Web3 is both a concept about how the internet can be more decentralised, trustless and open, and one of the major growth areas in the digital world. According to Emergen Research, the global market for projects operating in Web3 stood at $3.2 billion in 2021, with an expected compound annual growth rate of 43.7% over the next decade. The trend is even more pronounced when it comes to investment in startups on the blockchain, which totalled $25.2 billion last year. This represented an incredible 700% increase on the previous year.

With applications ranging from cryptocurrency and NFTs to DeFi and the metaverse, it is no wonder that the space is brimming with innovation and ambition. Many entrepreneurs are looking to Web3 as a platform for the realisation of ideas that previously seemed unthinkable. Most of the time, these projects require more funding than the founders can provide themselves. One of the best options for anyone seeking to launch a Web3 project is to take advantage of the emerging ecosystem of grants on offer, including via decentralised funding mechanisms that were never an option for traditional startups. Fortunately, there are a huge number of grants available today, covering all kinds of startups across the early development stages.

Web3 Foundation

Founded in 2017 by Gavin Wood, Ashley Tyson and Peter Czaban, the Web3 Foundation funds research and development teams working on decentralised technologies, primarily across software development framework Substrate, blockchain platform and cryptocurrency Polkadot, and scalable blockchain network Kusama. The Web3 technology stack is complex and includes browsers, APIs, oracles, encrypted storage, data distribution protocols and platform-neutral languages. This means that the grants are potentially open to a huge variety of startups working on the technical side of the blockchain. In addition to funding, the foundation also provides research, advocacy and collaborative support. Over 300 projects from more than 50 countries have received grants so far, including wallets, client implementations and identity modules. A total of 123 grants were issued in 2021, and new developments can be tracked on GitHub, where all the relevant information about the awarding of grants is published.

The Web3 Foundation also offers $100,000 grants for public research projects intending to advance and explore protocols within the Web3 technology stack. The team is looking for projects with open source code that aim to significantly impact the decentralised ecosystem in the long term, with priority areas including benchmarking, new technical and economic primitives, analysis of existing protocols, and implementations and security testing.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a developer platform and ‘decentralised superhighway’, aiming to speed up blockchain, NFT and crypto projects through APIs and node infrastructure. Its ultimate goal is to become the industry standard platform for Web3 developers, something it is backing up with the launch of a $25 million developer grant programme announced in June 2022. With up to $50,000 available per startup, the team has announced that it is looking for projects increasing the utility of NFTs and making DeFi more accessible to both institutional and home traders. Interestingly, the Alchemy team said that the recent downturn in cryptocurrency market capitalisations had actually been a driving factor in launching the grant system, given that many companies had been forced to make redundancies and scale back projects, and new startups have been more reluctant to launch in the current climate.

NEAR Protocol

NEAR Protocol is a ‘climate neutral’ decentralised application (DApp) platform, using its native NEAR tokens (ranked 25th on CoinMarketCap as of July 2022) as payment for transaction fees and storage on its crypto platform. The platform aims to be speedier than classic blockchains through its sharding approach, whereby segments of the chain are distributed to various nodes that only have to handle a fraction of transactions. In October 2021, the NEAR Protocol announced an $800 million Global Ecosystem Fund, upping the stakes in the sector. Of this, $250 million is earmarked for ecosystem grants over the coming four years, alongside a $100 million regional fund and $100 million intended specifically for startups. The NEAR Foundation Grants Program is open to new projects in Ethereum Virtual Machine, wallets, infrastructure, social impact, NFTs, GameFi and the metaverse, DAOs and R&D. Different tiers are available — <$100K, $100–250K and $250K+ — while over 800 projects have been funded to date, with a total of $45 million allocated.

When it comes to DeFi grants specifically, the platform is currently taking applications for its NEAR DeFi Ecosystem: Proximity intake, which is looking for teams launching DeFi protocols on NEAR and Aurora, an implementation of an Ethereum Virtual Machine on the NEAR Protocol. Areas of interest include NFTs, metaverse and DAOs.

