Mikhail Maslennikov

This guide will take you through everything you need to start using Azuro Testnet v2.

This week sees the launch of the new and improved Azuro Testnet and to celebrate we are running various competitions where you can win some fantastic prizes.

Full details on #azuroSZN competitions and prizes can be found here

Step 1: The basics

Join the Azuro Discord

Follow us on Twitter

Ensure you have a Metamask account set up

Step 2: Verify your wallet in the Discord in order to qualify for the competitions

Your Metamask wallet is required in order to track your Testnet v2 betting activity and reward prizes as part of the #azuroSZN competitions.

To verify yourself you need to:

Go to Azuro Discord

pass the welcome Captcha

go to the #wallet-verification channel

follow instruction to connect your wallet via Collab.land

Step 3. Navigate to Testnet v2

Navigate to Testnet v2 on the Azuro website — https://app.azuro.org/

Step 4. Connect your wallet to the Azuro Testnet

Step 5. Change your network to Rinkeby

Step 6. Get testnet ETH on the Rinkeby network

Betting on Azuro Testnet will not cost users tx fees. You can claim test ETH from the Rinkeby network and claim free USDT tokens to bet with from Azuro.

First of all claim your tesnet ETH here — https://faucets.chain.link/rinkeby

Add your wallet address you’ll be using on testnet to the ‘testnet account address’ field and press ‘send request’ after completing the CAPTCHA.

The Chainlink faucet will give you 0.1 ETH per claim (More than enough gas to participate for the duration of the testnet).

Option 2:

If you have problems with the first option you can ask the community to send you some testnet ETH in the #rinkebyproblems channel in Discord.

Just send your wallet address to the channel.

Step 7. Return to Testnet v2 and claim your 100 USDT

Step 8. Make bets and compete for amazing prizes

You can track your bets in the ‘My Bets’ section as shown below.

Once the event is over, if you bet has won you will need to click the redeem button to claim your winnings. This triggers a rinkeby transaction and will update you USDT test token balance once complete.

You’re all set, make sure to check out the campaigns running on testnet in Discord and here on medium!

Nexon is a decentralized algorithm-based lending protocol on Aurora. We’ve deployed Nexon on Aurora testnet and is available to try here! 🥳.

Starswap has gone live on Starcoin’s testnet barnard, the first step in our grand vision of a fully functional on-chain decentralized exchange.

Before Starswap goes live on mainnet, we want to do our best to ensure the security of the entire protocol.

Therefore, we encourage developers and security experts to test our protocol, and we will also provide various rewards for the Starswap vulnerability program.

rule

You must be the first to report a problem to us. We will review duplicate bugs to see if they provide additional information, but otherwise only reward the first reporter.

We’ll award bounties as we fix them and keep you informed as we work to fix them.

Follow the Tutorial to experience the Starswap testnet function

Report discovered bugs at https://forms.gle/zBUpVpW6QxNXSdHU6

Bounty Reward

For the bug bounty program, we have four tiers of rewards:

Tier 1 Rewards — UI errors on the web page (100$ is equivalent to $STAR)

Tier 2 Rewards — Availability issues that do not result in loss of funds. Bug fixes may require manual intervention to adjust parameters (150$ equivalent to $STAR)

Tier 3 Rewards — Availability issues that do not result in loss of funds. Bug fixes may require smart contract redeployment (200$ equivalent to $STAR)

Tier 4 Rewards — Problems that lead to loss of funds (400$ is equivalent to $STAR)

Starswap project party reserves all rights

It’s been a month since the release of Terabethia’s Testnet! We’re following up with V2 of this testnet, receiving some architecture upgrades focused on internalizing and obfuscating data.

Terabethia crossed the 1-month mark with a live testnet on the Internet Computer. For the past month and a half, developers started testing and building on top of the bridge and its communication protocol that helps bridge contracts across Ethereum and the Internet Computer

A month later, with feedback under our arms and more research on our team’s end, we are releasing V2 of Terabethia’s testnet. Our focus with this release? To improve security, make IC -> Eth messages more cheap and efficient using Starknet, and polish the overall architecture!

Let’s dive deep into how the testnet works, what is new, and review the flow in both directions:

Sending messages Ethereum to the Internet Computer

And from the Internet Computer to Ethereum

If you want to get right to testing, visit our updated documentation!

Any Ethereum contract can send messages through Terabethia to a canister on the Internet Computer by calling:

Terabethia.sendMessage(uint256 canisterId, uint256[] payload).

We store only the hash of the message (32 bytes), allowing anyone to efficiently send even large payloads.

Terabethia Goerli contract: 0x2E130E57021Bb4dfb95Eb4Dd0dD8CFCeB936148a

Once you submit the transaction to Ethereum, it’s picked up by our AWS Lambda. If the transaction is valid, we take the uncompressed message data and forward the message to Terabethia’s contract on the IC.

The message is then automatically delivered by calling the handler method on your canister. It’s up to your canister if you decide to consume the message. We provide an example below using eth_proxy .

Once the message is consumed from Terabethia (by calling consume_message), it’s gone and it can’t be consumed anymore. So it’s your responsibility to make sure your flow after consume_message is failure-proof.

We created the eth_proxy example with two versions of how to consistently handle messages from our Terabethia canister. This example uses Terabethia to build two contracts that bridge a token (in this case testnet ETH) to the IC.

The first version will make the proxy an extension to a set token (i.e. DIP20, ERC721); allowing all the functionality to exist within one canister avoiding any inconsistencies with inter canister calls. The second version will build on top of the current version to maintain an internal log of received messages. Allowing manual (using heartbeat function) failure recovery to transactions between a proxy and the respective token.

This version of IC Terabethia focuses on internalizing and obfuscating data. Previously we didn’t have nonce on incoming messages. So with nonce now provided in the message we can maintain idempotency even with the same message.

Similarly we now maintain an internal index (outgoing_nonce) of outgoing messages to Ethereum. Hashing the unique index with the message allows us to create a unique transaction list.

Another update here is that, when consuming a message received from the IC, the Terabethia contract on Ethereum will consume the message from our new Starknet core contract, which we now utilize to relay messages from the IC to Ethereum in a more efficient manner (more on this below).

TerabethiaCanister.send_message(to: Principal, payload: Vec<Nat>).

That store’s outgoing message (hash only) on Terabethia canister.

Terabethia Internet Computer canister: timop-6qaaa-aaaab-qaeea-cai

We pull these messages by our AWS Lambda every minute. Every message is sent to Ethereum through our Starknet Cairo contract. The main difference is messages sent to Ethereum are not automatically triggered (because of gas costs). Once the message is accepted on Ethereum, a user needs to manually consume the message.

As an example, you can check our EthProxy.sol, where users can invoke withdraw(uint256 amount). You can only withdraw the exact amount you burnt on the Internet Computer.

Usually, it takes less than an hour for the message to be accepted on Ethereum, depending on Starknet, but it could be sped up by providing payment.

In V2 of Terabethia, we shifted to integrate Starknet directly into our stack to act as a more efficient relayer of messages from the IC to Ethereum. As detailed in the flow above, messages are sent to our Starknet Cairo contract, which then rolls up to Ethereum. One of the biggest benefits of this is having Starknet handle Ethereum state updates, which can be expensive and challenging to deal with otherwise.

We have also further developed and upgraded our AWS infrastructure and lambda setups to ensure several security guarantees to different aspects of the bridge, and its interactions with Starknet. Let’s dig into the technical details of these security improvements.

We’ll share more on how we plan to reduce our AWS impact/infra in the future below. It’s on our roadmap to reduce centralized components as the bridge grows and new updates allow for it.

Internet Computer Signatures

We’ve secured the sending of messages from Ethereum→ Internet Computer with an secp256k1 key stored in AWS KSM, which means the private key never leaves the HSM (Hardware Security Module). Yes, even our developers don’t have access to it. We only know the public key (Principal ID), which is needed for whitelisting on the IC.

The signing action (ksm:sign) is disabled for everyone, except the lambda roles which are responsible for polling/sending messages (to the IC).

Starknet Signatures

Since Starknet does not support secp256k1 signatures, we are working on an implementation ourselves. In the meantime, we have another AWS KSM key that’s used for decrypting Starknet’s private key.

But how was it encrypted in the first place? For this purpose we have a simple bootstrap Lambda, it creates a random key pair for Starknet and it only exposes Stark address and encrypted private key in base64 format. The Stark address is used when we deploy Cairo contracts (whitelisting operator) and an encrypted private key is set as env variable on the Lambda that sends messages to Starknet.

