[April] Centrifuge Update
Hello Centrifuge World! 👾
We are going to try something new (for us) here and update you all with what’s going on in our Centrifuge life in a monthly TL;DR update.
Maker, MIPs, and More 🚦
Centrifuge has joined the MIPs conversation and is actively pursuing to ratify the first ever real-world assets proposal in MCD. We hosted a call with the Maker community to learn about other proposals and the potential of real-world assets in DeFi (listen to the recording 👉 here).
The Proposals
📝 The first proposal is with ConsolFreight, to bring freight shipping invoices in as collateral to MCD. Check out the proposal we made in the Maker Forum.
📝 The second proposal is with Paperchain, which will use music streaming royalties as collateral for MCD. You can check out the proposal here.
In case you are out of the loop with Maker’s next big moves, read here about governance polling + timeline.
Tinlake + Centrifuge Chain Have Been Audited 🤖
Least Authority, one of the leading Web 3 security consultants, has finished auditing our Tinlake smart contracts and Centrifuge Chain. Some projects Least Authority has worked on in the past include Ethereum 2.0 specs, Metamask mobile, and Zcash audits. After a two week period, LA has concluded our Tinlake smart contracts do not have any major bugs, and that our Parity Substrate based Centrifuge Chain is in good shape:
“We found the code to be very well organized and easy to comprehend. The codebase also included considerable test coverage. The whitepaper, [VPSW17], is technically well written and the authors are transparent about currently unsolved problems within the consensus algorithm. Considering the current state of the industry is experimental, such transparency and analysis is commendable.”
👉 You can see the two audits here.
Three Tinlake Transactions Confirmed Post-Audit 🧾
In April, we successfully completed transactions with ShutteOne and ConsolFreight.
ShuttleOne Txs
ShuttleOne financed two of their merchants, HappyFresh and ChowFeng, through Tinlake. HappyFresh is an online grocery delivery platform based in Singapore and ChowFeng is a traditional manufacturing business based in Malaysia.
“With ShuttleOne, we are making money borderless. Our customer HappyFresh, for example, operates in all major markets in South East Asia. To cater to increased demand, they need to have access to new liquidity markets fast. Combining our frictionless payments with Centrifuge Tinlake seemed like the logical step to access liquidity in DeFi.” — HongZhuang Lim, CEO of ShuttleOne
ConsolFreight Tx
Our first pilot transaction with ConsolFreight also went live in April. ConsolFreight is a SaaS freight technology provider that empowers the digital transformation of the shipping industry. Similar to Shuttleone, they empower merchants (in this case freight forwarders) via financing. Currently, ConsoflFreight is focused on disaster relief shipments in wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic.
“This [DeFi] is especially important in moments of emergency: disaster relief shipments need quick and reliable processing. Tinlake would allow us to increase operational efficiencies and decrease the operational cost on this future shipment.” — Alejandro Gutierrez, CSO/Co-Founder of ConsolFreight
👉 You can read more about these transactions in our blog post here.
New Hire 👨💻 👋
We would like to welcome Victor to the Centrifuge team!
Victor is a developer with strong Rust skills over different aspects of cryptography. He recently optimized the usage of elliptic curves cryptography on performative zero-knowledge circuits with Bulletproofs and PLONK; and implemented several primitives, as a reference implementation of Poseidon — a cryptographic hash optimized for zk-SNARKS. He also worked with ERP systems implementation, leading the architecture team on the adaptation of large scale government-oriented ERP system for the Russian market.
Being an open-source enthusiast, Victor also collaborated on several projects, always advocating for privacy and transparency with a very diverse tech stack. Victor will help Centrifuge mainly with the backend processes, being the Chain implementation, the Node intrinsics, and communication with the Gateway.
Media 📰
🎙 Lucas spoke with ChorusOne about Centrifuge and its potential to bring real-world liquidity to the DeFi ecosystem. Listen to the podcast here.
👨🎤 Lucas Vogelsang spoke at the Sub0 Pre Panel along with Maggie Dong from Parity and Thomas Scholtes from Radicle.xyz. You can see the recording here.
📰 In the news with ConsolFreight and our recent transaction.
📝 Dennis, our Product Lead, has written an educational piece on how we will price real-world assets in the DeFi context. Read the article here.
🖥 We are starting a resource hub for developers, bizdev, and community members alike to learn more about how Tinlake works. You can learn more about Tinlake in our documentation here.
What to expect in May 🔮
DeFi Discussions w/ Lea
Coming up immediately is the Dystopia DeFi Discussions, May 1–4th. This is a free, virtual event that Lea will be on a panel together with MakerDAO and Circle on Saturday May 2nd, 8:30–9:30 PM CEST.
New York Blockchain Week
It may not be held in the Midtown Hilton, but the show must [virtually] go on. Keep an eye out for us, more details to come on where we will be speaking…
