Elk Weekly Recap — #1

Elk.Finance
Elk Finance
Published in
3 min readJul 19, 2021

As Elk expands its reach as a multi-chain crypto hub, there are so many exciting developments going on that it is hard to keep track of everything happening across our chains and behind the scenes.

To help keep our followers informed, we are introducing a weekly post that looks back on the announcements, partnerships, and launches from the previous week.

We also plan to include notes from the developers on technical progress and previews of things to look forward to in the week ahead.

Week in review

  • Reef, a new DeFi platform, announced a partnership with Elk, which was featured on the Reef Ecosystem Map (link)
  • SpiritSwap (Fantom) will launch a new SPIRIT-ELK farm on their dApp (link) after ElkNet is live & ElkDex will then double the emissions for SPIRIT-ELK
  • CryptoCompanions NFT (Avalanche) sponsored a giveaway for Elk-themed companions (link)
  • Elk was listed on DefiLlama, a DeFi indexer (link)
  • Avaware (Avalanche) released a limited edition NFT, Eddy the Elk, as part of its Avalanche Collectibles series (link)
  • Coin98 wallet added support for $ELK on Fantom (link)
  • Trader Joe (Avalanche) completed the first-ever double rewards farming cycle on Avalanche, with an ELK-AVAX farm that has reached over $160k in deposits

From the devs

Internal testing on ElkNet continues, with a second round of limited testnet assessment started earlier today. We continue to see improvements in stability. We are currently waiting on one of our web3 providers to optimize their API service to improve integration with our mainnet architecture, at which point we are preparing to restore service, barring any additional issues.

The past few weeks have also brought news of other bridge protocols suffering from hacks and exploits, including Chainswap, Anyswap, and most recently THORChain. These events should underscore the crucial importance of security for cross-chain protocols, which can carry added vulnerabilities. The security of ElkNet is our top priority, which is why we have adopted a prudent approach to its release. We plan for ElkNet to be bulletproof, which these events demonstrate is the only acceptable benchmark.

While we are monitoring these incidents, we also want to reassure the community that the specific exploits the attackers used could not impact ElkNet based on the fundamentals of safe design we have built into the protocol. In one case, the attacker was able to trick the system into believing they had deposited more than they actually did. This is impossible to do in ElkNet because we only transfer what is deposited.

Based on how our protocol is written, there would need to be a bug in the underlying EVM to produce a similar exploit, which is much more improbable, and would not be specific to Elk in that case.

Even in the highly unlikely case that were to happen, ElkNet also stores cryptographic signatures of transactions on both source and target chains, making it virtually impossible to attack or alter transactions on the network itself.

The week ahead

  • HashEx, a leading blockchain security firm, will release the first audit of Elk this week
  • A new series of educational articles about crypto, DeFi, and all things Elk, will launch
  • …and more!

About Elk Finance

Elk Finance is a decentralized network for cross-chain liquidity. The Elk ecosystem makes it seamless for anyone to move value and exchange cryptocurrencies across blockchains more quickly and securely, all at a low cost.

Elk’s robust and intuitive architecture also allows developers to build and integrate smart contracts and DeFi applications on top of the Elk platform in order to leverage its cross-chain functionality.

Elk Finance has already launched on the Avalanche Network, Polygon (Matic) Network, Fantom Opera Network & Huobi Eco. You can find more information about Elk Finance & how to buy the $ELK tokens in our documentation.

Links to our website, charts & community channels can all be found here.

Have questions?

Join the conversation on Telegram and Discord!

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Elk.Finance
Elk Finance

Elk.Finance is a decentralized network for cross-chain liquidity. Seamless experience with sub-second speed. Any chain, anytime, anywhere!