One of the latest updates from Wanchain is that they deployed new decentralized, non-custodial bridges connecting the Cardano mainnet to 11 other networks.

Altcoin Buzz General Manager Anindya (Ani) Baidya anchored the Wanchain AMA session with Temujin, Director of Marketing of Wanchain.

Segment 1: Introduction

Q – Tell us a bit about yourself and your journey with Wanchain.

My name is Temujin. I’m Wanchain’s VP of Marketing. My so-called blockchain journey began all the way back in 2012 when I was a grad student at the London School of Economics. At that time, I was really profoundly impacted by this book by Steven Lukes called Power: A Radical View. It totally made me think about power, how it manifests in society, and its relationship to incumbent institutions in a whole new way. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon this thing called Bitcoin right around this time as well, and everything just snapped into place. I was instantly hooked!

Over the years, I’ve worked in a few different types of blockchain companies – from small start-ups trying to change the world to large multinationals “playing” blockchain. And now, I’m at Wanchain! A brief intro about Wanchain for those who don’t already know.

Wanchain is an R&D-focused blockchain interoperability project. In fact, Wanchain is one of the first, if not THE first, blockchain interoperability project. We’ve officially been around since 2017, but our roots stretch back even further. Our mission is to drive blockchain adoption by building decentralized blockchain interoperability solutions that connect the world’s many isolated blockchain networks. Today, Wanchain is basically formed of two pillars:

1) A Layer 1 EVM blockchain with Monero-style privacy features

2) A web of blockchain bridges connecting ~30 public networks, both EVMs and non-EVMs

Segment 2: Deep Dive
Q – It has been quite some time since we last spoke. We last spoke on July 22. Since then what do you think are the major milestones that Wanchain has achieved?

There are probably too many milestones to name, but I think the last time was right after Wanchain’s “Saturn” hard fork, where the Wanchain blockchain notably introduced EIP-1559 – and with it a per transaction WAN burning mechanism to make the WAN coin deflationary. I can share a few highlights though!

Top of the list:

We launched our XFlows product! Wanchain’s XFlows is a totally decentralized solution that enables native-to-native cross-chain transformations. Native-to-native cross-chain transactions are especially useful for assets like USDT that are minted natively by Tether on multiple chains – if you bridge USDT to a chain where “real” USDT exists, you definitely want that USDT instead of a wrapped one! Today, XFlows supports BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC.

Speaking of USDC, since we last spoke, Wanchain was also revealed as one of Circle’s partners for the launch of its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP)! As one of the Circle’s launch partners, Wanchain has been able to leverage CCTP to burn and mint real USDC on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Avalanche. CCTP works great in concert with XFlows. The integration is totally seamless in the Wanchain Bridge, meaning if CCTP is available on a particular route, the Wanchain Bridge will default to that. Otherwise, the cross-chain transaction will automatically use our own novel XFlows mechanism.

We’ve also continued expanding our cross-chain infrastructure, of course. Over the past several months, we’ve integrated tons of new chains. Right now, we connect ~30 public networks. We’ve also expanded our bridge types: We can now bridge fungible coins/tokens, NFTs, and messages. In fact, we’ll be opening our general message-passing platform to the public later this year! We’ve also recently launched our XStake platform, which is a web-based platform designed to house a variety of infrastructure-supporting staking opportunities.

And finally, and this is very exciting, we’ve just publicly launched our long-awaited Cardano bridges!

Q – Let’s talk about the Cardano bridge. You recently launched the Cardano bridges with a huge positive reception from the community. Tell us about the experience, what you achieved, what were the roadblocks, etc.

It was quite the journey! Luckily, I’ve had the chance to recap the story in a few Twitter (X?) Spaces recently, so it’s all very fresh!

As many of you probably know, Cardano differs fundamentally from most other networks out there, so we needed to work directly with IOG (the entity that builds the Cardano blockchain) to make it happen.

The earliest conversations with IOG started way back in September 2021. For the first little while, it was mostly just checks and balances – making sure everyone understood how Wanchain worked and making sure we understood how Cardano worked. Once we decided to take on this project, we laid out a plan and shared it with the public in July 2022.

The biggest technical obstacle was getting the Cardano network to natively support Schnorr signatures and the Secp256k1 curve. These were considered must-haves for the Cardano Bridges. Luckily, the team at IOG helped coordinate internally and these primitives were added to the Cardano network in their Valentine hard fork in February 2023. Once that was done, we were really able to go full-steam ahead and deploy the bridges to Cardano.