Encrypting via ksm:encrypt is only allowed to bootstrap the Lambda role. Decrypting via ksm:decrypt is only allowed to a Lambda that sends messages to Starknet.

Reducing Our AWS Impact in the Future

There are two key pieces that we’re looking to tackle in terms of reducing our AWS involvement in Terabethia:

Threshold Signatures — once it’s possible to make signatures within an IC canister, we can leverage these instead of using KMS. Every outgoing message in Terabethia IC would be signed and such signature will be simply verified in Cairo.

Ethereum Integration — once it’s possible to query Ethereum state directly from an IC canister, we can easily check if the Ethereum→Internet Computer message exists there. That way would only use AWS for triggering a message’s delivery, while the message validation would happen on the IC directly.

That’s all for this testnet update! V2 is coming as a great one-up to the initial release of Terabethia, and we’re moving smoothly along towards mainnet!

What are some of the pieces that we’ll be working on to get there?

Exploring batch messages through Starknet to increase throughput

Add and verify secp256k1 signatures on Starknet

Build a transaction or notification checker for IC to ETH pending messages

Magic Proxy (ERC20 asset bridge) built using this new bridge setup

Stay tuned and sharp for more updates! Connect with us on Twitter or Discord to share with the team behind Terabethia.

What’s Next & Wrapping it up!

Security Guarantees

What is New in ICETH in Testnet V2?

When sending messages from the Internet Computer to Ethereum with Terabethia, it’s pretty much the same as the other way around! Any IC canister can call:

Messages From Internet Computer Ethereum

What is New in ETHIC in Testnet V2?

Messages From Ethereum Internet Computer

As Clearpool moves from the Testnet and onto the Mainnet, we’ve been receiving more and more questions on what exactly we do. With our protocol being the first in the market, we’d like to offer a simple explanation of what Clearpool is. Read on to learn what Clearpool does and how it’s going to change borrowing and lending for both institutions and retail investors alike.

Clearpool provides a platform that opens up the credit markets to both institutional and retail investors. But what does this really mean?

The credit market is where institutions look when they require capital but don’t want to sell equity. Think of it as an unsecured loan they take out from investors. In return, investors get their money back plus interest after a set period of time.

Traditionally, at least one large financial institution (usually several) would originate the loan, with many more participating as investors. This means that the value accrues to these larger institutions, and leaves retail investors overlooked.

Clearpool takes this concept, applies the principles of decentralization and the benefits of cryptography, to level the playing field, and gives everyone (whether you’re a large investment fund, crypto whale or everyday retail DeFi user) the ability to access the value that these borrowing and lending opportunities create.

The biggest difference to traditional credit markets is that Clearpool removes all central intermediaries, and subsequent layers of cost and friction, which enables higher and properly priced returns for lending stablecoins (USD pegged digital assets).

Lenders get risk-adjusted rates of interest, paid in stablecoins, plus additional rewards paid in the protocol’s native token CPOOL. This makes Clearpool one of the most attractive venues for lending in DeFi.

Before an institution can become a borrower on Clearpool, it must become whitelisted. They must provide certain information and pass a KYC (Know Your Customer) process, to verify their identity and prove that they are legitimate.

Once this is complete, the Clearpool team will assess the information, and make a decision on whitelisting. Later, the Clearpool community (CPOOL holders) will be able to participate in whitelist voting.

Whitelisted borrowers can subsequently launch a single-borrower liquidity pool and compete for liquidity directly from the DeFi ecosystem. Anybody can be a lender, all you need is a web3 wallet such as MetaMask. Connecting to the app is simple, and once connected you will see all available borrower pools. Clicking on a pool will show you more details about the borrower, their credit score, and the rate of interest + rewards that you can earn for lending to that pool.

The interest rate paid by the borrower is dynamic, which means it varies depending on the utilization ratio of the pool (the percentage of the total funds in the pool that the borrower is currently utilizing). This means lenders’ returns are based on real-time risk ensuring your returns are fair.

Simply put — Clearpool follows the real-time demand and supply of your lending activities and offers extra rewards to provide a fair and competitive return.

3. Shape the Future of our Platform as you Earn 🗳

We mentioned how you can earn CPOOL tokens through the lending process. CPOOL is Clearpool’s governance token. It is a liquid digital asset that trades on various exchanges. The CPOOL token also has a significant amount of utility, which helps to power the Clearpool ecosystem.

Holders can stake CPOOL on the Clearpool app to earn staking rewards, regardless of whether they are a lender or not. Locking staked tokens for a longer period increases the rewards, and also gives you more power for CPOOL farming through what is called a multiplier level.

CPOOL farming allows lenders to stake their cpTokens, which are tokens that they receive when they lend to a borrower pool (we will cover cpTokens in more detail in a subsequent post) to increase the additional CPOOL rewards that they earn for being a lender. The rewards that you earn for farming (staking cpTokens) depend on your multiplier level, which as we mentioned earlier is achieved through CPOOL staking.

This mechanism incentivises the purchasing, holding and locking of CPOOL tokens for all types of lenders, including large institutional players. This creates more demand for the token in the open market. Additionally, all borrowers must also be staking CPOOL — even more demand!

Did we mention CPOOL is deflationary?! Yes, CPOOL has a declining total supply thanks to a buyback mechanism through protocol revenue. We will cover that more in a subsequent post, but for now, just visualize all that demand for a token that’s supply is shrinking!

Finally, CPOOL will eventually give its holders the ability to shape our long-term roadmap through governance voting once Clearpool transitions to full decentralization.

We understand that some of these concepts may be difficult to understand for those of you who aren’t familiar with traditional financial markets, but Clearpool is a platform where borrowing and lending capital is fair, competitive, and where the best lending opportunities are unlocked for everyone.

We hope this article gives you a better understanding of the Clearpool protocol and its governance token CPOOL.

Stay tuned for the next article in our Clearpool for Beginners Series coming soon!

Wrapping Up

2. Earn Profit Without Stress

1. Unlocking the Credit Markets

DISCLAIMER — THIS IS ABSOLUTE SPECULATION AND MY PERSONAL VIEWS AND OPINIONS. NOTHING IN THIS POST REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OR THE CORE DEFIKINGDOMS TEAM AND NONE OF THIS SPECULATION IS SUPPORTED BY ANYTHING OTHER THAN MY OBSERVATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF PRIOR STATEMENTS AND TEASERS

Okay with that out of the way lets get into some straight degen speculation.

Today, at the beginning of the AMA we saw the release of this Crystalvale teaser trailer — “A Perilous Journey Part 2”

This video features heroes being killed by a large sea creature followed by images of their cards being burned!

What does this mean?

Here’s my straight up degen speculation on how I think this will all play together with Crystalvale launch. Hope you enjoy!

My speculation is, like several others who I’m sure are thinking the exact same thing, is that there will be an option to early voyage to Crystalvale for exclusive quests and rare rewards, but at great risk, even the risk of losing your hero!

Why do I think this?

Back on Dec. 2, 2021, the team held an AMA and Frisk Fox mentioned the below:

What do you think of having these expansions being accompanied by event quests (i.e. an exploration event and people can do quests and rewards for exploring to the new chain)?

Frisky: Hubert would like to have a word with you because apparently it seems you’ve been spying on him and his plans. This is definitely in the works where we’ll have quests where you can go over earlier (existing heros) and have exclusive early access (could be some in game risk, etc) but there will be potential for some cool rewards and we’ll probably start announcing these things in the coming weeks and months.

Later in December, on Christmas Eve, Frisky made a suprise appearance in the Price Discussion channel and dropped these little nuggets:

Okay we were all excited, but I don’t think anyone had connected the prior statement about “in game risk” and Crystalvale early voyage with hero burning.

Frisky also said this:

And what did we recently get in the patch with the Castle update? A monument to what I presume is passed heroes.

A monument to heros, with flowers, which signify to me this is a monument to past heroes (likely passed away).

Then we get this teaser trailer where the heroes are attacked by a sea creature (with some cards being burned) on what appears to be a voyage to Crystalvale:

Lastly — the name of the teaser is literally THE PERILOUS JOURNEY.

What else might we expect to be able to see?

Gen0’s won’t be able to be burned (and probably wouldn’t be able to go)?

Would the hero be burned forever? Maybe not!?

Whatever happens, if this is a possibility I definitely have a lineup of some heroes that are going to be on the chopping block to be sent to war:

My heroes when I’m choosing who gets to take the perilous Journey.

