Umbrella Network Turns 1: Looking Back on the Year We Blazed Past
Umbrella Network turns one today. Nov 18th to be precise.
While we look back nostalgically on our journey, we thought why not apprise the community on how it started and how it is going, 25+ AMAs and 50+ partnerships later.
50 Partnerships were built across Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon Blockchains by Umbrella Network
From established infrastructure providers such as InfStones and Huobi Global to highly innovative DeFi protocols such as Armor Finance and UnoRe, Umbrella Network has gained the trust of 50 DeFi companies that are depicted below as per the industry they belong to:
Our #BSCmonth and #RoadToMainnet campaigns were instrumental in getting partnerships across the BSC and ETH blockchains.
8 crypto-exchanges List $UMB for trading
Spanning both centralized and decentralized options, $UMB, the token that powers the entire Umbrella Network ecosystem of decentralized oracles, can be traded on several cryptocurrency exchanges such as KuCoin and Poloniex.
3 Blockchains Natively Supported By Umbrella Network — 5 MORE on the Way!
After first going live on Binance Smart Chain in June 2021, Umbrella Network never took its foot off the pedal and followed up with mainnet launches on Ethereum (Sept end) and Polygon (Oct end) in quick succession.
When a Blockchain is natively supported by Umbrella Network, it means that smart contracts on those Blockchains can directly access our price feeds. Umbrella Network’s decentralized oracles are cheaper by almost 90% than the closest competition, supports 5x more data pairs, and provides data that is updated as frequently as every 20 minutes (compared to every 24 hours by others)
As per our updated roadmap, we’ve decided to move the EVM compatible Blockchains such as Avalanche and Moonbeam ahead of schedule for dedicated and robust testing and development of the testnet and the subsequent mainnet launches.
By Q2 2022, Umbrella Network’s decentralized oracles would natively support smart contracts across 9 different Blockchains — making us the largest decentralized oracle by number of Blockchains natively supported.
29 AMAs and TableTalks were held across communities where Umbrella Network was the Guest
As a decentralized entity, Umbrella Network welcomes questions from all members of the lovingly termed $UMB community. But for those who might not yet be in our Telegram channel or Discord (where some of our liveliest conversations occur), Umbrella Network appears as a guest for AMAs.
These platforms have been Telegram, YouTube livestreams, Twitter threads, and more. Over the last one year, we appeared on 21 external communities to answer their questions on Umbrella Network and decentralized oracles.
Umbrella Network also hosts TableTalks — a livestream YouTube program to give the community direct access to what the team is thinking and working on.
Around major announcements, Umbrella Network also hosted 5 AMAs on their internal Telegram channel.
100,000+ $UMB in Prizes Given To Foster Development around dApps
The fact that Umbrella Network supports development of responsible dApps that leverage oracles to make themselves more secure is no secret. From sponsoring Eth Online, ETH CC, and various Gitcoin and Developer’s Challenges, we’re doing our part to make DeFi more secure, stable, and open for all.
Over the past one year, we announced awards worth over 100,000 $UMB across the above mentioned platforms, and we will only continue to increase our investments significantly in the near future.
The goal here has been to help the developer community better understand the risks of directly sourcing their data feeds from hacker-prone centralized sources or the costly decentralized alternatives.
2 Cohorts of Community Validators Onboarded — More To Follow
Community validators form the backbone of the data validation process for our decentralized oracles. When data is brought to our oracles via APIs or other sources, it is the community validators that validate the veracity of the data before it is committed to the Blockchain and add to the security of the overall network.
Umbrella Network brings in validators as cohorts and the process for onboarding the second cohort is underway at the time of writing, with even more validators to join our growing program in the coming months. If you’re interested in becoming a validator, click here to read the details.
Token Bridge and Options Pricing Model Launched
Both technological innovations and a testament to Umbrella Network’s commitment to helping make DeFi safer, the Token Bridge and the Options Pricing Model were launched in October to address different risks in the crypto-space.
Umbrella Network’s token bridge (ETH-BSC) was birthed out of necessity. Following a third-party exploit of a third-party bridge, we decided that the only way to ensure the safety of the bridge protocol and that of the $UMB staked by the community, we decided to build our own.
A token bridge enables the transfer of tokens from one Blockchain (say $UMB on ETH Blockchain) over to another (say $UMB on BSC).
Over time, the functionality of the bridge shall be expanded to include seamless transfer of $UMB tokens across all supported Blockchains. Ability to leverage our token bridge for bridging third party tokens, as well as support for new blockchains and asset types shall be added subsequently too.
Via our partnership with UnoRe and CoverCompared, transactions over Umbrella Network’s token bridge are currently insured to the cumulative tune of $500k.
On the other hand, the options pricing model is as much a work of art, as it is of technology — like all mathematical things are!
Umbrella Network’s options pricing model has solved a long-standing problem affecting the crypto-options market — arbitrage.
By applying non-arbitrage constraints and smoothing the implied volatility curve, the extrapolated strike prices are free of arbitrage.
This is the first time crypto-options stand in parity with the tradfi markets such as the S&P 500 in terms of arbitrage-free trading, smooth IV curve, and the presence of a more comprehensive options chain.
LIVE Token Burn
Umbrella Network burned almost 1,500,000 $UMB tokens in a YouTube livestream — Link. We took this opportunity to educate the audience on what a true burn means.
We invoked the ‘burn’ function in our smart contract which is more sophisticated than simply sending the tokens to a zero wallet. By performing a ‘true burn’, Umbrella Network reduced the total token supply by the number of tokens burned.
This act was necessitated due to the third party exploit that siphoned $UMB tokens from the third-party bridge and dumped it into the market. By burning an equivalent number of tokens, we practically brought the price back to the pre-exploit levels.
The Acquisition of Advertising Platform Lucidity
Umbrella Network acquired the blockchain advertising platform Lucidity.
Lucidity has been instrumental in identifying data discrepancies in the digital ad supply chain for some of the biggest brands in the world. They’re a prime example of taking off-chain data stored in multiple databases and moving it to the blockchain securely to unlock valuable insights.
Umbrella Network’s Senior Advisor, Sam Kim posted here the rationale of the $UMB community behind acquiring Lucidity. The proposal was subsequently unanimously accepted by the Community Council.
Lucidity recently won silver at the prestigious IAB awards, in partnership with Samsung and Space Agency.
Umbrella Network Enters GameFi — Brace Yourselves
Umbrella Network is making a splash in the GameFi space with the strategic partnership with MetalCore — a P2E game developed by Studio 369 with stunning visuals unseen earlier in the gaming NFT space.
MetalCore officially launched at NFT.NYC where they were the Platinum sponsor. Check out the trailer here and follow Metalcore on Twitter and Discord to stay updated, gain chances to win whitelist spots, and more pleasant surprises.
While the above constitute the milestones that made the most noise, there were countless other wins throughout the year. From coverage on major publications such as Forbes and Cointelegraph to coverage on Coindesk, the wins just kept coming and we’re excited to keep up our pace as we look towards 2022 and work towards greater adoption, innovation, and decentralization.
Speaking of milestones, lest we forget, the first-ever rUMB to UMB Achievement was revealed. When 40MM data points are written on a single chain on any 7 consecutive days, the ability to convert rUMB to UMB shall unlock.
Read here for more details.
With that, we’d like to call it a wrap on Umbrella Network’s Year in Review: 2021.
Follow us on Twitter, Telegram, Discord, Instagram, Facebook, and Medium so that you do not have to rely on year-end updates to apprise yourselves of the progress made by one of the hottest products in DeFi.
- Umbrella Network Marketing Team
