR Governance
The AIR token was distributed to initial supporters that held CFG (through the CFG snapshot) and supporters that contributed KSM to the Altair crowdloan. And Altair just took another big step to full community ownership: AIR tokens held by the Centrifuge Foundation are all in the on-chain Treasury now. This puts the Treasury of AIR in the hands of the community. So the Altair council and on-chain democracy can put it to work to develop Altair 💪
Altair just hosted its first official governance call this week to discuss the most important topics in the Altair ecosystem. (If you missed it, you can watch it here.) We were also joined by one of the members of the Polkadot council, Raul, to discuss what the Altair community can learn from Polkadot and Kusama governance. Lots of interesting issues came up — including how on-chain bounties and grants work to spend the on-chain treasury of AIR. We are really excited to start seeing governance and treasury proposals from the community of AIR holders!
NFT Studio 👉 NFT Playground
The next big update planned to be proposed on Altair is NFT Playground (changing name from NFT Studio). The Centrifuge team has been hard at work building this first planned functionality on Altair. As the home for financing the most experimental assets on Kusama, like your favorite JPEG NFTs, what better way to kick this off than with a dapp that puts those NFTs first?
NFT Playground will be the home for creators and collectors alike — and is the first step towards unlocking liquidity for these unique assets. Once NFT Playground is live we can’t wait to see the community of creators start buzzing with new ideas.
Stay tuned for more updates on NFT Playground. The Altair council plans to propose the next runtime upgrade in a few weeks, after RTU4 stability is confirmed.
Asset Financing Pools
There is another important milestone on the horizon — bringing Tinlake’s asset financing pools onto Altair. The Pools on Altair functionality has been one of the largest (and most interesting) challenges for the Centrifuge engineering team.The audit is already underway, so it isn’t long now until asset financing on Altair takes flight.
By bringing asset financing pools onto Altair, we are finally starting to realize the vision of this long journey building on substrate. From the very early days we talked about the Centrifuge vision of a larger ecosystem of many, connected blockchains. Where value could move freely and Centrifuge could enable off-chain assets to access financing through DeFi projects like Maker or Aave (check and check!) We built Centrifuge to unlock value for businesses that has previously been inaccessible. Now Altair will help us grow this vision — to unlock liquidity for the wildest assets out there and push the boundaries of asset financing.
We Need You!
Yes, we need you: our community! Now is the time to start participating in Altair governance. There are many different ways to get involved, from participating in on-chain votes to joining in the discussion on our forum or in the Altair governance calls. You have the power to shape the future of Altair.