Avalanche Foundation

Avalanche is a blockchain platform that views itself as a rival to Ethereum and sees its competitive advantages in speed, affordability and environmental friendliness. Its native AVAX cryptocurrency was ranked 14th on CoinMarketCap as of July 2022. The Avalanche Foundation has hit the headlines over the last year with a number of funding programmes for new Web3 projects. In November 2021, it launched the Blizzard Fund, which also counts Ava Labs, Polychain Capital and Three Arrows Capital and more among its investors. Over $200 million was made available for accelerating growth, development and innovation across the Avalanche blockchain and ecosystem. This fund focused on four key areas: DeFi, enterprise applications, NFTs and cultural applications, while also emphasising security token issuance, liquidity providers and self-sovereign identity. In March, the foundation launched the $290 million Multiverse incentive programme and accelerator, which is intended to expand its ‘subnet’ and foster an ecosystem of scalable app-specific blockchains. The main areas of focus are GameFi, DeFi, NFTs and institutional use cases.

Celo

Celo is an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible proof-of-stake layer-1 protocol, serving as a mobile-first DeFi platform that aims to make DApps and cryptocurrency payments accessible for smartphone users all over the world, including unbanked users. As of May 2022, it had over 3 million wallet holders in 113 countries.

The Celo Foundation Grant programme aims to nurture the Celo ecosystem by supporting projects that are committed to building and primarily fall within the categories of ecosystem support, research, education and community, and social impact across DApps, blockchain infrastructure, DeFi, developer tools, and UBI. The fourth wave of grants, the recipients of which were announced in October 2021, received a combined $9.35 million across 50 projects. For more traditional fundraising, Celo operates the Celo Ecosystem Venture Fund, led by the Polychain Capital investment firm.

Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organisation supporting Ethereum and related technologies, has been running an Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) since 2019, providing funding and other support to Web3 projects within the Ethereum ecosystem. The focus is on startups that seek to strengthen Ethereum and encompasses developer tools, research, community building and resources, infrastructure and open standards. The ESP awarded a total of $7.7 million to 68 projects in 2019, $12.9 million to 99 projects in 2020, and $26.9 million to 136 projects in 2021.

Harmony

Harmony is a layer-1 blockchain launched in 2019 that uses sharding and features trustless cross-chain bridges to run Ethereum applications. The native ONE token is used for payment of transaction fees, governance and staking. Its effective proof of stake (EPoS) consensus mechanism is an attempt to solve the blockchain trilemma of decentralisation, scalability and security.

The Harmony Ecosystem Fund aims to make at least $180 million available for grants for Web3 projects and DAOs over the one-year period from Q4 2021 to Q3 2022, with a total of $300 million set to be delivered over four years. Harmony plans to reach 10,000 startups and improve the experiences of 10 million blockchain users with the funds. The types of DAO under consideration include those working in wallets, research, community, validation and development.

Interchain Foundation

Cosmos, pitching itself as an ‘internet of blockchains’, is an ecosystem of interoperable, sovereign blockchain apps and services that communicate via an Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol. A proof of stake chain, Cosmos uses the native ATOM token, which was ranked 26th on CoinMarketCap by market capitalisation as of late July 2022.

The Interchain Foundation, whose mission statement is to fund and advance the Cosmos ecosystem, operates a programme of stewardship, investments and grants. While grants are currently on pause, the foundation has provided a significant number of startups with funding in recent years, covering research and engineering, products, security and community. In Q4 2020, 13 grants were issued for a total volume of $0.9 million.

Solana

Solana is a smart contract platform that prioritises speed and efficiency and uses top ten cryptocurrency asset SOL as its native token. The Solana Foundation operates the Solana Grants Program, which is open to new initiatives across a number of segments aiming to grow and secure the Solana network. Some of the key areas include censorship resistance, DAO tools, developer tools, education, payments, financial inclusion, climate change and academic research. The first wave of grants in 2020 supported 12 projects including oracles, bridges, wallets and infrastructure.

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This guide will help you build a dapp (decentralized application) on BSC (Binance Smart Chain) with the functionalities to send transactions, deploy & interact with smart contracts, and sign messages, with keys secured by a familiar Web 2.0 style passwordless login.