So now, I’m happy to say, that as of a couple of days ago, Wanchain’s decentralized, non-custodial cross-chain bridges connect the Cardano mainnet to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Astar, Avalanche, BNB Chain, OKT Chain, Optimism, Polygon, Tron and Wanchain!

Users can now use ADA on Ethereum, and BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT, and WAN on Cardano!

So now, I’m happy to say, that as of a couple of days ago, Wanchain’s decentralized, non-custodial cross-chain bridges connect the Cardano mainnet to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Astar, Avalanche, BNB Chain, OKT Chain, Optimism, Polygon, Tron and Wanchain!

Users can now use ADA on Ethereum, and BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT, and WAN on Cardano!

Q – So Wanchain will bring a lot of liquidity improvement on Cardano for sure! I was very curious about some other Blockchains and it will be a 2 part question: What will be the future of bridges if modular blockchains like Polkadot or Cosmos become more popular?
Looks like multiple L2s will pop up in the coming days. How do you plan to integrate these chains, and what can we expect from you in the coming 6 months?

1) If Polkadot (which we already bridge to) and Cosmos don’t become popular, others are likely to in the future. While these kinds of networks offer native interoperability between their own parachains/blockchains, you’re just going to end up with siloed hubs of blockchains instead of siloed single blockchains. So you’re still going to need solutions to bridge between and connect these non-interoperable hubs.

This, of course, is for the medium term. The long-term vision of interoperability is that there are industry-wide interoperability standards that are developed and adopted by everyone. Once that happens, interoperability will be far more seamless and elegant (it’s also something that Wanchain spends lots of resources on developing with our academic and industry partners).

2) Ethereum L2s are more likely to gain real adoption than something like Polkadot/Cosmos in my opinion (again, in the medium term). These L2s are also perfect candidates for us to expand our XFlows products as these L2s share security with the Ethereum L1.

Because of this, we often consider the “official” L2 assets (ie. bridged via the official L2 bridge) as equivalent to the native asset on Ethereum. Of relevance, we just recently expanded USDT, USDC, BTC, and ETH XFlows to Metis. I think you can expect to see more of that!

Q – As people are transferring assets among blockchains, are you seeing a clear direction of the movement of assets to a particular blockchain (and also, people moving away from another)?

From my perch, stablecoins like USDT and USDC are still extremely popular. That’s one reason I’m optimistic about our new Cardano bridges. Because of these bridges, for the first time ever, fiat-backed stablecoins are available on the Cardano mainnet.

In terms of specific chains, it really varies and changes like the wind lol. There are still so many active chains out there, and so many new chains launching all the time. The larger Ethereum ecosystem (if defined as Ethereum, the clones (standard EVMs), the sidechains, and the L2s) only continues to grow. The larger Ethereum ecosystem really is as dominant as it’s ever been.

That being said, and as I alluded to above, I do think it’s inevitable that there will be multiple, totally distinct groupings of blockchains that are here to stay. So to me, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the future of blockchain will be formed by multiple chains (or clusters of blockchains), and that these chains will need to be interoperable if we’re ever to have widespread adoption.

Q – Wanchain still remains the most secure Crypto Bridge, It has not been hacked a single time. How do you build such a robust protocol? What goes into it?

Honestly, there’s no big secret. The key is just to always put security first. And to never sacrifice security for short-term growth.

For Wanchain, this starts with solid R&D, an emphasis on developing common standards, and rigorous testing. To give you all a little peek behind the curtain, Wanchain works closely with academic partners and industry groups like the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) to develop robust interoperability standards. As a quick aside, Wanchain’s VP of Engineering, Dr. Weijia Zhang, is actually the head of interoperability at the EEA and chairs the EEA interoperability work group.

As interoperability standards and best practices are developed, they pass through a kind of peer review and undergo rigorous testing. Then, when ready, they are published and Wanchain tends to be the first public place where they are implemented. In a very simplified nutshell, that’s how Wanchain builds and maintains the industry’s longest-running bridges.

Q – The Wanchain ecosystem is also consistently growing. Tell us more about some of your top projects.

In terms of the things we build in-house, we just launched XStake, as I mentioned earlier. Our bridge is also doing better than ever. Not only do we keep integrating more chains, but the recent daily volume on the bridge is higher than it’s ever been (for the most part). The bridge is also undergoing a UX upgrade to modernize and improve the user experience to make it less daunting for those not as used to Web3.

