Blockchain moves faster than everyday life. Price goes up, price goes down, new protocols launch, announcements pour in and improvements get done. Then it’s time for breakfast ☕️!
Many factors contribute to this speed. Some include:
Global 24/7/365: Constant, consistent work all day every day.
Decentralized, passionate contributors: Belief in a better way forward and a desire to change the 🌏 drives many devs, users, and supporters.
Capital: Money is flowing, projects can bring in talented developers and pay them what they’re worth.
New Frontiers: Exciting ecosystem with limitless room to explore, create and advance.
Open Source: Iterative, composable, competitive and collaborative development environment.
Let’s look at the last point for a minute. Where would the broader Ethereum ecosystem be without an open-source, transparent ethos? Likely light years behind where it stands now. Innovation in the Ethereum ecosystem is being driven by open-source code and development.
Open source creates a virtuous cycle, where devs can fork code, make improvements & iterate, commit that new code, and pass it on to the next devs for further iteration. Code evolves quickly and organically, leading to the innovations we see on a daily basis.
xDai is a good example of this evolutionary approach. What started as a sidechain using Ethereum’s open-source code base and PoA validators has evolved into a robust scalability solution with a unique PoS consensus, stable transactional environment and Nethermind client support.
In turn, the xDai team has developed the first open-source bridge infrastructure with Omnibridge, and the BlockScout open-source block explorer is now used by many EVM-based projects such as Ethereum Classic, Celo, Avalanche C-Chain, Chilliz….the list goes on.
Open-source code is utilized and modified, and open-source code is given back to the community. It is in this spirit of transparency and evolution that several new projects launched on xDai this week.
The team behind Agave.finance has been optimizing the protocol for some time. Originally forked from Aave, Agave provides depositors with passive income and lets users borrow and lend assets on xDai. While using Aave as a jumping off point and utilizing the core contracts for security and compatibility, Agave has added some new front-end features, chainlink feed options and operates with a community-driven DAO.
Another exciting project launching this week on xDai is AoX, Arbitrum on xDai. The Arbitrum code was deployed on xDai with the open-source repository, then tied to BlockScout to support the Arbitrum environment. xDai users can access Arbitrum as they would on Ethereum, creating another point of synergy between chains.
Many big projects like Uniswap and Reddit are deploying on Arbitrum on Ethereum, and it makes sense to include it on xDai. AoX provides further opportunities for battle-testing Arbitrum and gives projects an additional rollup environment to explore and innovate on.
We look forward to continued open-source developments as projects continue to iterate on xDai and beyond!
September 3 Weekly Highlights
Projects
The Agave finance platform is live on xDai. Look for more updates from the team as DeFi lending on xDai starts to heat up 🌵🔥
AoX on xDai is an open-sourced Arbitrum deployed for xDai projects and users. The rollup is operational, and additional functionality is coming soon. Checkout the docs to get rollin’.
Tomasz Stanczak Founder and CTO of Nethermind presented on MEV (Miner Extractable Value), Flashbots & xDai at EdCon. In the video linked below, learn more about how Nethermind is leveraging xDai as a canary network to prepare for MEV on Ethereum 2 following the merge. To try it out, checkout our quick primer on MEV and how to use flashbots on xDai.
CryptExLocker recently deployed to xDai, and they held an AMA with Igor featuring questions about security, challenges, and future directions for xDai and Eth 2.0. Their blogpost features a recap of the chat.
NFTs
NFTs have entered the mainstream, and xDai continues to support projects looking to mint NFTs in a green, environmentally conscious way. As a bonus, projects and collectors save a ton of money in fees! Noted NFT projects on xDai this week:
NiftyZone is an NFT marketplace featuring digital artists from Asia. They feature an excellent collection or works, and use xDai for NFT minting.
xDaiPunks is an iterative project directly inspired by CryptoPunks, xDaiPunks gives everyone the opportunity to own an NFT punk on xDai and participate in the auction process auctions without worrying about bidding price. The marketplace uses the underlying smart contract to offer xDaiPunks for purchase.