Rollkit Developers Leverage Bitcoin for Sovereign Rollups, Sparking Criticism from Ethereum Proponents

March 6, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Interlay introduces new protocol for Bitcoin’s reciprocal relationship with DeFi

April 7, 2022 Coin Telegraph

XCC is positioned as a supporting mechanism to XCLAIM, a protocol which acts as the foundational layer for Interlay’s Bitcoin one-to-one backed asset interBTC.

Interoperability network Interlay has released a 21-page technical whitepaper, titled XCC: Theft-Resilient and Collateral-Optimized Cryptocurrency-Backed Assets, advocating for the imminent development of cross-blockchain interoperability solutions to unlock a plethora of potential within the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

As a Polkadot parachain, Interlay is focusing its efforts on opening pathways of communication and interaction between Bitcoin’s currency-native ecosystem, with the wider functionalities of the DeFi space with networks such as Ethereum and Polkadot.

The newly-launched XCC protocol — serving as an additional layer of XCLAIM which was introduced to the market in 2018 — enables greater asset sovereignty during cross-chain activities such as wrapping, as well as unifying Bitcoin multisigs with mechanisms typically native to the Ethereum network such as commit chains.

To uphold the purported benefits of risk aversion and capital efficiency, the XCC asset will only be available within curated DeFi applications, however, users have the freedom to transition to the interBTC product if they require greater flexibility. Both services will exist in tandem with each other, expanding the capabilities of Bitcoin’s DeFi market to a wider consumer audience.

According to their assessment, XCC allows for “any Bitcoin that is staked long-term and is not intended to be moved can essentially ‘release’ its collateral”, and that this can then be “reused to secure other, ‘liquid’ BTC being bridged… allowing for vaults to serve more users with the same collateral.”

Interlay co-founder & CEO, Alexei Zamyatin, shared his vision for the future of XCC both in terms of decentralized adoption, as well as a security enhancement, stating:

“interBTC, aiming to become the equivalent of DAI for BTC, already decentralized Bitcoin custody. However, the goal always was to achieve non-custodial BTC DeFi - a very hard problem to solve. XCC sets a milestone in this regard, finally enabling theft resilient and easy to use Bitcoin DeFi.”

A previous recipient of a Web3 Foundation grant, Interlay announced progressions to their wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) digital asset, kBTC in mid-March, deploying the token onto their canary parachain Kintsugi.

Already supported on Polkadot native parachain protocols Karura and Moonriver, the move instigates their preparations for upcoming deployment across Cosmos and Ethereum sometime within the calendar year.

Interlay aims to advance Bitcoin’s DeFi potential with new interoperable bridge

March 24, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Interlay was the recipient of an up-to-$100,000 Web3 Foundation grant in March 2020 to develop the parachain technology implemented.

Interlay, a newly appointed Polkadot (DOT) parachain network, is nearing the completion of a two-year Bitcoin (BTC) bridge development project on Polkadot, with the launch announcement on its sandbox platform Kusama.

Additionally, Interlay has integrated a Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) digital asset, known as kBTC, on their Canary parachain Kintsugi. The asset is already available for trading on other Polkadot parachains Karura, governed by Acala, and Moonriver, governed by Moonbeam.

It is expected that Interlay will seek to deploy its technology across both Cosmos and Ethereum during the coming year to enhance interoperability between chains.

As many of you know, kBTC is our flagship product on @kusamanetwork. kBTC is a 1:1 BTC-backed asset on Kusama, maintained by a decentralized network of collateralized vaults. KSM will be the first of many collateral to secure kBTC❗️

Detailed analysis https://t.co/AT8yC4iQqC
— Interlay #interBTC (@InterlayHQ) March 24, 2022

Alexei Zamyatin, the co-founder and CEO of Interlay, stated:

“There is 14 billion USD worth of Bitcoin ‘DeFi’ on Ethereum, controlled by a handful of centralized custodians, behind KYC, with no remedy for users or DApps if something goes wrong. Even big players like Maker, Compound and Aave implicitly trust a few tradiFi institutions."

The initial development of this project was financially supported by an undisclosed, up-to-$100,000 Web3 Foundation grant issued in March 2020.

Following this, the interoperability project was the subject of two capital raises, both a $3 million seed round in July 2021 and a Series A $6.5 million round in December 2021. At the time of the latter, the founder of CEO of lead contributor DFG Capital, James Wo stated that Interlay's solution will "expand the cross-chain possibilities for Bitcoin."

In February, Interlay was announced among the winners of Polkadot's tenth parachain auction slot, securing in excess of 2.7 million DOT tokens from nearly 20,000 participants.

Finance Redefined: Binance leads $60M Multichain funding, Interlay raises $6.5M, Dec. 17–24

December 24, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Finance Redefined: Binance leads M Multichain funding, Interlay raises .5M, Dec. 17–24

Belt Finance

Binance Labs was the lead funder in a $60-million seed round, Interlay seeks to increase Bitcoin interoperability, Bent Finance and Grim Finance suffer million-dollar exploits — all coming to you in this week’s Finance Redefined.

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter.