On the community-developer side of things, there are quite a few Dapps that continue to build and provide valuable services to the Wanchain community. There are some mainstays like the Zoo Ecosystem (GameFi, Yield Farming), Open Zoo (NFT Marketplace), Wanlend (Lending), and Wanswap (Dex), but there are also some new Dapps that have deployed recently like RexDex (Dex with NFT staking) and Elk Finance (DeFi suite). There are also several more on the horizon like the mysterious Zebra.

The Wanchain L1 ecosystem continues to grow and mature, and I’m really looking forward to what it looks like by the time we have our next AMA!

Q – Some interesting questions from Twitter. We will take 3 Twitter questions now. The first one is: What unique advantages does XStake offer compared to the previously available WanWallet Desktop and WanWallet Mobile apps for staking?

Good question! XStake is something that a lot of our users have been waiting for and I’m happy that it’s finally out. As mentioned above, XStake is designed to become a new pillar of the Wanchain ecosystem as it houses a variety of infrastructure-supporting staking opportunities.

Today, users can use XStake to stake WAN to Wanchain PoS Validator Nodes, which creates a more democratic and resilient blockchain network. Similarly, users can use XStake to stake WAN in a Wanchain Bridge Node to increase the cross-chain capacity of the Wanchain Bridge! Of course, both generate yield.

Before XStake, users needed to download software (either desktop wallet or mobile wallet) to access these opportunities. So XStake makes these more universally available and makes them far more convenient to use.

Moving forward, XStake will be an evolving platform with new staking opportunities added. The next one will likely be a blue-chip asset like USDT. We’ll also eventually add a function wherein users can deploy full nodes directly from XStake.

Q – Next Twitter question. Could you provide details about the unified decentralized collateral pools maintained by Wanchain’s Bridge Nodes, and how these pools support and sustain the functionality of the crosschain bridges?

Sure! It’s all possible because Wanchain’s Bridge nodes are decentralized and permissionless, meaning each and every one of you can go and deploy Bridge nodes right now if you want to. The only requirements are:

  • Run the hardware/cloud instance.
  • Stake and lock a minimum number of WAN coins.ç

All the WAN locked in the Bridge Nodes serve to over-collateralize users’ bridged assets. So, for example, if you use Wanchain Bridge to move 1 USDC from Avalanche to Cardano, not only is your 1 USDT on Cardano backed 1:1 by native USDC (ie. issued by Circle), it is also backed by WAN coin.

If ever there was any exploit or security issue with the Wanchain Bridge, the Bridge Node operators would be slashed so that the end user wouldn’t suffer the hardship. And so, because of this additional security layer, we say that assets bridged by Wanchain Bridge are all over collateralized.

Q – The 3rd question is: With Wanchain’s mission to empower developers to build cross-chain applications, can you provide specific examples of applications that have leveraged the platform’s capabilities, showcasing the impact of these advancements? Do you have like a white-label product or a B2B Product?

Wanchain has a full SDK for our cross-chain bridges, which makes it easy for other project developers to access our bridges and XFlows in their own products. Recently, there have been a couple of notable projects that have taken advantage.

For example, RocketX. RocketX lets users do cross-chain swaps by leveraging both decentralized and centralized liquidity. They recently integrated Wanchain. There is also OKX DEX, which integrated our bridges in their bridge/dex aggregator.

Q – How many bridges would the team consider building before shifting their focus on growing Wanchain’s own ecosystem? Would low-utilization bridges be closed in the future to reduce redundancy in the system?

Especially since the launch of XFlows, both the Wanchain L1 and the Cross-Chain bridges work in concert — so it isn’t a matter of choosing one over the other. For instance, XFlows liquidity is generated incidentally by people bridging to the Wanchain L1 to use the Dapps there. So as the Wanchain L1 grows, XFlows becomes more powerful. So, in other words, we need to build and grow both!

Q – What is your strongest advantage that you think will make your team lead the market?

Our development team is truly world-class, so I’d say our strongest advantage is the quality of the devs. The way we value R&D and our unmatched track record are close seconds!

Q – Do you want to give a list of your community links, so that the community can move over?

Sure! To stay up to date with Wanchain, please join the official communities and channels below:

Wanchain Twitter, Telegram.

Wanchain Medium and Website.

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Disclaimer
The information discussed by Altcoin Buzz is not financial advice. This is for educational, entertainment, and informational purposes only. Any information or strategies are thoughts and opinions relevant to the accepted levels of risk tolerance of the writer/reviewers and their risk tolerance may be different than yours. We are not responsible for any losses that you may incur as a result of any investments directly or indirectly related to the information provided. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are high-risk investments so please do your due diligence. This article has been sponsored by Wanchain. Copyright Altcoin Buzz Pte Ltd.

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