Polkadot Newsletter

In today’s edition:

• Kusama just got BEEFY
  
• Trustless bridges are coming to Polkadot
• Latest news highlights from the ecosystem

BEEFY launch on Kusama paves the way for trustless bridges on Polkadot

Fans of Polkadot’s chaos-loving canary network Kusama were treated to some big news this month as the highly anticipated BEEFY consensus protocol was activated there, paving the way for an imminent launch on Polkadot.

BEEFY is a new addition to Polkadot’s family of consensus protocols, and will enable trustless light-client bridges connecting Polkadot to external ecosystems like Ethereum in a secure, decentralized way. BEEFY makes it possible to follow and verify the state of Polkadot (or any chain running GRANDPA finality consensus) on external chains like Ethereum, opening the door to secure cross-ecosystem interoperability.

If you’re familiar with the overabundance of bridge hacks in recent years that have led to billions in losses, you’ll know that insecure, centralized bridging technology is a huge problem for the industry. Thanks to BEEFY, Polkadot will be able to host secure, state-of-the art bridges connecting it to external ecosystems in a risk-minimized way.

This will greatly improve access to tokens, liquidity, users, and applications on other ecosystems from Polkadot parachains and apps, furthering Polkadot’s vision of a securely interoperable decentralized web. BEEFY is expected to launch on Polkadot pending a community vote on OpenGov in the coming months.

Which bridges are on the way?

The two most anticipated trustless bridges that BEEFY will enable are Snowbridge and Hyperbridge.

Snowbridge is a trustless, general-purpose Polkadot ↔ Ethereum bridge that will enable things like ERC20 token transfers and smart contract calls.

Hyperbridge is a trustless bridging hub that will leverage Polkadot to connect external ecosystems, including Ethereum and rollups like Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, and Polygon.

Also expected to be ready for launch soon is the Polkadot ↔ Kusama bridge, which will connect the two cousin networks and enable cool things like the network treasuries holding each other’s respective tokens.

These will join already existing bridges in the ecosystem, such as Interlay’s Bitcoin bridge. Check out the Polkadot wiki for the complete rundown on Polkadot ecosystem bridges.

Ecosystem News Deep-Dive

• Web3 Foundation announces the return of Web3 Summit after a 5 year hiatus for the conference, happening August 19-21 in Berlin
• Attending ETH Denver this week? Be sure to stop by the Polkadot booth, meet members of the ecosystem, and check out all the Polkadot talks and activities
• Last call for in-person tickets to Sub0: Act quick to join the Polkadot developer community in Bangkok, March 12-13
• Polkadot gets new testnet with the launch of Paseo
• Agile Coretime successfully deployed to Westend testnet, paving the way for more flexible ways of connecting to Polkadot
• Nova wallet enables token swaps using the HydraDX omnipool
• Talisman wallet announces cross-chain swaps via Chainflip
• OriginTrail team launches PolkaBot.AI, a conversational chatbot here to answer all your burning Polkadot questions, and wins recent parachain auction for NeuroWeb
• Zeitgeist integrates USDC into their prediction market ecosystem and launches a groundbreaking new AMM model, DLMSR
• Unique Network sets NFT record minting nearly 5000 NFTs per minute, and renews their Polkadot parachain slot
• HydraDX enables USDT/USDC pool