2020: A Look Back At the DAPP Network
Bridging, Connecting & Collaborating in the Age of Social Distancing
TL;DR
- Cross-chain bridging and interoperability has become one of the focal points of the DAPP Network during its second year of development.
- EdgeDSPs are taking cross-chain a step further by enabling anyone with an internet connection to become a DAPP Service Provider, lowering the barriers to network growth and further decentralizing the DAPP Network.
- A new DAPP Network governance system enables the community to suggest, debate, and implement changes to the DAPP Network.
“Looking forward to 2020, we believe that by interoperating with one another, individual networks can create win-win scenarios amongst themselves while driving meaningful transformation on a global scale.”
We penned these words almost exactly a year ago when the DAPP Network turned one year old. Back then, the DAPP Network community had already evolved from an idea into a thriving multi-chain middleware. After launching with a working product from day one, the DAPP Network’s many powerful services started forming crucial components used by many dApps. While each and every one of the DAPP Network’s services carries out a crucial function on its own, their true potential lies in combining them to yield powerful new technologies.
Over the last year, we’ve heard from many community members that it has become increasingly clear to them that cross-chain bridging lies at the intersection of what DAPP Network is best at, what the market needs, and what we are most passionate about. We couldn’t agree more.
Today, 2 years since launching, we reflect on all of the accomplishments of the DAPP Network and look at how the focus on cross-chain capabilities is unlocking new possibilities across the blockchain space.
Honing In On Cross-Chain
What started off as an EOSIO to EOSIO token bridge has evolved into cross-chain technology generic enough to bridge between any EVM-compatible smart contract chain. Next up was the Bridge Activation Party, which brought together some of the finest DAPP Service Providers (DSPs) to launch a universal bridge to Ethereum. Throughout the process, the need for robust, general-purpose bridging tech quickly became apparent, thanks in part to more blockchain usage, ushered in by the rise of DeFi.
What a difference a year makes. When recapping 2019, we were excited by the fact that DeFi had reached half a billion dollars in total value locked. In the span of 12 months, that number has multiplied itself almost 30 times! DeFi’s breakout season has undoubtedly been one of the highlights of the year, alongside Bitcoin’s growth as a legitimate institutional asset class. At the same time, DeFi’s meteoric rise has rekindled concerns over the scalability of public blockchains. For a growing segment within the blockchain space, the path to supercharging DeFi into a system that can handle millions of users must first pass through interoperability.
Cross-chain has become a trendy topic, boosted by the rise of ‘hub chains.’ These chains, most notably Polkadot and Cosmos, shifted away from a single-chain architecture to systems whereby many chains can connect to a single ‘hub chain.’ Unlike first-generation blockchains which can get congested processing tremendous transaction loads, these ‘hub chains’ simply keep a record of the updated state of each connected chain. By connecting to these hubs, blockchains in the wider Cosmos and Polkadot network can communicate with every other connected chain in their ecosystem. Even Eth 2.0, the Ethereum community’s major scaling project, is working towards a sharding system that would similarly see many different chains connected to the Eth 2.0 ‘Beacon Chain.’
While each of these hub ecosystems strives to scale in their own way, their true potential lies in combining together into a giant mesh network where data and tokens can flow freely across chains. DAPP Network as a universal bridging framework is critical to the future of integrated applications and networked liquidity in a multi-chain universe.
For this reason, DAPP Network expanded the capabilities of its cross-chain initial bridge to include Polkadot! We are excited about the prospects of Polkadot and look forward to enabling a cross-chain bridge on this up-and-coming ecosystem. The fact that the first use-case is Bancor, one of DeFi’s OGs, who will be using DAPP Network to bridge their BNT tokens to Polkadot, makes this development all the more exciting.
We envision a future where all blockchains are interconnected with open communication channels between them. The DAPP Network bridging framework enables cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data or asset, not just tokens, between any EVM compatible blockchain. Developers can also link between contracts on different chains and call those contracts seamlessly using cross-chain smart contract execution as part of a multi-chain application. With the DAPP Network, chains such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, ATOM, Matic, and EVM-based parachains on Polkadot could all potentially communicate and transact via a mesh network of bridges without any friction. And with the EdgeDSP technology behind them, creating and operating bridging agents on the DAPP Network could be as easy as opening a browser tab.
Towards Community Independence
One of the major trends since the launch of the DAPP Network has been the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and governance models. In 2020, many different projects experimented with decentralized governance such as Compound, Uniswap, Curve, and others implementing on-chain governance systems as a way to democratize ownership of each individual protocol while removing the risk of any person or company from making unilateral decisions.
The introduction of a new governance model as an added utility of the DAPP token empowers DAPP Network users who hold DAPP tokens to suggest, debate, and propose changes to the DAPP Network, using a robust proposal system and an elected set of MSIG Guardians.
Lowering Barriers for Network Growth
Alongside significant strides in cross-chain technology, the unveiling of EdgeDSPs has been a crowning achievement in the life of the DAPP Network.
From day one, DAPP Service Providers have been at the heart of the DAPP Network. They ran infrastructure, operated full nodes, and offered services for developers. Yet running a DSP involves both resources and expertise that are beyond the reach of average users. EdgeDSP turns ordinary users into extraordinary agents by allowing anyone to operate a lightweight DSP that can even run in a browser! Now anyone with an internet connection can potentially run a DSP and become an agent on the DAPP Network.
Roadmap Delivered and More
Two years ago we published our whitepaper that introduced the vision for the DAPP Network and its first service, vRam, as well as ideas for additional functionality that we envisioned such as vCPU, ram-less accounts, and IBC.
We are honored to say that by halfway through our second year, we have been able to deliver not only every single feature outlined in the whitepaper, but also many additional features and services including LiquidStorage, LiquidOracles, LiquidScheduler, and LiquidChains.
A Look Forward
We are proud to look back at two productive and innovative years as we look ahead towards the next. Cross-chain is more than just a set of technologies, it is a mindset that views close collaboration between networks as a strength and an essential step towards a future of trustless collaboration. It emphasizes that only through interoperability can individual chains overcome the different limitations that constrain them. We are excited to continue pushing this vision towards its full potential by bridging the gaps (pun intended) that divide us and allowing different blockchains to integrate seamlessly with one another.