Boostrap Project

CLI Quickstart Tool

To start, run the following CLI command in your terminal. The make-magic NPM package is the quickest way to bootstrap a Magic project from a list of pre-built templates — similar to create-react-app.

Setup Project Name

After a few seconds, you will be prompted for a project name. This will also be the name of the folder that will be created for this project.

Magic Publishable API Key

After putting in a project name, you will be prompted for your Magic Publishable API Key, which is used to enable user authentication with Magic.

To get your publishable API key, you’ll need to sign up for Magic Dashboard. Once you’ve signed up, an app will be created upon your first login (you’ll be able to create new apps later). You’ll now be able to see your Live Publishable API Key — copy and paste the key into your CLI prompt.

Select NPM Client

After hitting Enter, you’ll be asked to select whether you’d like to use npm / yarn as the NPM client for your project.

Open Application

After selecting your NPM client, a lightweight server will automatically start, and you’ll be directed to your application running locally. In this example app, you’ll be prompted to sign up for a new account using an email address or login into an existing one. The authentication process is secured by Magic.

After clicking on your magic link email, you’ll be successfully logged in, and a Binance Smart Chain wallet address will be automatically generated as well!

Get Test BNB

To interact with this example app, you’ll first need to acquire some test BNB tokens. This is very straightforward with Binance Smart Chain with a couple few steps:

1. Visit the BNB Testnet Faucet
2. Copy and paste your public address from the example app into the text box of the faucet
3. Click the Give me BNB dropdown button, and select how many tests

BNB tokens you’d like to get

After a few seconds, the tokens will be available in your account.

Code Deep Dive

Now you can open your local project with a code editor of your choice, and we’ll highlight several snippets of code where we’ll teach you some basics on how to use Magic and Binance Smart Chain.

Install Magic and Web3 SDK

To begin using Magic and Binance Smart Chain, you’ll first need to install the Magic and Web3 Javascript SDK with a script tag. You can also install them with yarn or npm. You may already be familiar with the Web3 SDK, which is often used to build Ethereum-based decentralized applications. What’s exciting about Binance Smart Chain is that it’s EVM-compatible, which means you can continue to use the same Web3 SDK without having to learn a new SDK interface.

Initialize Magic Instance

Before you initialize a Magic instance, you’ll need to configure your Binance Smart Chain options.

For Testnet

For Mainnet

Now you can initialize a Magic instance with your **Publishable API Key** and Binance Smart Chain options:

Implement Login Handler

Implementing user login is very straightforward with Magic. Simply pass in the user email to a one-liner to initiate the login process:

await magic.auth.loginWithMagicLink({ email });

Full Implementation

Implement Send Transaction

Every Magic-user account comes with a Binance Smart Chain wallet key pair and can be accessed via familiar and simple Web 2.0 style login without needing to write down seed phrases or download browser extensions.

To get your current wallet address

const fromAddress = (await web3.eth.getAccounts())[0];

To send a transaction to the blockchain with Web3

Full Implementation

Implement Logout Handler

Implementing user logout is very simple.

Full Implementation

Use Formatic

Formatic is an alternative product developed by the Magic team to support Ethereum-specific dApps — it now also supports Binance Smart Chain. The main difference is that Fortmatic offers a Single-Sign-On user experience and has a default UI for sending transactions and sending messages (unlike Magic, where you can customize the UI).

That’s all we wanted to talk about for today, friends. Stay updated with the latest information and news from the bc team. Our team will be glad to see you next time!

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Along with smart contracts, oracles form one of the cornerstones of decentralized applications (DApps) and the world of decentralized finance, or DeFi. Oracles act as a gateway between real-world, real-time data sources and the blockchain, allowing smart contracts to be executed and fulfilled based on external sources of information. Use cases to date primarily involve financial information tracking the prices of assets, including digital assets, but the potential applications are endless and could extend to smart contracts based on information about weather, political events, traffic, or even people’s behavioral patterns and geolocations.