Putting the disclaimer here again because you guys are a bunch of degens and probably skipped the other disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER — THIS IS ABSOLUTE SPECULATION AND MY PERSONAL VIEWS AND OPINIONS. NOTHING IN THIS POST REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OR THE CORE DEFIKINGDOMS TEAM AND NONE OF THIS SPECULATION IS SUPPORTED BY ANYTHING OTHER THAN MY OBSERVATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF PRIOR STATEMENTS AND TEASERSDISCLAIMER — THIS IS ABSOLUTE SPECULATION AND MY PERSONAL VIEWS AND OPINIONS. NOTHING IN THIS POST REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OR THE CORE DEFIKINGDOMS TEAM AND NONE OF THIS SPECULATION IS SUPPORTED BY ANYTHING OTHER THAN MY OBSERVATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF PRIOR STATEMENTS AND TEASERS

Okay with that out of the way lets get into some straight degen speculation.

Today, at the beginning of the AMA we saw the release of this Crystalvale teaser trailer — “A Perilous Journey Part 2”

This video features heroes being killed by a large sea creature followed by images of their cards being burned!

What does this mean?

Here’s my straight up degen speculation on how I think this will all play together with Crystalvale launch. Hope you enjoy!

My speculation is, like several others who I’m sure are thinking the exact same thing, is that there will be an option to early voyage to Crystalvale for exclusive quests and rare rewards, but at great risk, even the risk of losing your hero!

Why do I think this?

Back on Dec. 2, 2021, the team held an AMA and Frisk Fox mentioned the below:

What do you think of having these expansions being accompanied by event quests (i.e. an exploration event and people can do quests and rewards for exploring to the new chain)?

Frisky: Hubert would like to have a word with you because apparently it seems you’ve been spying on him and his plans. This is definitely in the works where we’ll have quests where you can go over earlier (existing heros) and have exclusive early access (could be some in game risk, etc) but there will be potential for some cool rewards and we’ll probably start announcing these things in the coming weeks and months.

Later in December, on Christmas Eve, Frisky made a suprise appearance in the Price Discussion channel and dropped these little nuggets:

Okay we were all excited, but I don’t think anyone had connected the prior statement about “in game risk” and Crystalvale early voyage with hero burning.

Frisky also said this:

And what did we recently get in the patch with the Castle update? A monument to what I presume is passed heroes.

A monument to heros, with flowers, which signify to me this is a monument to past heroes (likely passed away).

Then we get this teaser trailer where the heroes are attacked by a sea creature (with some cards being burned) on what appears to be a voyage to Crystalvale:

Lastly — the name of the teaser is literally THE PERILOUS JOURNEY.

What else might we expect to be able to see?

Gen0’s won’t be able to be burned (and probably wouldn’t be able to go)?

Would the hero be burned forever? Maybe not!?

Whatever happens, if this is a possibility I definitely have a lineup of some heroes that are going to be on the chopping block to be sent to war:

My heroes when I’m choosing who gets to take the perilous Journey.

Putting the disclaimer here again because you guys are a bunch of degens and probably skipped the other disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER — THIS IS ABSOLUTE SPECULATION AND MY PERSONAL VIEWS AND OPINIONS. NOTHING IN THIS POST REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OR THE CORE DEFIKINGDOMS TEAM AND NONE OF THIS SPECULATION IS SUPPORTED BY ANYTHING OTHER THAN MY OBSERVATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF PRIOR STATEMENTS AND TEASERS

We successfully finalized our seed and private sale rounds totaling $5.8 Million. Having developed the next evolutionary step in communication, pax.world is well positioned to become the next big player in the web3 metaverse solutions.

Yida Gao, General Partner of Shima Capital said “When we were first introduced to pax.world, it was clear that they stood out from other metaverse projects. The project’s sleek design and vetted team differentiates it among its peers. Pax.world is truly the first metaverse project to provide a real, grown-up, business and networking environment for its users.”

The private and seed round requests for interests oversubscribed 48 hours after the release of our whitepaper on December 15th with over 2000 requests to invest. Since then, pax.world has finalized a carefully selected list of backers who include several prominent names such as Reef, DFG Capital, TRGC, BlueZilla VC, Shima Capital, DextForce, Poolz, AU21 Capital and Jump Trading who serves as public exchange market maker.

During our seed and private rounds we were able to secure exceptional key opinion leaders (KOLs) in addition to securing a broad range of advisors to launch pax.world. Most notably contributors from other metaverse projects including Netvrk, early backers in Victoria VR.

“My vision five years ago was to build a virtual global community for individuals and brands, while revolutionizing the way they interact online.” says Frank Fitzgerald, Founder of pax.world “The unprecedented level of interest we received in our fund raise has been extremely validating and given us the ability to grow our community and expand this vision, making this a reality, well, a virtual reality!”

With the upcoming IDO/IEO launch of our BSC based token on March 11th, $PAXW — we will announce multiple events on Twitter (@paxworldteam) in the coming weeks including…limited edition NFT collections featuring our interactive in world AI avatar named Charlotte, land sales starting later this quarter and a full public launch later this year.

About pax.world

pax: pacis f. [peace; calm , quiet] (Latin)

Pax.world is a ready-to-deploy open metaverse platform that provides advanced audio, video and chat features along with realistic avatars with advanced technical specifications. With no graphics card or VR headset required (but optional) pax.world will launch users into web3 right from their laptops or mobile devices with simple wallet onboarding and low hardware requirements. Pax.world aims to innovate communication, discovery and knowledge in a new creative world owned by its members. The project aims to offer rich, interactive experiences that facilitate education, socialization, commerce and entertainment in a safe and inclusive environment.

Below is an introduction to Wanna LaunchPad’s features and usage UI.

Introduction to the main interface

Will include 4 main contents:

- Live: The projects are in the process of IDO.

- Upcoming: Upcoming IDO.

- Closed: Completed IDO.

- Search: Search for projects.

Steps to join

To participate in IDO on Wanna LaunchPad users need to have WANNAx to participate. This means that holders with WANNAx will be able to get more benefits.

When you want to join the IDO of an “upcoming” project, please follow the steps below:

Step 1: Access Wannaswap Launchpad. Link: https://wannaswap.finance/launchpad

Step 2: Select the project. Once the project is selected, the project’s information will be displayed. Users can use as the most basic reference information.

Step 3: Stake $WANNAx

Users start staking their WANNAx here. Staking or unstaking will not be restricted. That is, after staking, users can completely unstake at any time and can also stake more… The system will base on the amount of WANNAx and staking time to calculate the maximum amount each user is allowed to buy. But it will definitely be less than or equal to the amount staked.

Step 4: Commit

Users connect to personal wallets and commit the amount they want to buy (cannot exceed the number that the system has determined for that user in step 3). When committing, the corresponding amount of WANNAx in the wallet will be transferred to the system. Thus, the user must ensure that there is enough WANNAx balance in his personal wallet.

Step 5: Show the ending too

Step 6: Claim

Note: Depending on the project, it is possible to use WANNAx or NEAR, AURORA or stable coin as the exchange unit. However holding WANNAx is always required.

We are actively working on new projects to find quality projects to bring to the Wannaswap community. Projects need to meet the following factors:

1. Get grants from Near, Aurora or Proximity — Claim their identity and experience.

2. Pitch deck and Tokenomics approved by research team.

3. Vision, development direction and implementation ability.

The platform introduces new features to the world of decentralized insurance.

Bridge Mutual Community,

The Great Reinforcement is upon us!

We are extremely happy to announce that Bridge Mutual V2: The Great Reinforcement is live and open to the users! The platform is live and operational after months of deployment and relentless testing (including community beta testing)!

TL;DR:

Bridge Mutual is a decentralized, NO-KYC coverage platform that allows users to purchase insurance for their crypto portfolios and underwrite policies with stablecoins in exchange for an attractive yield. The platform is supported by Tether, collaborates with Sushi, and is already fully operational. Find general information about Bridge Mutual V1 here. Read V1 Whitepaper here.

Bridge Mutual V2: The Great Reinforcement, a massive upgrade to the platform, launches now. It's a big deal. Massive capital efficiency improvements make the APYs higher and policy prices lower.

Value proposition: earn high APY on your stablecoins by providing coverage liquidity and/or purchasing insurance policies against hacks and rug pulls and fully protect your portfolio. Earn tokens through voting on claims.

Bridge Mutual is for everyone, everywhere — anyone can purchase or provide coverage (individual or entity). The platform is privacy-oriented and has no KYC.

