Lodge Letter #58

FoxFortyTwo 🦊
Elk Finance
Published in
4 min readSep 21, 2022

BaaS Alpha is out in the wild. The Fed hikes rates again by 75bps (the only certainty is volatility). Who wants to be an ambassador for Elk? Elastos Smart Chain Elk liquidity deepens.

Elk gets visual

Our very own Shylo (AKA Snake Plissken) soon to appear, again, as the face and sound of Elk. Coming to a screen near you.

(Psst, spoiler alert: It’s your screen!)

ENTA Asks: Shylo Cliffe from Elk Finance

Bridging-as-a-Service (BaaS)

We know the advent of BaaS has necessitated the exercising of patience, and we thank our participants for displaying that exact attribute in abundance. The stage is now set for them to build on and enjoy the ElkNet cross-chain SDK. On test nets only for now, but before we know it there will be bridges springing up for myriad projects, all secured by the ElkNet and self-managed by the creators.

Suspension bridges, pedestrian bridges, lifting bridges, swing bridges, maybe some tunnels! In this analogy we are but the conduit for Web3 developers to design what they need and deploy it where they need it. Of course Elk will help where we can along the way, yet we are looking to empower our partners to create a Web3 solution for their product that directly suits their purpose.

Off-the-shelf and custom solutions will also be available, but the real power of decentralization in Web3 is passing control to those who use the technology and services. A programmable ElkNet remains the goal, and this Alpha version of the BaaS SDK is a stepping stone along that journey.

If you’d like to see the (evolving) documentation for the BaaS SDK then check it out here: https://docs.elk.finance/for-developers/bridge-as-a-service-baas

ELA/ELK Liquidity Grant

Following the successful DAO proposal submitted to Elastos’ Cyber Republic (CR), we are working through the process of claiming and depositing the funding for ELA/ELK pair liquidity to the ElkDex on Elastos Smart Chain. Once the LP tokens have been sent to CR’s multi-sig wallet we can withdraw the rest of the funding and pair it up.

The end result will be 40,000 ELA paired with the equivalent in ELK shared 50/50 between Elk and CR wallets. These LP tokens won’t be farmed. It is also worth noting that the fee into Elastos Smart Chain will be lowered to 0.1 ELK while this liquidity bootstrapping is in place (subject to operational cost parameters).

Head over and check out the Glide DEX, maybe look at Ela.city and Pasar marketplaces for some NFTs (including Bunny Punks) or have a look at the Cyber Republic website itself to see what proposals are on the way. The Elacity Digital Rights Management (DRM) proposal is one to keep an eye on for sure: Web3 powered DRM that can put creators in control of their work rather than the few dominant centralized DRM providers that currently control everything!

Elacity is looking to forge the path for Web3 DRM

Further to this is the dynamic CreDA Credit Score project and Web3 lending and borrowing from FilDA.

Innovation is rife on Elastos, with DIDs available for free from the (Elk friendly) Essentials Wallet, decentralized storage for NFTs (actually own your NFTs data), and P2P Carrier 2.0 data transfer also nearing completion.

Elk and CR brings the liquidity and provides the bridge, now go and explore!

Elk Ambassadors

This is new to Elk, and takes its inspiration from others in the Web3 space. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery after all. We asked ourselves how we can find a way to reward and empower the most communicative, enthusiastic and loyal members of the Elk family — the community itself. Our Ambassador scheme, led by our Community Manager Doubleclick, is designed to reward those that are spreading the Word Of Elk far and wide. Bringing value to the actions of dedicated community members is a worthwhile endeavor and we look forward to rolling out this enterprise in the coming weeks.

Elk is a bridge for the community, by the community, especially now the BaaS testing is underway. This ethos is more true now than ever before. By assigning Ambassador tasks and assigning rewards to the people making a difference we can continue on our path to Web3 interoperability together.

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FoxFortyTwo 🦊
Elk Finance

Cross-chain. DeFi. Web3. (Arthera, Elk, more!) Technology start-up co-founder. Former teacher. Writer. Copyeditor. Marketer. Family first - work up from there.