[Project Tracker] #23 March 2021
Althea
In last months February update we spoke about the progress Althea has made towards Gravity Bridge, this month they announced the completion and test of the first transaction of a Cosmos based token (ALTG) to test Ethereum (Goerli) using the second iteration of Althea Gravity, the Cosmos <> Ethereum bridge! This is a huge success for the project as they have put a lot of work into making this happen and as they mentioned on Twitter, “It’s a historic day in the cosmos!” This additional functionality of the bridge enables Cosmos native assets and Atoms to be sent to Ethereum addresses and to DEXs like Uniswap, all with significant gas savings. Althea has an article explaining the benefits and how it works which can be found here.
Band Protocol
Band has announced another huge partnership update this month with Fantom as they announced the BandChain validator node — actively participating in the data query process and increasing the degree of decentralization on the oracle network. Bandchain has also reached a new milestone of nearly 3,000,000 total requests on the BandChain mainnet which they described as signaling rapid adoption and usage of the oracle network. BandChain also put out an update that their official blockchain explorer, CosmoScan, officially supports IBC messages on the transaction overview and transaction details page. Overall another huge month for Band Protocol as I’m sure their progress will continue with more updates to come.
Sentinel
Sentinel announced a key marketing partnership with Washman and Winkryto this month as they plan to engage with key industry media, promote their brand, and connect with a rapidly growing community. They plan to use this partnership to establish a roadmap for a global successful media and community engagement. This is a big win for Sentinel as these partners are some of the biggest PR/marketing in the crypto world. Sentinel has some serious Venture Funds and other projects backing them as they make the move towards dVPN mass adoption. This news comes after the project announced they are migrating from Ethereum to the Cosmos Ecosystem. They put out an easy guide to swap Sentinel ERC20 Tokens to the Cosmos-based Mainnet Tokens found here.
IRISnet
Last month we celebrated the second year of success for IRISnet. This month, the project has enabled IBC transfers and completed the first Cross-Mainnet token transfer with Cosmos Hub, and successfully upgraded to IRISnet Mainnet 1.1! The upgrade to Mainnet 1.1 means better support for the operation of Coinswap and other applications. IRISnet detailed the benefits and how the upgrade took place is a new blog post. With IBC transfers enabled, IRIS Hub can now support the interchain token transfers with Cosmos Hub and other networks connected over IBC. Big shoutout to IRIS and the community as the governance proposal was submitted on March 27th and received 99.99% yes votes of the 59% participation. Two years down, many more to come.
Kira Network
Kira had two big announcements in March as Kira’s KEX ERC-20 token is now listed on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Kira’s Public Testnet officially launched on March 31st after an extensive 90-day testing period. The Public testnet launch will be followed by incentivized games, challenges, and competitions to earn KEX rewards, Validator seats, and attractive monthly stipends. More info on the BSC listing can be found in Kira’s Medium article here. Kira is making great progress on their 2021 roadmap. Congrats team!
CertiK Foundation
As we described in last month's update, CertiK and Binance have made huge progress toward their work together on BSC’s ecosystem security needs and priorities. This month, CertiK announced the launch of their Binance Smart Chain validator node marking yet another milestone and furthering the creation of a secure staking ecosystem. You can learn more about staking $BNB with CertiK here. CertiK has also announced a Strategic Partnership with Huobi ECO Chain (Heco) to further secure the Blockchain Ecosystem. If you want to learn more about what you can do to further your security, which is beneficial to everyone, CertiK published an awesome new beginners guide to security on their blog. Huge congrats to the team!
Vega
Vega had a big month as they announced that they raised $5m in their latest funding rounds with Arrington Capital and Cumberland DRW. The raises provide the capital the project needs to ship the upcoming mainnet release and continue developing the protocol alongside the community. They also released a new roadmap which details all their exciting upcoming announcements and ambitious milestones that are coming.
Akash
Earlier this month, Akash network announced that they are integrating with Equinix Metal to provide the first viable decentralized cloud solution. Equinix is the world’s largest data center and colocation infrastructure provider, with 220 data centers in 25 countries which makes this a huge win for the Akash team. This integration came after the team announced the launch of Akash MAINNET 2 earlier in the month. This launch empowers developers to break free from the limitations of traditional cloud infrastructure. These are big moves being made by Akash after last month the ICF awarded them with a grant to build and maintain the IBC Relayer.
Author
Chace Young
Summary
These project updates were researched from git repos and project blogs. If you have a project that’s active but not listed here, please reach out to us so I can make sure your update is included in future posts. Cypher Core is dedicated to the Cosmos ecosystem and community and is here to help as a validator, as well as to help projects solve business needs like getting your project the sunshine it needs to thrive.
Until next time.