V2 introduces Capital Pool, an investment arm of Bridge Mutual, that will invest idle liquidity into 3rd party Defi protocols and generate revenue for Bridge Mutual's vault and (indirectly) for BMI token holders.

V2 also introduces leveraged portfolios, which allow users to underwrite insurance for many projects simultaneously, and with various risk parameters. Leveraged portfolios will offer relatively consistently high APYs for liquidity providers who are willing to accept the underlying risk while at the same time decreasing the price of the policies for new users.

Other features include shield mining, an affiliate widget, and the refreshed design of the platform.

Why Insurance?

With DApps and protocols pushing the DeFi industry forward, The TVL (Total Value Locked) in DeFi has reached over 195 Billion, with the number of DeFi users surpassing 3M by July 2021.

Source: Dune Analytics

Current DeFi protocols are already utilizing financial mechanisms such as collateralized loans, exchange fees, price options, and numerous derivatives. However, as we precariously observe and study the expanding industry, we recognize a lack of a variety of insurance and risk hedging products, especially fully decentralized ones. According to Ciphertrace, more than 60% of attacks in the crypto space were DeFi- related. As the overall TVL and the numbers of users increase, so does an opportunity for hackers and scammers. Defi is only as strong as the code that governs it, and the number of attacks will only grow in time. Because the risks will only continue to rise, there is a strong case for a decentralized and accessible insurance protocol that optimizes itself in accordance with the community requirements. At the same time, if the industry is to mature, users should be able to diversify their farm strategies with high APY insurance products. Both of those objectives (and more) can be achieved by a protocol that allows the market to underwrite insurance products and purchase a policy for crypto assets.

Enter Bridge Mutual.

Deployment of Bridge Mutual V2

Bridge Mutual Version 2: The Great Reinforcement going live is a great milestone for the team and marks a conclusion of an 8+ months effort of designs, standups, discussions, video calls, sometimes uneasy decisions, and moments of celebrations.

We called this upgrade "The Great Reinforcement" for three reasons:

First, to reinforce the Bridge Mutual platform and its community with better tools and resources to protect themselves against losses and threats in the crypto sphere. Making no-KYC crypto-insurance cheaper, better, and more widely accessible (few clicks).

Second, to create a safe, transparent, and incentivized environment for coverage providers (investors) to use their crypto for underwriting insurance policies in exchange for a yield. The Insurance industry and blockchain fit perfectly together, and it's about time that users get unrestricted access to that potential. V2 introduces sophisticated, permissionless, and transparent insurance-like pools that will generate yield in exchange for bearing an insurance risk. Community is now reinforced to use products that were never as accessible as they will be now.

And finally the third, for which we are most excited about. All the V2 features are interconnected and reinforce one another. Coverage pools fuel the availability of insurance policies. Leveraged portfolios use coverage pools to attract even more liquidity (of different risk parameters) and drive down the price of policies across the platform, which translates to increased policy sales. Increased policy sales transfer to higher coverage pools APYs, and the cycle continues to rise, all in the purpose of providing value to the end-user.

All the idle coverage liquidity is being used by the Capital Pool, an investment arm of the Bridge Mutual Protocol, to deploy funds into third-party yield generation projects. The yield generated comes to Bridge Mutual vault (owned by the BMI holders) and can be used to decrease the policies' prices further, initiate BMI token buybacks (buy pressure), or other initiatives. The protocol has its own funds and can work with it. Capital Pool revenues join the existing revenues from policy sales (20% of the premiums go to the Bridge Mutual vault). The protocol is designed and intended to be a sustainable machine, regardless of the market cycle.

All this is decentralized and privacy-oriented by design. Bridge is a tool built by the community, for the community.

Please note that Bridge Mutual V1 will still be open for users to withdraw and migrate their remaining rewards during this process.

Overview of V2 features:

Leveraged Portfolio(s)

Bridge Mutual V2 introduces Leveraged Portfolios, which consists of a distinct pool dedicated to users who may deposit their funds for leveraging. Although exposed to more risk than regular Coverage provider funds, leveraging will offer a much higher APY than a standard coverage. This feature will allow users to utilize new yield farming strategies for higher yields with rewards in stablecoins, BMI tokens, and Shield Mining tokens.

The value proposition for users:

Exposure to riskier high-reward pools with attractive APYs.

Opportunity to utilize new yield farming strategies for even higher APYs.

Reinsurance Pool

Bridge Mutual's Reinsurance Pool (RP) incorporates protocol-owned funds. The interest is earned from 3 factors: DeFi Yield Generator, Protocol Fee, and Reward Pool. The reinsurance pool acts as an internal coverage provider, which may significantly de-risk the protocol at no additional expense for regular Coverage Providers. With Bridge Mutual's Reinsurance Pool, The Protocol Fee will be 20 percent, a portion of the Premium paid by Policyholders. As for the Reward Pool, a part of the 80% premium will be allocated to reward Coverage providers.

The value proposition for users:

Increased supply of much cheaper coverage on selected pools.

Improved operations and increased capital efficiency directly translate to Bridge Mutual's overall value.

Capital Pool

The Capital Pool is the main pool responsible for the circulation of funds within the system. It aggregates USDT funds from all Coverage Pools, the Reinsurance Pool, and the Leveraged Portfolio(s). Additionally, it re-deploys to third-party protocols, enabling a small portion for withdrawals and claims while rebalancing daily to certify continuous operations and payouts.

The value proposition for users:

Externally oriented liquidity pool capable of interacting with the entire world of DeFi (yield farming).

Idle funds are utilized to generate yield, which can be potentially re-distributed to BMI holders.

Shield Mining

The Shield Mining feature is designed to encourage users and projects to provide X tokens into Project X Coverage Pools. This will enable community members to promote their project pools to attract and gain additional liquidity for their coverage. Bridge Mutual V2 also permits Leveraged Coverage Providers the potential to receive rewards in BMI, USDT, and the project X token.

The value proposition for users:

Developers and community members can promote their project coverage pool by depositing project X tokens and attracting liquidity with an increased APY.

Exposure to multi-token rewards.

BMI Widget

The Bridge Mutual widget is an easy-to-implement tool that enables BMI affiliates to sell coverage policies and directly raise liquidity through their applications. The front-end element will connect to partnered projects' interfaces that allow users to utilize a seamless coverage process within their platform. This feature will empower more users to participate in the Bridge Mutual safeguarding method and facilitate earnings as a BMI affiliate with no up-front investment.

The value proposition for users:

Earning as a BMI affiliate with no up-front investment

Personal branding benefits

BMI Mobile Version

As the BMI community grows, more users are relying on the platform. Following the recent UI/UX update, Bridge Mutual has also extended its efforts to run smoothly on mobile browsers, fit for browsing and interacting on smaller touch screens. Bridge Mutual consistently aims to make the application more accessible to anyone from anywhere.

The value proposition for users:

Access to all Bridge Mutual functionalities anytime and everywhere from your mobile.

Monitoring of your coverage portfolio will now be easier and faster.

Participate in the decentralized insurance revolution

It all starts with the Bridge Mutual app and our community.

All Bridge Mutual V2 users are now free to purchase coverage for their crypto portfolio and start diversifying their yield strategy as insurance underwriters. They are also free to farm with their BMI tokens on SushiSwap (search "Farm" section for BMI).

BMI tokens are at the center of the platform's future and will become more and more scarce over time. Bridge Mutual will port to Solana, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon (as well as likely other chains) in the near future. The overall supply of the tokens will remain constant, while the platform will start working with projects in many different ecosystems. To address their respective demands, adequate numbers of BMI tokens will be ported to different ecosystems.

V2 infrastructure, flexible and capable of hosting limitless insurance products (smart contract coverage is the first of many to come), will forever be governed by BMI's. The team's vision is to expand the protocol to as many chains as possible so that all ecosystems can benefit from the value proposition of decentralized insurance.

What's next?

More protocols on the platform, focus on marketing, lots of optimizations, and scaling.

Bridge Mutual DAO is scheduled to launch in February 2021, enabling BMI holders to create proposals and participate in the project's overall governance. We had strategically concluded to wait to start delivering any DAO news until after the public launch of V2, as we want the community to work on the latest possible version of the platform.

The DAO will enable vBMI holders (BMI stakers) to initiate discussions, proposals, and voting procedures, and consequently, directly influence the strategy and operations of the Bridge Mutual protocol.

Shortly after the DAO, Bridge Mutual multi-chain will follow. Users can expect Bridge Mutual to function on Solana, BSC, and MATIC (Polygon).

