Lodge Letter #56
A period of sideways, low-volatility action in the wider markets. Electricity is getting more expensive. Energy supplies are being shut off. Perhaps the Ethereum merge is well timed? It certainly looks like a good time to reduce the PoW energy costs by over 99% through transitioning to PoS!
Bridging-as-a-Service (BaaS)
BaaS Alpha is fast approaching. It will support the interfaces we showed in our Lodge Letter #53. The plan is to provide a basic tutorial that goes from A to Z (via ElkNet) and shows our Alpha Testing devs how to deploy their bridge. We will then iterate it for a while until we are satisfied that it is stable and supports our Alpha Testers’ use-cases. The long-term goal for the BaaS is to provide an extended API that will support more use-cases, but we need to learn what these are in order for us to build it!
Cross-chain swaps
We have finished the first half of the oracle needed for cross-chain swaps, and we will be connecting it to an on-chain contract that will provide price quotes. Once this is done there is first some stability work to be done on the oracle, and then a little bit of smart contract development (and a fair bit of UI development) to connect everything together.
It’s an eagerly awaited feature we know, and one that can open doors for the end-user bridge with partners on all chains. It is however proving somewhat recalcitrant up to this point, but difficulties are there to be overcome. If it was easy then everyone would be doing it after all.
Partnerships
We are in discussions with Xion, Elastos, among others, to secure liquidity, provide bridging and extend into other ecosystems. In this way we can serve more Web3 DeFi enthusiasts with our ElkNet bridge. More on these next week.
AMAs
Recently both Baal and Snake attended AMAs on behalf of Elk and they can be enjoyed here. The Cross Chain Coalition host is incredibly enthusiastic and was suitably excited by what we’ve built so far. Baal on AMAs is always a good listen as he’s the man with alpha after all!
Polygon Ecosystem Updates and Xion Finance
Cross Chain Coalition
Roadmap
We are mostly pushing things a little from Q3 into Q4 this year, and from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023. Apologies for this but with the markets as they are, funding massive development and partnerships takes longer than when crypto is sloshing about all over the place.
There are also quite a few items which we are looking to add to our roadmap. It may be premature to list them all, but here are a few of them as a little tease.
Non-EVM support: It has always been in the back of the Elk mind, and some may be able to guess where we’re looking first of all.
Governance: How this can operate in a multi-chain platform is reasonably complex, and perhaps some economic changes can be introduced too.
ElkNet VM: This can give ElkNet a life of its own through enabling direct ElkNet programming to support dApps. This is an exciting idea which would be the culmination of Baal’s original vision. A lot of work still needs to be done on that front, but we believe the core approach is now in place.
Next is BaaS Alpha Testing — eyes on Monday 5th. Fingers crossed.
