sidechain
Karura launches decentralized exchange on Polkadot and Kusama
Karura Swap has opened trading for the Kusama/Karura — KSM/KAR — pair as the platform becomes one of the first DEXs to launch on Polkadot and Kusama.
Karura, the Polkadot implementation of the Acala protocol, has launched its decentralized exchange (DEX) platform, Karura Swap.
According to the announcement issued on Friday, the DEX platform is now live, with KSM/KAR being the first trading pair on the exchange.
Per details provided by the announcement, Karura Swap has gone live with an initial total value locked north of $3.4 million, with more than 1,000 unique liquidity providers (LP).
The team revealed that the DEX launch highlighted the benefits of its “Bootstrap feature” that provides a liquidity sandbox for trading pairs with the walled environment, reportedly preventing front-running and market manipulation during the initial launch of a trading pair.
“With Bootstrap, Karura aims to empower trustless trading at fair market rate to reflect the tenets of equitable and open finance for all,” the blog post added.
Indeed, the inaugural KSM/KAR pair passed through the bootstrap phase and has only gone live after satisfying the mandated liquidity goal. With the launch of the DEX, Karura Swap becomes the first decentralized exchange on Polkadot and Kusama and the first avenue for trustless trading of Kusama tokens on a DEX.
Other trading pairs that will be launched on Karura Swap can also make use of the Bootstrap feature. LPs can elect to supply one or both tokens in the pool during the process, while trading remains suspended until the set liquidity target is achieved.
Related: DeFi hub Karura emerges as first Kusama parachain slot auction winner
With Karura envisioned as a decentralized finance hub on Kusama, the team said other features such as kUSD stablecoin loans, staking and liquidity mining programs are in the works. These added protocols are part of the plans to build up the network within the 48-week network lease secured by winning a parachain auction slot.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Karura became the first Kusama parachain slot auction winner back on June 22, with over 501,000 KSM staked in the crowd-loan process. These slot auctions determine the parachains that will be added to the Kusama relay chain, which serves as a companion network for Polkadot.
Polygon announces scalable data availability infrastructure Avail
The Polygon team is set to launch a data availability solution for sidechains and layer-two protocols.
Ethereum (ETH) scalability infrastructure developer Polygon has announced the rollout of a general-purpose, scalable data availability solution called Avail.
According to a release issued on Monday, Polygon revealed that Avail will function as a data available tool for execution layers like sidechains, standalone networks, and layer-two protocols.
One of the major hurdles for effective blockchain scaling is the data availability problem. Malicious actors can broadcast blocks to the network with incomplete data and other participants will be none the wiser.
To tackle this problem, the Polygon team stated that Avail utilizes erasure coding and polynomial commitment to combat data encoding fraud proofs by creating a two-dimensional data availability layer.
Rather than creating their own data availability protocols, execution layers can offload the role to the Avail layer with the latter acting as a secure data hosting site.
For standalone chains, interfacing with Polygon’s Avail will reportedly enable these networks to rely on the latter’s validator security protocols. Thus, these chains will be able to solve the data availability problem without needing to run their own validator set.
For layer-two protocols, the announcement revealed that scaling solutions like Validium can expand their scalability throughput by deploying Avail to secure the data availability function offline.
Commenting on Avail’s importance within the context of ongoing efforts to boost blockchain scalability, the announcement quoted Polygon co-founder Anurag Arjun as stating: “Avail is a key component of a new paradigm in which blockchains will work in the future.”
“We believe off-chain scaling solutions and standalone chains will require a robust scalable data availability solution and we are excited to be working on this problem,” the Polygon co-founder added in the release.
Related: Polygon debuts SDK for building Ethereum-compatible chains
Polygon’s popularity continues to be a growing trend within the crypto and blockchain space with an expanding user base that reportedly hosts 1.4 million unique users. Popular decentralized finance staples like Aave and SushiSwap have also established a presence on Polygon.