Solana's development is ahead, but it's also much more challenging than the other two, especially given the V2's overall complexity. To provide you with an idea, Bridge Mutual consists of almost 18,000 lines of solidity code which is huge by industry standards. For comparison purposes, Aave has approximately 7356 lines, and Uniswap V3 has 5000.

Once V2 is fully operational with Ethereum, we will be updating the community about multi-chain progress.

Going multi-chain will accelerate protocol development. Each chain will bring new liquidity, new covered protocols, and new marketing opportunities.

Thanks from the team to the community

Our team, led by Mike Miglio, our CEO and founder, and Lukas NN, our COO, consists of almost 30 members — each individual with heavy daily tasks to ensure the best performance of Bridge Mutual.

Fast forward a year later, the small circle of early adopters turned into thousands of engaging and dedicated members that we are happy to call our community. Early partnerships opened bigger partnerships, action plans turned into massive developments, and product visions turned into product launches.

As we progress our way into the new year, we want to thank each and every one of our dedicated members for supporting us this far. We are all collectively aiming for one goal: to provide anyone, anywhere, with the latest technological tools to protect their assets and participate in the collective prosperity of DeFi.

According to ImmuneFi, DeFi faced $10B in hacks and losses just in 2022. CryptoNews and Ambcrypto suggest that crypto hacks may escalate this year, which makes it even more important for Bridge Mutual to lead and protect the space.

This is a proud moment for us. Although we have come so far, we still have many more milestones to meet and objectives to accomplish. If you happen to be a new user, we kindly invite you to join our communities on Twitter, Discord, and Telegram, as well as welcome your first steps of protecting your assets on Bridge Mutual. If you've been with us for a while, thank you for your continued support. You're the reason why we're building.

Back to work,

Bridge Mutual team.

About Bridge Mutual

Bridge Mutual, a decentralized coverage platform, is on a mission to become the #1 crypto-armorer of Decentralized Finance and equip everyone with protection against universal crypto threats. We are a fully decentralized, p2p/p2b discretionary risk coverage platform covering smart contracts, stablecoins, centralized exchanges. Our platform allows users to provide coverage, decide on policy payouts, share profit, and get compensated for adjudicating claims. Users can get protection and provide one in exchange for yield. We focus on great product design, pro-community business objectives, and synergy with other web3 innovations.

Dear Linear Community,

It’s time for the monthly rebalancing of the ℓDEFI index.

For those not familiar with the rebalancing process it can be simplified into the following steps:

PieDAO provides Linear with the current month’s weightings in spreadsheet format → Linear provides its Oracle partners the spreadsheet → the Oracle partners provide Linear with the updated price data feed for ℓDEFI.

The table and pie chart below shows the resulting percentage allocations which were computed by adjusting the average market cap of all underlying’s over the past 30 days.

ℓDEFI February Rebalance

We look forward to providing you with the next update in a month.

Kind regards,

Linear Team

About Linear Finance

Linear Finance is a cross-chain compatible, decentralized delta-one asset protocol that allows users to get synthetic exposure to various assets, including cryptocurrency, commodities, and market indices. Users can utilize our cross-chain swap functionality to instantly swap assets across leading blockchain environments and DeFi protocols with unlimited liquidity and zero slippage.

12 Months In Dot Points

The idea here is to provide a ‘snapshot’ of the state of the nation before diving into a bit more detail of what has transpired over the last 12 months. Please note that the usual weekly Monday dev article will be pushed to tomorrow as the article-contributor time has been spent on this article as a priority. For now; brew a coffee, grab a beer or whatever is your drink of choice and run through the events of the past 12 months!

Happy Birthday Spartans!

TimeLine

28/08/20 — SpartanProtocol project was first announced

10/09/20 — First SPARTA token minted; Proof-of-Burn commences

27/09/20— First AMM pool was deployed (SPARTA:WBNB)

17/11/20— Bond+Mint program went live

19/01/21 — First successful DAO proposal (Bond allocation)

01/05/21— AMM exploited

12/05/21 — SPARTA V2 token deployed (inc feeBurn)

02/08/21 — CodeArena contest completed

Soon— TestNet

After-soon— Mainnet

Token Metrics (30/08/21)

2000+ — GitHub Commits

$0.30 — Burn Price

85.3 Million — Total Supply

$0.55 — Current Price

$43.5 M — Market Cap

270,328 — SPARTA Burnt Forever (feeBurn)

78.9 Million — SPARTA Circulating

81.5 M — V2 SPARTA Tokens

1,090 — V2 SPARTA Holders (>$100USD)

18,498 — V2 Transactions

SpartaV1

3.5 M — V1 SPARTA Tokens Remaining

586 — V1 SPARTA Holders (>$100USD)

840 248 — V1 Transactions

Fun Fact: If v1 had this deflationary function in place, we could estimate a rough ~2,600,000 SPARTA would have been burnt out of the total supply by now based on the transfer count * avg transfer amount plugged into the calculation of the feeBurn using half of the supply as the totalSupply figure.

Socials

73 — Published Medium Articles

316,760 — Reads&Views of the Medium

18.4K — Twitter followers

300+ — Twitter Posts

6M+ — Twitter Impressions & Engagements

6169 — Telegram members

The Story So Far

It's hard to believe that 12 months have passed since the first battle cries of the Spartan Protocol were heard across the globe.

The purpose of this section is to explore the events and objectives that have led us to where we are today. Thank you to everyone that has and continues to support SpartanProtocol — by the community for the community; always.

The project was released with the goal of being the first major non-UniSwap-clone liquidity project on Binance Smart Chain. Supported by passionate members of the existing Binance Chain community that saw the emerging opportunity that the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem could offer to DeFi and cryptocurrency; especially with the crazy fees that were being observed on other smart-contract-enabled chains.

Some might say that 12 months has shown this inkling to be pretty solid.

Check out the first article posted on Medium below (hello world!)

Announcing the Spartan Protocol

A Protocol for incentivised liquidity and synthetic assets on the Binance Smart Chain

medium.com

Team

Spartan Protocol’s vision was formed from a pseudo-anonymous group of developers who believe passionately in self-sovereignty.

Having globally distributed tools without extensive roadblocks such as bad actors, regulatory bodies and rent-seekers mean things can happen faster and cheaper. Anyone with access to a device and the internet has equal ability to be a peer in the ecosystem.

This philosophy has held true over the last 12 months with a strong contributor base that actively engages and helps build, for those without the technical skills that have wanted to assist have been helping with graphics, documentation, education and social media.

Further to that, the community contributed significant funds as can be seen with the recent $90K plus that was raised to fund the recently completed codeArena audit.

Why Binance Smart Chain

12 months ago, the concept of a smart-contract-enabled blockchain, with community adoption & cheap enough fees for the non-rich to afford, was still a pipe dream. Binance Smart Chain was one of the first movers in this space.

Spartan Protocol being comprised of many distributed members mostly from the Binance Chain community recognised the benefits that could be provided by a cheaper, EVM-capable blockchain with lightning-quick block times. Especially with the resources & community drive that would be provided and fueled by Binance.

Seemed like an obvious choice for this community to band together, get in early and bring across their code and experience from projects on other chains to build something brand new from the ground up especially for BSC.

Proof Of Burn — No AirDrops, No Team Tokens, No Private Sales — Ever !!!

Being a community project from the start during the proliferation of many DeFi protocols that prayed on unsuspecting crypto enthusiasts a fair & equitable launch and distribution of tokens was of the highest importance to contributors.

That's how BurnForSPARTA was born.

To acquire SPARTA, members had to burn BNB and bridged-BEP2 assets at a predetermined rate. Programmatically (no KYC or whitelists); their old assets were destroyed and SPARTA was minted and sent to them. Only 100m SPARTA could be acquired this way. The remainder of 200m SPARTA would then be emitted programmatically by the protocol over the lifetime of the network, starting at 35% APY and reducing, for the purposes of incentivising liquidity.

No one, not even the Spartan contributors; will be paid from an initial or time-locked allocation of tokens. No one will have ‘free’ or ‘airdropped’ access to any SPARTA tokens on mainnet launch (nor afterwards at any point).

Assisting Projects to join Binance Smart Chain

One of the quiet achievements of SpartanProtocol is that in the early days of BSC, many Binance Chain projects reached out for assistance in establishing their BSC presence and migrating their ecosystems across to function on both chains.

Spartan Protocol, as one of the pioneers of this process, was always happy to help!

This is something that continues to bring great joy to the contributors as we continue to work towards building a successful and flourishing Binance Smart Chain community, now and into the future.