Oracles can be based on software or hardware. The former collects data from digital sources such as websites — stock trackers and digital asset exchanges are two common examples — while the latter are based on information that is collected physically, such as barcode scanners and sensors. Oracles can also differ in the directionality of the information, with inbound oracles providing information from third-party data sources to smart contracts, while outbound oracles allow contracts to export data.

Chainlink

Chainlink is one of the oldest and highest-profile oracle technologies in the digital assets space, and today is the most widely used decentralized oracle network. Its core principle is to provide highly reliable tamper-proof data to smart contracts, allowing the contracts to be verified by real-world inputs rather than stakeholder decision-making. The platform aggregates price feeds through its network of oracle nodes, providing reference prices that allow developers to build smart contracts based on reliable external data. The node operators are rewarded for their data collection activity in the form of LINK tokens, the network’s native coin and an ERC677 token, an extension of the ERC-20 protocol standard for tokens created on the Ethereum network. The size of the reward is calculated according to market demand for the data itself, while the value of the token itself is allowed to fluctuate according to supply and demand.

The platform’s success can be observed in the number of high-profile crypto projects that have announced integrations with Chainlink. Polkadot’s DeFi hub Acala and blockchain platform Cardano are just two examples, and as of February 2022, the network had secured over $60 billion in deposits into smart contracts across DeFi, GameFi, lending and more. Serving as a mouthpiece through which the traditional and digital financial systems can communicate, it also follows that Chainlink can provide utility to non-crypto projects. The Google Cloud team previously integrated Chainlink with its BigQuery enterprise cloud data warehouse, while a partnership with charity UNICEF was recently announced. Under the new collaboration, Chainlink will help to fund projects that are developing blockchain-based solutions to support communities in need on behalf of the UNICEF Office of Innovation.

Another feature of the Chainlink ecosystem is its Proof of Reserve oracle networks, which ensure that tokenized assets are collateralized. This protects people using digital assets from fractional reserve practices that they may be unaware of, as well as other risks associated with assets that are not properly backed up. This aspect of oracle networks is set to become even more significant as more and more high-value traditional commodities such as tokenized financial assets and precious metals come on chain.

Band Protocol

Band Protocol is a cross-chain oracle platform connecting real-world data and authenticated APIs to smart contracts. The protocol feeds off-chain information to DApps and uses a number of different mechanisms for communication between data sources and smart contracts. Like Chainlink, Band Protocol is blockchain agnostic, and the platform supports integration with a variety of different blockchains.

The Band Protocol is notable for its community focus, with over 72 professional and community node operators on its network. The decentralized BandChain platform allows anyone with an API endpoint to offer their data for use by DApps via oracle scripts. Data sources are tamper-proof thanks to the Tendermint BFT (Byzantine fault tolerance) consensus algorithm, in which validators take turns to propose blocks of transactions and vote on them.

Node operators stake BAND tokens as a guarantee of their data’s reliability and receive on-chain rewards in BAND in exchange for fulfilling oracle requests and producing blocks. This is funded by the data requests themselves, for which BAND tokens are required as transaction fees from smart contract stakeholders. BAND token holders who do not themselves carry out oracle duties may allocate their tokens to chosen and trusted validators in exchange for a share of query fees and block rewards.

MakerDAO

MakerDAO is a decentralized governance community supporting the generation of Dai, which is described as the world’s leading decentralized stablecoin. This is achieved via the Maker Protocol, a set of smart contracts that forms one of the largest DApps on the Ethereum blockchain. The Dai token uses audited and publicly viewable Ethereum smart contracts as collateral, locking in the token’s price at $1, the standard value for stable digital assets.

Participants in the Maker ecosystem can create Dai by putting up collateral and burning it after repaying the balance they have generated. The decentralized, non-custodial and permissionless storage of leverage is fulfilled through Maker Vaults, which form a core component of the Maker Protocol. This is where oracles come in. The protocol pulls price feeds of various assets into the ecosystem via oracle nodes, allowing participants to identify the right moment to liquidate a vault or find out how much Dai a given vault can generate. The independent, third-party feeds used by the oracles are provided by a number of individuals and organizations, and each oracle corresponds to a specific asset, continually providing new information on its reference price and, therefore, the value of any chosen collateral.

