Avalanche Begins Final Phase of Testing on Bridge to Ethereum
ChainSafe’s ChainBridge technology to enable assets to flow between the two blockchains
New York, NY – November 23, 2020 — Avalanche, the highly-scalable, open-source platform for launching decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, has begun the final phase of testing of a bridge to connect its ecosystem to Ethereum. When deployed to mainnet, the bridge will open a gateway for simple, secure transfers of assets between Avalanche and Ethereum.
The Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge uses ChainSafe’s ChainBridge to connect Avalanche’s Contract Chain (“C-Chain”) and Ethereum. The C-Chain is an instance of the Ethereum Virtual Machine that is compatible with Ethereum tooling and token standards, while offering faster finality, higher transaction throughput, and lower fees.
“Bridges will play an increasingly important role in the evolution of DeFi, and the emergence of the first wave of DeFi applications and assets that function across chains,” says Kevin Sekniqi of Ava Labs. “With this bridge so close to launch, we’ll soon see many new and familiar assets moving between these two ecosystems, providing users with more choice and opportunities for yield.”
The testnet implementation of the Bridge will be secured by our partners Protofire, Hashquark, POA Network, and Avascan, who will function as “Relayers.” Relayers will approve and reject transfers based on a vote using Gnosis Safe Multisig. If the vote passes a certain threshold, the token transfer is approved and facilitated.
Bridge users will be able to use ETH within decentralized applications on Avalanche, by locking WETH (wrapped ETH) in the ChainBridge contract, and an equivalent token will be minted on Avalanche. The Bridge can be used either by interacting with apps that integrate the Bridge or with an Avalanche-Ethereum asset swap app.
Ava Labs, the team behind Avalanche, is also releasing the Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge codebase open source on its Github, so community members can run their own bridges, if interested.
Since launching mainnet on September 21, Avalanche has over 600 full, block-producing validators participating in network consensus, and an additional 2,500 delegators participating in staking. Collectively, they account for over $1B in AVAX staked to secure the network.
Avalanche has attracted contributions from a large pool of open-source developers, awarded significant grants for engineers to build infrastructure and applications, and integrated with leading projects like Chainlink, Polyient, and Quantstamp. It has raised $60M to-date, including $42M in a 4.5 hour public sale this July, and a separate private sale led by Galaxy Digital, Bitmain, and Initialized Capital.
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Ava Labs
Ava Labs makes it simple to launch finance applications using blockchain technology–with highly scalable and efficient networks, customizable public and private blockchains, the capability to create any digital asset, and more. We are empowering people to build an open, simple, and democratic internet of finance.
Ava Labs was founded by Cornell computer scientists who brought on talent from Wall Street to execute their vision. The company has received funding from leading investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, Galaxy Digital, Bitmain, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant. www.avalabs.org
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