Migrating from Binance Chain to Binance Smart Chain

A guide for projects on how to migrate from BEP2 to BEP20

medium.com

Bond+Mint

Bond+Mint; another novel distribution idea from the Spartan Protocol community — After continued discussions about how best to press on with SPARTA token distribution after BurnForSPARTA, the community contributors built and tried out the new Bond+Mint feature.

The Bond+Mint was an extremely effective way of bootstrapping liquidity into the pools, by pairing assets with SPARTA and having a 12-month release of assets meant that funds could be locked into the protocol, whilst allowing people to remove some as desired. The linear release rate of 12 months let individuals choose the time that suited them the most without creating the potential for lots of lockups to end all at the same time, stabilising outflows in the future.

Once people saw the effect of locking up liquidity over a long period they tended to choose to keep their liquidity locked up whilst learning more about the inner workings of the protocol and DeFi in general. This developed the community into a crowd of low time preference individuals.

Positions Page

One thing that stood out to contributors really early on was that many projects did not have a way to show a user their position in pools. This seems like an oversight in the beginning until the treads of technical complexity are unravelled in how difficult it is to accomplish, without bloat and excess contracts fees. It becomes an ongoing challenge.

A couple of contributors took the challenge on and developed the positions page, giving Spartans the ability to see their positions within the pools based on the below key metrics:

Tokens added and their price movements

Tokens vested and their price movements

True global ‘Profits’ and ‘Losses’ based on both Realised and unrealised gains and losses

How to check your ‘Redemption Value’

Guide for assessing the value of your help LP tokens

medium.com

DAO Activated

DAOs are unlike traditional organisations that have a hierarchical control structure, generally private and inaccessible to a community. Centralised exchanges are an example of this; you might want a token listed, but besides a Twitter barrage, you have very little influence on that decision coming to fruition.

DAOs place the community participants in control of the platform transparently and programmatically. The power of contracts enforced by mathematics means that a large number of automated actions within a contract can be set up and voted on, the results of which will be automatically actioned.

BonDAO was enabled as the first step towards a fully working DAO allowing community members to decide which asset pools would receive Bond+Mint allocations. It was seen as a good way to test out functionality and stress the importance of long term thinking for the protocol.

Spartan Protocol DAO — (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation)

Bond+Mint DAO — Now Live

medium.com

May Exploit

Unfortunately, along with the highs came the lows, and May 1 was most certainly the most difficult day in the short history of Spartan Procotol for both the contributors and also for the community.

We remain disappointed that the individual(s) who exploited the Liquidity Pools did not contact the community via social media to report the issue and request a bounty/compensation, and discuss the return of the stolen funds. As Spartan Protocol was launched with the concept of a fair distribution (no team tokens, no seed or angel investors collecting cheap tokens, and no funds paid to the team during the Token Generation Event), all funds taken were the property of the Spartan Protocol community.

Should the individual(s) wish to contact us to discuss a return of a portion of these tokens, we would welcome the opportunity, and these tokens would be returned to the original liquidity providers based on their percentage of holdings at the time of exploit (we already have this snapshot)

Today, Spartan Protocol was subject to an exploit targeting the liquidity pools.

The Spartan Contracts were fully audited by Certik prior to launch, along with the usual ongoing code reviews, so this…

spartanprotocol.medium.com

Claiming Fallen Sparten Funds

To support the community in the wake of the exploit, a decision was made to allocate a small portion of the remaining SPARTA tokens (from the distribution phase) to the LP holders that were impacted.

There is still SPARTA that has not been claimed by V1 Pools holders, so if you are yet to claim, now is the time to navigate to the DApp upgrade to the V2 of SPARTA and claim any SPARTA from the pools (be careful to follow the official links; do not trust any PMs or links until you have confirmed their legitimacy multiple times)

Spartan Protocol | Liquidity & Synthetics on BSC | DeFi

Spartan Protocol provides community-governed and programmable token emissions functions to incentivize the formation of…

dapp.spartanprotocol.org

Road To Sparta V2

During a Spartan’s Childhood, they undergo the Agoge, a period of development where they are taken from their family and put through a gruelling training regime. The results were one of the strongest and in our opinion one of the most badass ancient warrior societies. Only through great adversity can you come out the other side stronger, the Spartan community has dusted itself off and set about becoming a stronger and more resilient platform to do battle into the future.

Road to SPARTAv2

Completing your tokenSwap to SPARTAv2, and the claim process detailed

spartanprotocol.medium.com

Code Arena Audit

During the Agoge, Spartans are tested and learn from experienced warriors and members of society. Spartan Protocol thanks to the generosity of a crowdfunding campaign have enlisted the assistance of CodeArena to hold a contest to perform an in-depth and broad audit of the entire ecosystem.

A unique benefit of codeArena is that the work is performed by a diverse and specialised team of security experts to conduct both logical and unique exploit approaches. Spartan Protocol received record engagement and feedback from wardens which will strengthen the protocol going forward.

Deflationary Sparta — We missed Burning too Much

As you know, Spartan Protocol likes to burn tokens, so a ‘feeBurn” mechanism was implemented.

This feeBurn adds deflationary pressure to counteract the emissions curve and also to assist in offsetting any inflationary results of the FallenSpartans allocation. What we will likely see is a push/pull at some point in the supply where the feeBurn is having a tug-of-war with the daily emissions and holding the supply in a fairly consistent band.

As the supply increases, the feeBurn gets more aggressive and the daily emissions get less aggressive. This will mean that SPARTA gets more deflationary and less inflationary as the supply increases and time goes on.

The Twitter contributors will endeavour to provide weekly updates on feeBurn status — things will get exciting with the launch of the upgraded DApp.

For a detailed breakdown of the mechanism — see the Medium Article Below

SPARTAv2 (Token) Fee Burn

Learn about the new deflationary feature of the SPARTA token

spartanprotocol.medium.com

Contributor’s Focus

CodeArena Contest

IN PROGRESS — work through the post-contest tasks with the C4 judges & team for the eventual allocation of awards to security wardens

IN PROGRESS — communicate with security wardens to clarify/expand on feedback

Once these tasks above are completed, the CodeArena report will be published, and Spartans will be able to review the final list of findings to understand how the changes that have already been implemented into Spartan Protocol (in the PostC5 repository) fit into this greater picture.

As discussed previously, we continue to build and refine code in parallel with the CodeArena post-contest actions.

SPARTA V2 (Token)

COMPLETED (& ONGOING) — Work with DEXs & aggregators to ensure up-to-date information on the new SPARTA token (retiring the previous contract address) (1inch, PancakeSwap etc.)

COMPLETED (& ONGOING) — Work with token-tracking informational websites to ensure new token info is up-to-date (BSCscan, CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap etc.)

SpartanContracts

IN PROGRESS —Rebuild automated testing

Deploy updated V2 contracts to BSC testnet for at least 1 week of community stress testing

Deploy completed V2 contracts to BSC mainnet

DAppV2

COMPLETED (& ONGOING) — Set up a reliable index of history scoped to contracts (use this for positions page etc)

IN PROGRESS — Update the DApp to suit the contract changes

IN PROGRESS — Use the new testnet subgraph to build a more lightweight positions page for V2

After Mainnet

Enable Bond allocations to replenish TVL into the V2 pools

March onwards with our original goals of building the decentralised, yield-generating synthetics protocol on Binance Smart Chain

Thank you

If you have made it this far through our articles, we know that you are one of the true SpartanProtocol warriors that takes the time to genuinely assess what the contributors are spending countless hours on and the work that they are doing.

Thank you for your endless support and willingness to help those that might not spend the same amount of time digging as deep. That effort is not wasted and is massively appreciated by all.

You are the true Spartan Warriors; AROO, AROO, AROO

COMPLETED (only minor changes as required from now on) — Implementing refinements to contracts to address C4 & contributor feedback since the C4 contest code-freeze

COMPLETED — Sort and prioritise all CodeArena submissions into contract scopes along with tags based on ‘actionable’ or ‘discussion points’

COMPLETED — triage and prioritise the feedback submitted from the CodeArena wardens during the contest to prepare for the judges

What Can the Community Expect from the ISPO?

Today, we are thrilled to officially announce Ardana’s upcoming ISPO (Initial Stake Pool Offering) with DANA through our Ardana Stake Pool Alliance (ASPA) partners.

We have recently witnessed a consolidation of staked ADA in only a few SPOs (Stake Pool Operators), many of which operate multiple stake pools. We believe in the original vision of Cardano as a decentralized blockchain, and SPO diversity is critical to that tenant. Thus, one of the primary objectives of the ISPO will be to provide fair and decentralized incentives to both our smaller and larger ASPA member pools.

