Stakin Podcast Sits Down With Polygon, Wormhole Exploit, Solana Riptide, ICON Roadmap and more
Once again, it has been a fun few weeks in blockchain. And we’re glad to tell you all about it. These are the main highlights of this week:
- Gravity Launched Their Front-End for Cross-Chain Transfers: Spacestation
- Axelar Announces The Launch of Satellite
- ICON Foundation Announces SNOW/ICE Launch Roadmap
- Agoric Mainnet Upgrade Proposal
- $NETA Launches On $JUNO
- Stakin Sits Down With Polygon New Podcast Episode
- Solana Labs Launches Solana Pay
- Solana Riptide Hackathon
- Solana Bridge: Wormhole Exploit
Gravity Launched Their Front-End for Cross-Chain Transfers: Spacestation
On the 26th of January 2022, Gravity Bridge launched their cross-chain transfer front-end called Spacestation. Spacestation.zone currently only supports transfers to Gravity Bridge Chain, and can be used by connecting your Keplr Wallet.
Axelar Announces The Launch of Satellite
The first ecosystem application powered by the Axelar Network was introduced on the 26th of January: Satellite. Satellite is a decentralized cross-chain asset transfer tool that allows users to transfer assets held on one chain to an address on another. Satellite will facilitate the transfer of native Terra assets like as LUNA and UST between many EVM and non-EVM chains, including Terra, Avalanche, Polygon, Ethereum, and Fantom, with Moonbeam following soon after. Several networks and assets will be added during the next few weeks and months.
Axelar
ICON Foundation Announces SNOW/ICE Launch Roadmap
Recently, the ICON Foundation released the full roadmap for the SNOW/ICE Launch. You can find all the information here. In a nutshell, the roll-out will be happening in four phases. The first, frost is a standalone PoA Testnet, will involve view iterations to develop core runtime features. This phase will feature crude tokenomics and integration with the ICON BTP bridge and Ethereum bridge, as well as identify EVM and Ethereum compatibility gaps.
Agoric Mainnet Upgrade Proposal
The first upgrade proposal for Mainnet Phase 0 of Agoric was applied. This proposal was to bump the Agoric Mainnet to Cosmos v0.44.5 and add new “vesting” capabilities: Clawback Vesting and transferring additional tokens to existing Periodic Vesting accounts. Stakin has voted and upgraded. We’re excited for further upgrades and proposals. More information.
$NETA Launches on Juno Network
On the 1st of February 2022, $NETA was introduced to the Juno Network. $NETA is a decentralized store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account. $NETA claiming started on February 1st, 2022. All unclaimed $NETA will automatically be permanently burned on February 28th, 2022. You can claim your $NETA here: https://neta.money/
Stakin Podcast With Polygon
Stakin released the second episode of The Staking Podcast and this time, we sat down with Polygon. The Staking Podcast is a podcast that teaches its listeners about the different Proof-of-Stake networks on which Stakin operates. You can have a listen at the conversation with Polygon’s Governance Officer here:
Solana Labs Launches Solana Pay
On the 1st of February 2022, Solana Labs launched Solana Pay, providing merchants and consumers with a new decentralized payment standards and protocols to enable direct acceptance and settlement of digital dollars such as USDC. Users of Solana Pay, will now be able to accept and transact any volume of tokenized dollars compatible with the Solana Blockchain for disruptively low fees measured in fractions of a cent. The platform was developed as a decentralized peer-to-peer protocol, you can find more information about the platform here.
Solana Riptide Hackathon
Additionally, Solana Ventures kicked off the Riptide hackathon, a global Solana hackathon with $5 million in prizes and seed funding on the 2nd of February 2022. The hackathon will run until the 17th of March. Riptide will focus on fostering new applications in the payments, DeFi, web3, gaming, and DAO arena as the current of developers and builders continues to flow towards the Solana blockchain. Builders may anticipate seminars, workshops, resources, and the support of the larger Solana community.
Wormhole Bridge Exploit
In other news, Wormhole, a highly popular cryptocurrency platform that offers bridges between multiple blockchains, announced on Twitter on the 2nd of February that they noticed an exploit. The bridge between the Ethereum and Solana blockchains was allegedly abused. It routed around $320 million in ETH to crypto wallets that did not belong to the Wormhole team.
A bridge is a grouping of smart contracts that allow for interoperability and transactions between multiple blockchains. A web app is often used by users to access a bridge. They link their wallet to the online app and then begin a transaction. Once the transaction on the origin blockchain has been confirmed, the crypto assets are released on the destination blockchain and transferred to the user wallet. For example, you might transfer ETH and receive SOL in return.
After reporting that their network was down for maintenance as a reaction to the exploit on the 2nd of February. On the 3rd of February, Wormhole let its users know in a Twitter message that “All funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up”.
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— Wormhole🌪 (@wormholecrypto) February 3, 2022
All funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up.
We're deeply grateful for your support and thank you for your patience.
DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. Staking, delegation, and cryptocurrencies involve a high degree of risk, and there is always the possibility of loss, including the failure of all staked digital assets. Additionally, delegators are at risk of slashing in case of security or liveness faults on some protocols. We advise you to do your due diligence before choosing a validator.
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