Chainlink Global Hackathon Winner deBridge Arming Developers With Tools to Go Truly Cross-chain
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The decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem has grown tremendously during the past year. Recently, it had approached USD 100 billion in total value locked (TVL) and is valued at well over USD 90 billion at the time of writing, according to DeFi Pulse data.
Smart contracts, which may be programmed with set terms and conditions, have also been deployed across a wide range of DeFi platforms such as Aave (AAVE) and Compound (COMP), in order to facilitate decentralized lending, borrowing, and staking. While this nascent DeFi system has its clear advantages, it’s currently quite fragmented.
Currently, there are many siloed blockchains which has made it really challenging to transfer value seamlessly between hundreds of distributed ledger tech (DLT) networks. However, there are several projects that are currently working to improve cross-chain interoperability. This means that application developers are creating protocols that will allow different blockchains to exchange data and assets between each other.
Enabling developers to go cross-chain
Projects like deBridge have been launched in order to create solutions that will allow different blockchains to exchange both data and cryptocurrency tokens with each other. deBridge has won the Chainlink Global Hackathon in 2021, grabbing the first prize among more than 140 competing teams.
While there are other blockchain interoperability solutions in the market such as Polkadot (DOT) and Cosmos (ATOM), deBridge is an innovative infrastructure project that aims to not only facilitate cross-chain swaps of assets but also help projects expand to other blockchains and Layer-2 platforms.
Using deBridge, project developers will be able to expand to other blockchains by bridging their native token as well as interconnect components of the protocol in different chains.
Just like many blockchains are required to support the future of finance, the crypto space also needs several different blockchain interoperability protocols to cater to a wide range of requirements.
According to its developers, deBridge is focused on enabling cross-chain interoperability and has the potential to take digital currencies and blockchain tech into the mainstream. As noted by the deBridge team, the blockchain space is rapidly undergoing transformative changes.
deBridge realizes that it will be critical to support cross-chain swaps and interoperability as we head into the future. The team recently raised USD 5.5 million in capital so that they could continue working in the cross-chain sector.
With assistance from partner ParaFi Capital, the deBridge team has been making steady progress, which has come after the project’s launch during the Chainlink Spring 2021 Hackathon.
deBridge has secured substantial investments from Huobi Ventures, Krypital, MarketAcross, Lemniscap, Crypto.com, DFG, the LAO, Neptune DAO, Axia8 Ventures, and several other prominent investors.
Alex Smirnov, Co-founder and Project Lead at deBridge, has noted that the proceeds should help with creating infrastructure and associated decentralized services that would enable any protocol to expand to any blockchain or DLT network “to achieve greater scalability, while seamlessly interconnecting protocol components in different ecosystems.”
The capital injection should also help deBridge with deploying their MainNet later this year. The initial version of the protocol will reportedly support the Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Polygon, HECO and Arbitrum cross-chain swaps as well as enable greater interoperability.
Individual users and established projects should be able to carry out cross-chain interactions and participate in bridging. The development team may also start creating various solutions on top of the deBridge protocol.
Looking ahead to a decentralized global economy
Many experts now agree that the future of finance will be a lot more decentralized than the traditional financial industry. In order to enable a truly democratized financial ecosystem, we need to create sufficiently decentralized platforms that will be able to interact with each other via cross-chain interoperability solutions. That’s why projects like deBridge are expected to play a major role in supporting blockchain interoperability and seamless interactions between independent DLT networks.
