Flare Receives Algorand Foundation SupaGrant to develop Bitcoin bridge
April 26th, 2022
We are excited to announce Flare has been awarded a 7-figure Algorand Foundation SupaGrant to develop a Bitcoin bridge into the Algorand ecosystem.
The bridge will be engineered using Flare’s native cross-chain protocols, offering greater security than existing technology through the use of consensus and risk mitigation to manage bridging rather than a custodial multi-signature approach.
Billions of dollars have been stolen from blockchain bridges in recent months, because they are often more centralized and less secure than the blockchains they serve. It is therefore of critical importance that new and more secure bridging approaches are developed, if we are to achieve a liquid cross-chain future.
The bridge being built by Flare for Algorand is one such example. It will enable secure trustless interoperability between ALGO and BTC, plus other non-smart contract tokens such as DOGE, LTC, XRP and XLM.
This new bridging approach will be constructed using Flare’s decentralized interoperability protocols — the Flare Time Series Oracle (FTSO) and the State Connector. The FTSO provides rapidly updating decentralized price data to the Flare Network. And the State Connector allows the network to come to consensus on external data, both on- and off-chain, trustlessly proving its state to smart contracts on Flare. These composable technologies enable Flare to deliver secure universal interoperability between any two chains, so the bridge could potentially be upgraded to also support interoperability between ALGO and any other smart contract Layer 1.
This is also the perfect time to officially confirm that BTC will be added as an FAsset on Flare (FBTC). BTC holders will be able to put their tokens to work in DeFi, NFT, Metaverse and other Web3 applications on Flare. They will also be able to bridge FBTC to any other network through Flare’s LayerCake application. Fast and decentralized, this will be a fully-insured bridging system for everyone to use.
“We have a huge amount of respect for the Algorand team, and are excited to be developing a secure and trustless bridge for the Algorand ecosystem. The simple fact is that existing approaches to bridging have time and again been proven unsatisfactory. Flare’s new approach is an entirely different way, built from the ground up rather than being based on existing bridging technology — and will bring a breakthrough in secure, decentralized interoperability between any and all chains.” — Sean Rowan, CTO & Co-founder of Flare
“We’re excited to partner with Flare and welcome them to the Algorand ecosystem. Our grant partnership with Flare will develop key DeFi infrastructure with a bridge to Bitcoin, opening up opportunities for further collaboration and innovation. We look forward to our partnership bringing value to our respective communities.” — Daniel Oon, Head of DeFi, Algorand Foundation
About Algorand Foundation
The Algorand blockchain — designed by the MIT professor and Turing Award winning cryptographer Silvio Micali — is uniquely capable of delivering on the promise of a borderless global economy. It achieves transaction throughputs at the speed of traditional finance, but with immediate finality, near zero transaction costs, and on a 24/7 basis. Its carbon-neutral platform and unique pure proof-of-stake consensus mechanism solves for the “blockchain trilemma” by achieving both security and scalability on a decentralized protocol, and without a second of downtime since it went live in 2019.
The Algorand Foundation is dedicated to helping fulfill the global promise of the Algorand blockchain by taking responsibility for its sound monetary supply economics, decentralized governance, and healthy and prosperous open-source ecosystem. For more information, visit https://algorand.foundation
About Flare Network
Flare Network is building a new Layer 1 designed to safely connect to all blockchains. Combining EVM compatibility with breakthrough decentralized interoperability protocols, the ‘Flare Time Series Oracle’ and ‘State Connector’, Flare’s technology delivers secure, trustless, universal interoperability with high throughput, low fees and an ultra-low carbon footprint. Flare is scaling Web3 for the next generation and “connecting everything”.