As the crypto community filled its crypto stockings for the holiday season, the Grinch emerged to gift a grimacing fate to two DeFi platforms, stealing their festive spirit and a whole lot of dollars.

Reading this article, you're only receiving a portion of the content from our DeFi newsletter. Drop your email below for the full copy.

Binance VC arm leads $60M round in cross-chain protocol Multichain

Binance Labs, the venture capital side of global crypto exchange Binance, facilitated a $60-million capital funding raise for cross-chain router protocol Multichain. Other notable participants included Sequoia China, IDG Capital and Three Arrows Capital.

Amid Multichain’s corporate rebrand from AnySwap last week, analytical estimates placed the protocol’s total value above $5 billion and reported over 300,000 users on the platform. The funds raised will be utilized across various domains, including research and development of crypto algorithms, audits, security and general ecosystem growth.

In addition to the capital support, Binance has also pledged to develop a broader relationship with the protocol, announcing that Multichain will be officially recommended as a tool to bridge bToken across chains through Binance’s smart contract platform, the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

BSC expressed high praise of Multichain, noting that it is “one of the biggest routers on BSC.” Zhaojun, a co-founder of Multichain, stated that the protocol connects “more public blockchains and crypto assets than anyone else, with lower transaction fees, shorter bridging time and higher security levels.”

Thanks Binance Smart Chain @BinanceChain for promoting #Multichain as officially recommended bridge#Multichain's top priority is to guarantee the security of on-chain assets https://t.co/CEocRygXzq
— Multichain (Previously Anyswap) (@MultichainOrg) December 20, 2021

Interlay raises $6.5M to accelerate Bitcoin DeFi interoperability

DeFi infrastructure startup Interlay announced a $6.5-million Series A funding round led by venture fund DFG Capital with additional participation from Hypersphere and Nexo Finance, among others.

The funding is set to support the construction of DeFi applications cross-chain to Ethereum, Cosmos and Polkadot, as well as onboard new developers to the team.

Interlay was designed to enhance the interoperability of crypto assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) to networks that typically facilitate DeFi activity such as Ethereum and Polkadot, a vision that the Web3 Foundation understood when it invested in the platform via a grant in March 2020.

Interlay's core product, a Bitcoin-backed digital asset titled InterBTC, can be utilized within the Polkadot ecosystem for various DeFi activities such as yield farming, lending and acting as a collateral asset. Tokenizing a Bitcoin derivative opens the possibility of greater utility for the asset in comparison to the functional capacity of the Bitcoin network.

Speaking on the funding raise, James Wo, founder and CEO of DFG, stated that Interlay’s solution would “expand the cross-chain possibilities for Bitcoin” before tweeting:

We are glad to lead the recent round of @InterlayHQ I believe what they do is very fundamental to the Polkadot ecosystem. If they gain 1% of BTC to use InterBTC, that’s $9 billion! @DFG_OfficiaI @inter_btc $DOT https://t.co/phFpVXeG0L
— James Wo (@realjameswo) December 21, 2021

Bent Finance and Grim Finance exploited for multi-millions

DeFi protocol Grim Finance reported over $30 million in losses this week after an “external attacker” gained access to the protocol’s vault contract via five reentrancy loops. This made it the sixth platform to encounter a security breach in the month of December, following high-profile hacks such as BadgerDAO’s $120 million loss.

In a damning explanatory tweet thread, DeFi security service RugDoc stated that Grim Finance’s largest mistake was not implementing a reentrancy guard on the before-after pattern in the protocol’s smart contract coding. Another mistake was granting the user “more privilege than is necessary” in enabling them to choose the preferred deposit token. RugDoc further explained:

“Hopefully, all projects can draw lessons from this incident that there is much knowledge most experienced solidity devs have at hand. If you haven’t acquired this yet, don’t build multi-million dollar projects. Don’t get audits from companies which everyone knows are useless.”

Similarly, fellow DeFi platform Bent Finance, known for its capabilities of staking and yield farming, also suffered a malicious exploit this week to the tune of 440 Ether (ETH), or just above $1.6 million at the time of writing.

1/ There was an exploit from the bent deployer address, it added balance of cvxcrv and mim to an address on an unvierifed update 20 days ago. We just discovered this today. There are multiple members on this team and we will make this right.
— Bent Finance (@BENT_Finance) December 21, 2021

Token performances

Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total value locked has increased 15.74% across the week to a figure of $142.58 billion, engulfing the losses printed in last week’s market downturn.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView reveals DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization have mainly been bullish over the last seven days.

Yearn.finance (YFI) registered two weeks of gains with 53.28%. Terra (LUNA) rose 36.6%, while Aave (AAVE) printed gains of 34.2%. Curve DAO Token (CRV) and Compound (COMP) claimed fourth and fifth places this week with 28.6% and 15.4%, respectively.

Interviews, features and other cool stuff

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us again next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.

Interlay

Binance VC arm leads $60M round in cross-chain protocol Multichain

Interlay raises $6.5M to accelerate Bitcoin DeFi interoperability

Bent Finance and Grim Finance exploited for multi-millions

Token performances

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