A new cross-chain automated protocol based on Ethereum and Polkadot says it is using two parachains in its quest to deliver interoperability and layer-two scaling. KwikSwap enables users to swap tokens, create new markets and participate in yield farming by providing liquidity and engaging in staking. The project’s objective is to provide developers, liquidity providers and traders with an opportunity to participate in a decentralized financial marketplace that is open and accessible to all. At present, KwikSwap’s focus is on developing and integrating its testnet on Plasm and Acala Network — with both layer-two scaling solutions described as “best in …

Just a day after two decentralized finance powerhouses announced layer-two integrations via the Polygon sidechain, a major nonfungible token and gaming title has today followed suit. In a blog post this morning, NFT-powered virtual world and video game Decentraland announced a token bridge enabling users to move native MANA tokens to Polygon and back. At the time of publication, MANA is the 80th ranked token by marketcap and has risen 3750% on the year to $1.01, per Coingecko. This is just the first step in what will be a significantly larger migration, as the project intends to enable all Decentraland …

The crypto market continues to search for scaling solutions as decentralized finance (DeFi) applications struggle with surging fees, but some alternative solutions are piquing investors' interest. For example, Nervos Network has enticed investors' appetites with a 341% rally in a month. The project also carries the Chinese government's stamp of approval, further increasing the odds for this project's future relevance. Nervos Network is a blockchain project based in China that supports layer-two scaling solutions. Since its inception, the project has sought to target decentralized finance (DeFi) and asset tokenization. The Nervos Common Knowledge Base (CKB) network provides a Turing-complete virtual …

A blockchain application platform that aims to make this technology accessible for everyone has unveiled a high-level view of its cutting-edge solutions for interoperability. Lisk says its approach is based on the paradigm of cross-chain certification — with information submitted between networks utilizing a signed object known as a certificate. According to the platform, this approach delivers several crucial advantages compared with other methods in the market. It is scalable — meaning there are no limits on the number of sidechains that can be connected to the Lisk mainchain — as well as flexible because cross-chain update transactions can be …

As cripplingly high gas fees put scalability in the spotlight and multiple platforms rush to become the preferred home of Ethereum’s decentralized finance, or DeFi, ecosystem, layer-two sidechain Polygon may be emerging as a frontrunner after scoring two big wins today. Both lending protocol Aave and portfolio management and batched transaction platform Zapper have announced that they will be offering implementations on Polygon. Aave will be launching a trimmed-down fork of its money market, with seven assets available for borrowing and lending at launch, and Zapper will enable Ethereum-to-Polygon transfers in the first step toward enabling cross-chain “zaps” — its …

A layer-two DAO protocol has warned that there are some “significant issues” with many of the most popular Optimistic Rollup solutions on the market. As Ethereum continues to struggle with a long-running gas fee crisis, with spiraling transaction costs making the blockchain unusable for many DeFi enthusiasts, rollups have been touted as the silver bullet that will address scalability woes. Earlier in March, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested that such a solution would serve as a sticking plaster until the long-awaited Eth2 upgrade delivers sharding — ensuring that the blockchain can scale by a factor of 100. But according to …

PureStake, the company behind the Moonbeam and Moonriver networks, two parachain candidates for Polkadot and Kusama, respectively, announced a successful $6 million raise. The funding round was led by CoinFund and included participants such as Binance Labs, ParaFi, Coinbase Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, IOSG Ventures. Some previous seed investors, who had funded the project in September 2020, also joined. These include investors like the Polkadot-centric Hypersphere Ventures, Hashkey, Arrington XRP, A195, KR1, D1 Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Divergence Ventures, and Signum Capital. The latest PureStake round comes as the Polkadot ecosystem starts gearing up for parachain auctions. Though most parachain candidate projects …

Hermez Network has announced on Wednesday the launch of its zk-rollup mainnet release. This means that the network is now open for users, who can benefit from the rollup’s much lower transaction costs than Ethereum. Zk-rollups use zero knowledge proofs to verify the correctness of a large batch of transactions. An outside ecosystem executes these transactions and generates proofs for them, which are then posted directly on the Ethereum blockchain. The result is a saving of over 10x in terms of block space, with Hermez transactions weighing just 10 bytes on the main chain, compared to more than 100 bytes …

Network congestion and high transaction costs on the Ethereum (ETH) network have been a persistent issue for investors and developers for the past year and this has shone a spotlight on blockchain projects that offer a solution to these issues. One class of tokens that has received a boost in both trading volume and price over the past two months are gas tokens that help power transactions on their respective blockchain networks. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that Gas (GAS), Ontology Gas (ONG) and VeThor Token (VTHO) have all seen their prices increase more than 300% since the …

In previous bull markets, one of the most consistent price movers for cryptocurrency projects was being listed on Coinbase, a phenomenon that became known as the 'Coinbase effect’. The recent announcement that Polygon (MATIC), SKALE (SKL) and SushiSwap (SUSHI) would be added to the exchange and begin trading on March 11 has proven that the Coinbase effect remains potent as the tokens witnessed record trading volume and double-digit price movements since the listing took place. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that SKL has been the biggest beneficiary of the Coinbase effect, increasing more than 200% since the announcement …

Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, believes the network is on the verge of scaling by a factor of 100, predicting the Optimism will release its layer-two solution in the coming weeks. Speaking on the Tim Ferriss podcast, Buterin noted Eth2’s developer are focused on working toward the chain merge with Ethereum, and are confident that layer-two solutions can support the network until sharding is developed. “Rollups are coming very soon,” he said, adding: “we’re fully confident that by the time that we need any more scaling of that, sharding will have already been ready for a long time by then.” Rollups …

As the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Bitcoin’s (BTC) effectiveness as a medium of exchange is still a matter for debate. Unlike fiat money that is inherently infinite in supply and must be managed by a central bank, Bitcoin is akin to gold in that it is commodity money with a finite supply of 21 million. However, the supply cap is not the major stumbling block for BTC as a medium of exchange, but rather, the transaction throughput. While Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system capable of facilitating online payments without a central counterparty, seven transactions …