Cross-chain liquidity protocol Ren has also recently created a bridge to allow users and projects to port their Ren-based wrapped tokens to the Polygon ecosystem. Back in May, the team released a software development kit to enable developers to create Ethereum-compatible standalone chains as well as layer-two protocols.
Another first for Polkadot as Kusama council approves first parachain slot auction
The first Kusama parachain slot auction will now commence and is set to run for the next week.
Polkadot's Kusama council passed Motion 310 on Tuesday, confirming the start of the first slot auction on the Kusama network.
According to details shared on the Polkadot governance platform Polkassembly, 13 out of the 19 “seats” on the Kusama council voted in favor of commencing the slot auction process.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Polkadot and Kusama co-founder Gavin Wood had published a tentative schedule for the Kusama slot auctions back on June 8.
These slot auctions will decide the parachains that will be added to the Kusama relay chain. Kusama functions as a canary network for Polkadot, which according to Wood helps to secure Polkadot by “allowing functionality to exist in the wild for as long as possible.”
Following Wood’s initial schedule, the first slot auction will proceed over five days, with the first two days allowing for preliminary bidding.
Thus, a winner should emerge by 11:00 am UTC on June 22, with the second slot auction commencing an hour later. In all, Wood proposed the first set of five consecutive slot auctions over five weeks before a temporary pause to evaluate network performance and proceeding to another round of auctions carried out using the same schedule.
Earlier in June, crypto trading platform Kraken announced a parachain auction platform to enable clients to participate in the process from the exchange itself. According to Kraken’s announcement, clients will be able to support bids for Kusama decentralized finance (DeFi) hub Karura and smart contract protocol Shiden.
Related: Polkadot creator Gavin Wood proposes June 15 for first Kusama parachain auction
On the price side, the start of the slot auction has yet to spur any major price rally for Kusama's KSM token. KSM is only up about 2% in the last 24-hour trading period. Meanwhile, Polkadot has seen a much larger price rally within the same period, with DOT securing a 15% gain as of the time of writing.
On Monday, Coinbase Pro announced the addition of Polkadot's DOT coin to its altcoin listing catalog. According to the announcement, DOT trading will commence on Wednesday in all Coinbase supported jurisdictions except Singapore.
Polkadot creator Gavin Wood proposes June 15 for first Kusama parachain auction
The first Kusama parachain auction could happen by mid-June if the council votes in favor of a recently released tentative schedule.
Polkadot and Kusama creator Gavin Wood has published a tentative schedule for the much-anticipated Kusama parachain slot auctions.
According to a blog post posted on Tuesday, the first parachain auction slot will open on June 15 at 12:00 pm Central European Summer Time.
The tentative schedule, subject to the approval of the Kusama Council and other KSM stakeholders, will see the maiden parachain auction concluded by June 17, with the bidding period continuing until June 22.
If the Kusama Council approves the schedule, then the first-ever parachain slot auction winner could emerge by 11:00 am on June 22. The second parachain slot auction will then commence an hour later, with subsequent slot auctions slated at one-week intervals according to Wood’s post.
After the first five weekly auctions, Wood recommended a pause to evaluate the performance of the network before commencing another batch of five parachain slot auctions based on the aforementioned schedule.
Back in May, Cointelegraph reported that Kusama was finally ready to host parachains. According to Wood, Kusama developers are confident that there are no technical hurdles to holding slot auctions or deploying parachains.
These auctions will determine which parachains will be added to the Kusama relay chain — a canary network for Polkadot. Detailing the need to get Kusama parachains up and running, Wood said, “Kusama exists as the Polkadot canary network and therefore to help protect Polkadot from a serious issue by allowing functionality to exist in the wild for as long as possible,” adding:
“Since the amount of protection it gives is in some way proportional to the amount of time it is active prior to Polkadot, there is a clear reason for deploying this logic as soon as possible for the good of Polkadot.”
The one-week headups given for the start of the process is reported to allow the community ample time to unstake their Kusama (KSM) to fund auction bids.
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