Ardana plans to focus on providing incentives to delegators with a long-term vision, not just liquidity providers farming mercenary capital. Patient delegators can expect a higher rate of incentives as a reward for their loyalty. An example of rewarding long-term loyalty would be an individual delegating for 5 epochs may earn something like X DANA per epoch, whereas delegating for 20 epochs may earn 1.15X DANA per epoch. We at Ardana are considering all approaches towards fostering long-term reward incentives and will announce more details surrounding the model we have chosen in further articles.

What is an ISPO?

An ISPO is one of many ways for a crypto project to raise funds. It’s a relatively new crypto fundraising method that first appeared on the Cardano blockchain. Unlike an ICO (initial coin offering), where investors spend their money on the project’s tokens, ISPO investors keep control of their money even after it has been delegated.

In the ISPO model, developers set a variable margin, collect the rewards, and pay their delegators with their utility tokens.

Users may be curious as to how an ISPO works. In essence, stake pools are identified for the ISPO where ADA holders must stake/delegate their tokens for a certain length of time. At the end of an ISPO the project team rewards ADA delegators with utility tokens from the project. ISPO stake pools can be community-operated or set up by the project team dedicated specifically for an ISPO. If a project team creates their own stake pools, they will also typically collect a percentage of regular ADA stake pool rewards to fund their project. With this model, project teams collect ADA rewards from running ISPO stake pools while simultaneously paying delegators with project utility tokens.

SundaeSwap first created the ISPO model in early 2021. However, they did not use the novel method since the team consecutively postponed the launch of their staking pool twice. MELD first utilized the ISPO design on July 1, 2021, and set a course to use the model to source funds for their project campaign.

Ardana’s ISPO Incentives

As mentioned above, one of our ISPO goals is to provide balanced, decentralized incentives for our smaller ASPA member pools, which may include tiered multipliers similar to MinSwap.

Overall, Ardana aims for a well-balanced distribution that promotes pools equally and ensures the ISPO benefits the network. In addition, the team will educate and prevent pools from becoming oversaturated and rally to encourage growth in the smaller pools. In this instance, the collaboration between pools will be key.

For example, if a pool is becoming near-saturated, the pool operators should use their platform to promote other smaller pools. This approach will benefit Ardana and the community as a whole. We will put the health and security of the ecosystem at the forefront while also finding solutions to empower others. This will be achieved by helping small pools grow and prosper while simultaneously raising awareness of the importance of decentralization. Future articles will cover the mechanics of the DANA ISPO in greater detail.

The ISPO Model and Decentralization

ISPOs are more equitable, decentralized, and secure, building on the advantages of IDO (initial DEX offerings). Above all, ISPOs are more inclusive, and the best part is that anyone may participate simply by delegating their ADA.

The DEX should assist small single pool operators and play a strategic role in raising the ecosystem’s minimum attack vector (MAV). The MAV graph can be seen here. However, MAV also only looks at the top 20 or so pools. Effective K, as explained by Nuclear Engineering Professor Dr. Liesenfelt here, is a better measurement.

There is no risk posed to an investor by delegating their ADA coins through an ISPO, unlike IDOs, where investors must spend their capital to receive the project’s tokens. In addition, ISPOs allow for ADA delegation, making them an efficient way to raise funds.

Through ISPOs, investors gain early access to tokens before product launch and avoid giving away their stake from ADA. Also, depending on the project, the participant may receive other rewards in addition to receiving their tokens.

Overall, this approach leads to greater decentralization and even better community engagement.

Conclusion

Ardana’s Initial Stake Pool Offering is an exciting opportunity for early adopters to support Ardana through the Cardano blockchain. An ISPO offers interested parties the opportunity to participate in an upcoming project not by purchasing a token, as is common with ICOs, but by contributing their ADA to a Cardano stake pool.

Users who wish to participate in Ardana’s ISPO can delegate their ADA to one of Ardana’s ASPA members for any period of time. Delegators will then receive rewards based on the duration and quantity of ADA stakes with further specifics to be announced shortly on the upcoming ISPO. Stay tuned.

About Ardana

Ardana is Cardano’s stablecoin hub, bringing the necessary DeFi primitives needed to bootstrap & maintain any economy to Cardano. Ardana offers an on-chain asset-backed stablecoin and a decentralized stable-asset DEX. The stablecoin is verifiably backed by an excess of on-chain collateral and will enable borrowers to take leverage on their ADA or other supported assets. The DEX is a highly capital efficient exchange enabling swaps with minimal slippage & fees while providing low-risk yield opportunities to liquidity providers.

Dear Citizens,

I’m Ed and I’ve recently joined Blockzero family as Community and Explorer’s Lead! The culture of this organization is one of the best I’ve yet to experience — the enthusiasm and meaningful contributions from both Core and Community members is thrilling to see as we kick off the New Year with gusto. Many changes are on the horizon with progressive decentralization and educational initiatives developed right within our Blockzero umbrella.

Follow Us Page

In order to make it as easy as possible to keep up with everything going on at Blockzero Labs, we just released the Follow Us landing page, where you can find links to all of our socials and also subscribe to the Blockzero Monthly Newsletter.

Discord Server Updates

To provide an optimized experience for our community and facilitate the onboarding process for new members, we’re implementing several changes in our Discord Server. We would love to hear your thoughts, please let us know your feedback!

Ideamarket Joins Blockzero Web3 Accelerator

We are super excited to announce Ideamarket has joined the Blockzero Accelerator Program! In total, over $18,500 IMO will be earned by those who participate. Check out how to participate here.

New Core Members

Our Core Team is growing! We’d love to welcome Ed Zisk and Nick Mitchell. Ed is joining us as Community Lead, to help us grow and develop our amazing community, while Nick is taking the role of Project Manager for Flashstake.

Last month was really exciting for Flashstake and we uploaded a series of #InsideTheBlock videos breaking down some aspects of the project like Universal Flashstaking, How Can DAOs utilize flashstake to raise money, pay contributors and much more! Check them out on our Youtube Channel.

Phase 1 Update: Planets

The Cryptonaut Planets were launched on Opensea on January 25th. 110 First Edition Cryptonaut Planet NFTs have been created, each with unique art and custom metadata traits. You can check all the details of Cryptonauts Planets on our Medium blog.

Cryptonaut Holders Airdrop

Cryptonaut owners that won the holders airdrop already have been awarded their XIO. 10 lucky T3 owners received 650 XIO each in their Avalanche wallets. You can check out your Cryptonaut’s vault balance here. (for T3s use Avalanche network).

Claim your Cryptonaut Shirt/Canvas

If you’re the proud owner of any T1 or T2 Cryptonaut, you can also claim your physical swag that comes with it. All Cryptonaut owners have until March 31st to claim their shirt/canvas, so if you haven’t yet, connect on Discord to get yours.

Flashstake AMA on Discord

Last month we held a Flashstake AMA on our Discord server and we got the chance to answer some good questions from the community. You can check it out on our YouTube channel. Make sure to follow our socials to participate in the next Blockzero Labs AMAs.

Vortex Updates

Since Testnet 1, we have restructured the codebase and applied all the fixes identified. New smart contract functions have been implemented and are being peer reviewed. Due to issues encountered in the code, Testnet 2 is delayed until we get it fixed. Stay tuned on our Discord for more updates!

Our Accelerator program led by Zach has just launched with Ideamarket as our first partner and we cannot wait to keep the train rolling by curating a series of thought leading and inspirational Web3 projects right to you, our Citizens! The Web3 world is wild and young, and we will be your guides by bringing you the greatest projects that pass our rigorous sniff tests. Come join our Blockzero Discord today and start earning! Onwards

¿Por qué la industria de la música necesita la Blockchain?

La industria de la música actual es una paradoja peculiar. El mercado streaming, con diferencia el mayor generador de ingresos en producción de música, es también el mercado de mayor crecimiento, con un aumento de casi un 23 % en 2019. A finales de ese año, había más de 340 millones de usuarios suscritos a plataformas de streaming en todo el mundo.

Sin embargo, a pesar de la creciente demanda de música en streaming, cada vez es más difícil forjarse una carrera en la industria de la música. Según una encuesta realizada a finales de 2020 por The Ivors Academy and Musician’s Union, ocho de cada diez músicos ganan menos de 200 dólares al año con las plataformas de streaming. De hecho, la herramienta online Ditto Music estima que una canción que genere 1,000 reproducciones en Spotify le dará al artista menos de $4.50 en pagos de royalties.

