#53: Crowdloans and Cross-Chain
With this issue, we welcome Xavier, who recently joined Chorus One as a Research Analyst, as a new author for Staking Economy. We’re excited to welcome Xavier, who has already written a bunch of great content — such as a report on the non-financial risks in decentralized finance — to the Staking Economy team.
💰Economics
Parachain Crowdloans
Polkadot is edging one step closer to its goal of providing cross-chain interoperability. On March 26th, Polkadot auctioned off the first public parachain on Rococo testnet to Acala. Polkadot is experimenting with a revolutionary token distribution model by auctioning off parachains to teams that lease a ‘slot’ for a given amount of time (max. 2 years). A unique aspect of parachain auctions is that teams can either bid for a parachain themselves, or borrow from existing DOT holders to increase their chance of success in winning a parachain auction (known as a ‘crowdloan’). Acala is the first team to bid on a public parachain and whilst it is only a testnet, Acala will get exclusive access to testing Polkadot interoperability and it is likely other parachain public slots will be auctioned off on Kusama and/or Polkadot in the near future.
🌐 Ecosystem
Cosmos Ecosystem Update
The Cosmos ecosystem is expanding with IBC going live and mainnets launching for Persistence (focused on bridging traditional and decentralized finance, e.g. through the commodities DEX Comdex), Sentinel (e.g. hosting the decentralized VPN network dVPN), and others such as Regen Network (focusing on climate finance) and Agoric (focusing on secure JavaScript smart contracts) getting close to their public launch. Chainflow hosted an AMA on the Agoric testnet, a summary of which can be found here.
With IBC live, blockchains in the Cosmos ecosystem can now connect and transfer value and data between each other. Check out this post on the Cosmos blog or this article from Messari on why this is a big deal.
Dapper Labs Raise
Dapper Labs, the company behind the NFT-optimized Flow Blockchain, raised $305 million at a reported $2.6 billion valuation. Investors included Michael Jordan (yes that one), as well as many other professional athletes from the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball. The hugely popular NBA Top Shot platform runs on Flow and has generated over $500 million in revenue in its short existence.
Solana DeFi Investment Vehicle
OKEx and MXC, two southeast Asia cryptocurrency exchanges are partnering with the Solana Foundation to fund projects building on top of the Solana blockchain. While there is a focus on DeFi projects, the $40 Million reserved for strategic investments are also going to be used for projects that expand the resources required to bring new decentralized apps and protocols to market.
⛓️ Network Updates
Mina Launch
The Mina mainnet launched on and a public sale over CoinList that will take place on April 13–18 was announced. Learn about the details here. As of now, there are 256 active block producers on the network and 750m MINA from early investors are already being staked. Check it out yourself on Figment’s Hubble explorer.
Livepeer Investment Trust
Livepeer’s visibility received a significant boost when Greyscale announced its Livepeer Investment Trust. Livepeer, a decentralized video streaming platform, was one of the first staking-backed network to launch back in 2018. Chainflow’s supported the project since the early days, as Chris was drawn to its practical, real-world use case having first met the team in 2017. Livepeer hopes to provide a streaming video platform at a fraction of a cost of legacy, centralized streaming platforms.
Solana Beach Version 2 is live
Solana Beach v2 went live on March 24th and is now a full-fledged block explorer through which you can explore, analyze, and track the Solana network. Staking Facilities closely collaborated with the VGNG team to build out Solana Beach into a high performance block explorer, suitable for Solanas’ throughput. In case you have any feedback, questions, or feature wishes, please let us know!
Explore Solana now at: https://solanabeach.io
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Staking Economy is written by Felix Lutsch from Chorus One with contributions by Chris Remus (Chainflow), Robert Dörzbach (Staking Facilities), and Xavier Meegan (Chorus One). Join us in the Staking Economy Telegram to discuss staking.
Opinions expressed are our own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our companies. All content is for informational purposes only and not intended as investment advice.
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