Mientras tanto, los ingresos por streaming de las propias plataformas de streaming ascendieron a más de $13 mil millones en 2020 y a pesar de que otros participantes en la industria de la música representen una parte de la diferencia entre los ingresos de la plataforma y las royalties de los artistas, es innegable que hay problemas que dan como resultado que los ingresos simplemente se pierdan.

ROBO DE DERECHOS DE AUTOR

El robo de derechos de autor es un problema que surge antes del la digitalización de la música, pero los avances tecnológicos lo han empeorado exponencialmente. Napster, que pudo haber sido el instigador de los servicios de intercambio de archivos de música, fue cerrado por violar los derechos de autor con relativa rapidez, lo que marcó un hito histórico.

Pero el genio no volvería a meterse en la lámpara. La Recording Industry Association of America estima que la piratería de música le cuesta a la economía de EE.UU alrededor de $12,5 mil millones anuales, mientras que los trabajadores de la industria de la música y el comercio minorista pierden $2,7 mil millones en ganancias.

METADATOS FALTANTES

Más allá de la piratería, los problemas continúan, por ejemplo, con los pagos de royalties incluso cuando las grabaciones y las reproducciones son legítimas. Los metadatos se consideran el “problema más grande que sufre la industria de la música”. Para que las plataformas de streaming atribuyan correctamente las royalties, cada archivo de música debe tener un conjunto de metadatos que permitan a la plataforma identificar la canción, el artista, el productor, el editor, el sello discográfico y mucho más.

En los primeros días de streaming, las plataformas se centraban en hacer crecer sus bibliotecas de música y las bases de usuarios tenían poco interés o incentivos para garantizar un conjunto completo de metadatos en todos los archivos que alojaban. Hasta la fecha, no existen estándares integrales de la industria para los metadatos musicales, lo que significa que a menudo faltan o no son precisos.

El resultado neto es que los titulares de los derechos de autor se están perdiendo una suma no cuantificable de pagos de royalties, normalmente perdidos o mal atribuidos. Además, en la era del big data y los algoritmos, no contar con estos metadatos representa la pérdida de una gran oportunidad para la industria.

Las organizaciones de los Derechos de Autor existen para garantizar que sus miembros reciban el pago correspondiente de los royalties. Sin embargo, son acciones muy difíciles de llevar a cabo sin estándares oficiales ni índices de metadatos o sin desarrollo de medios para entender el valor real de la música.

Por último, la paradoja es que en una industria en crecimiento donde la música en streaming representa la mayor parte, la mayoría de los participantes ven sus márgenes económicos reducidos por la pérdida de ingresos. A su vez, con la pandemia la industria de la música ha sufrido más que otras debido a las cancelaciones masivas de eventos en vivo. Solucionar los problemas con la música en formato físico y en vivo crearía una mayor resiliencia en caso de futuras crisis al devolver los ingresos perdidos a artistas, productores, estudios, sellos, distribuidores y otros actores de la industria.

BitSong está cambiando la melodía

BitSong, un ecosistema basado en Cosmos-SDK, ofrece dos propuestas innovadora para todos aquellos que forman parte industria de la música:

Ayuda a resolver los problemas existentes mencionados previamente al permitir que los artistas compartan su música directamente con el público e introduce la estandarización de los índices de metadatos para garantizar la atribución correcta de los royalties en todo momento. De esta manera se reduce la pérdida económica y de valor que ocurre a través de los canales actuales.

Introduce nuevas formas de monetización de la música y el sello de los músicos a través de innovaciones como fan tokens y objetos coleccionables digitales, también conocidos como NFT.

Afrontar los problemas existentes

La Blockchain fue diseñada para permitir que los peers intercambien valor; en el caso del Bitcoin, el valor es el Bitcoin, la criptomoneda. En el ecosistema blockchain de BitSong, la música es el valor activo. Las transacciones, como cuando alguien escucha una canción, se almacenan en la blockchain. Cada archivo de música se carga con un conjunto estándar de metadatos, lo que permite la atribución completa y correcta de royalties.

Las características de una blockchain ofrecen varias ventajas para superar los desafíos existentes. Una vez que se carga un archivo con los metadatos correctos, no se puede duplicar ni piratear, lo que ofrece la oportunidad de recuperar los ingresos perdidos.

Los contratos inteligentes o Smart-Contract basados en la blockchain permiten reglas programables, por lo que se podría imaginar una canción o un álbum como una máquina expendedora: una vez que el oyente deposita su moneda digital, la puede escuchar. Los términos de royalties también se pueden codificar en un archivo de música para que cada poseedor de los derechos de autor reciba su parte automáticamente y en cuestión de horas o minutos en lugar de semanas o meses. Cada regla se almacena en la blockchain como una transacción y no se puede modificar ni eliminar.

Capturando nuevas oportunidades

Lo que describimos arriba es la idea de un archivo de música como una forma de token digital con términos adjuntos. BitSong también ofrece muchas otras oportunidades para generar ingresos y oportunidades de participación de los fans mediante la tokenización.

Los tokens no fungibles, conocidos como NFT’s, han comenzado a llamar la atención de la industria de la música, con artistas como Kings of Leon y Eminem lanzando sus propias colecciones de NFT. Los NFT ofrecen la oportunidad de crear productos digitales premium y con ediciones muy limitadas, como portadas de álbumes, videoclips o incluso artículos de marca para campañas de cross-marketing.

Junto con los NFT, BitSong también ofrecerá la capacidad de acuñar Fan-Tokens. Portugal: The Man es una banda pionera en este modelo, comparándolo con la idea pre-digital de un club de fans en artículo para Rolling Stone. Los fan tokens también se pueden considerar como una especie de sistema de puntos de fidelidad, que permite a los fans acumular puntos digitales que pueden canjearse por recompensas como merchandising o entradas.

Si tradicionalmente es la imagen del “músico hambriento” la que resume los desafíos de hacer una carrera en la industria de la música, en BitSong reconocemos que estos problemas los sufren todos los que forman parte. Estamos construyendo un ecosistema de herramientas y soluciones tecnológicas diseñadas para superar los desafíos mientras creamos formas nuevas e innovadoras de involucrar a los oyentes.

Right now, many users and fans across the globe have gotten their hands on some fresh, new shiny Crowns (pCWS). This brief article will tell you what they’re for!

Crowns are the official token of the Seascape Network. Available on Binance Smart Chain, Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Ethereum, Crowns are designed to reward all key stakeholders of the gaming ecosystem and have become a core pillar of a series of planned DeFi & NFT games, where savvy players can increase their earnings exponentially through a variety of LP mining and NFT staking games.

Once you get your hands on Crowns, make sure to add their official address to your wallet so that they become visible.

pCWS Official Address on BSC:

0xbcf39f0edda668c58371e519af37ca705f2bfcbd

Use Your Crowns TODAY!

Right now, you can go to the Scape Store and get your hands on some brand new Scapes, Seascape’s original series of NFTs. Seascape believes strongly in making NFTs into true financial objects, and as such, they are all usable in staking and burning mechanisms on Seascape’s various mini games. Earlier generations of Scapes have higher earning potential, so be a savvy shopper at the Scape Store. Just connect your wallet and find Scapes that are to your liking. Get some into your wallet today!

Once you exchange Crowns for Scapes, head over to the Seascape platform to play Staking Saloon, where you can stake these new NFTs for increased Crowns earnings! Having at least 3 Scapes will help, as different combinations of Scapes will earn bonus rewards. Check out our walkthrough guide for more details, as well as all the bonus combinations.

This special season of Staking Saloon will last until March 10th, 2022. This is just one simple way to put your Crowns to work for you, with many more opening up all the time. Stay tuned for our Night Crawling epic, Zombie Farm coming to BSC very soon, where you can put your pCWS and Scapes to work in a variety of staking challenges!

What Else Can I Do with Crowns?

The Seascape Network is set to be a fully integrated powerhouse of DeFi gaming, so the possibilities are endless.

• Stake in Seascape Defi games to earn competitive yields

• Mint and Trade Scapes, Seascape original NFTs

• Buy Games and Services on the Scape Store

• Create PCC (Player Created Coins) backed by Crowns on Lighthouse

• Trade in Exchanges (like SeaDex) and earn rewards for your time spent throughout the network

These are all ways for the players to not only increase their in-game power, but also earn real profits while they have fun with the platform. Stay tuned to Seascape’s official social media for more chances to earn!

Your Game. Your Rules.

Enjoy the Seascape.