Compound

Compound is an algorithmic, autonomous interest rate protocol supporting the lending and borrowing of digital assets. Running on the Ethereum blockchain, the platform allows users to accrue interest without the need to entrust their digital assets to a third party. All terms are calculated by a smart contract rather than the stakeholders, meaning that collateral and interest rates are set according to the market, and the assets themselves are held in liquidity pools as opposed to being held by the counterparties. The protocol is permissionless, meaning that anyone with a crypto wallet can freely interact with it.

Prices on the protocol are determined by the Open Price Feed, which acts as the core oracle functionality for Compound and is based on Chainlink Price Feeds that are then processed using a number of smart contracts. The View contract ensures that reported prices fall within an acceptable range relative to a token’s time-weighted average price, while the ValidatorProxy contract validates the prices submitted by the feed. A precautionary failover is also in place — the network can switch the primary oracle from Chainlink Price Feeds to Uniswap v2 if necessary.

NEST

NEST Protocol is a blockchain oracle network providing real-world price data for DeFi, GameFi and NFTs. It is also the first oracle to provide on-chain price predictions. The two core components of the ecosystem are NEST Financial Market and NEST Oracle, the latter of which offers decentralized, nodeless, permissionless on-chain verification without a single point of entry or governing body.

NEST is based on a price reference system known as ‘quotation mining’, which allows anyone to participate via the native NEST token, an ERC-20 utility token. Miners provide price quotations to the smart contract and, provided that they have locked in a certain amount of the asset being quoted and paid a commission fee, receive NEST tokens as a reward. Verifiers then accept the quoted price and must lock in double the value of the same asset staked by the miner. Mining is the only way to acquire the NEST token beyond purchasing it on the open market, and a split is made upon minting, whereby 80% goes to the miner, 15% to the node, which comprises holders of the governance token, and 5% to NEST developers.

UMA

UMA Protocol operates Optimistic Oracle, which provides a means of bringing various data types on-chain via dispute arbitration. Requestors seeking price asset data submit requests to the oracle with a stated reward, allowing Proposers to reference off-chain price feeds in exchange for these rewards once a proposal bond has been staked. A period known as the proposal liveness period follows, during which Disputers can refute the Proposer’s price. When proposed prices are disputed, a Data Verification Mechanism (DVM) is activated, and token holders are given 48 hours to vote on the price of an asset. Proposers lose their bond if the disputed price information is deemed incorrect, incentivizing trustworthiness for price information on the oracle.

DIA

DIA (decentralized information asset) is an open-source oracle platform enabling the sourcing, supply and sharing of trustable data. Founded in 2018 and based in Switzerland, DIA is backed by a number of high-profile venture funds, including Outlier Ventures, Continue Capital and TRG Capital. The platform’s feeds include asset prices, metaverse data, and lending rates, along with other data classes. The oracles can be used on all major networks, including Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot and Polygon.

In 2020, DIA began to publicly distribute DIA, the native token of the ecosystem. DIA is a governance token, meaning that validators are able to contribute to decision-making based on their stake. The token also serves as an incentive for information sources to provide accurate data feeds and for validators to check them. The project creators hope to distribute all governance by 2025, at which point DIA will become a fully-fledged DAO or decentralized autonomous organization. Other plans in the project’s roadmap include the launch of custom-built data feeds, which can be constructed around a mix of sources and methodologies, delivering higher resilience.

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The layer 2 solutions Avalanche introduced a network architecture with 3 sub-chains: P-chain, X-chain and C-chain. The C-chain subchain is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and enables the development of Solidity-based smart contracts as well as the issuance of tokens that comply with the ERC-20 standard.

The Avalanche blockchain is supported by well-known decentralized applications (DApps) such as the Aave lending protocol and the Curve AMM protocol, which focus on stablecoin liquidity pools.

Is it difficult to create a smart contract on the Avalanche network yourself? What are the pitfalls? How can you deploy a smart contract if you are not familiar with Solidity? We will answer these questions in this article.

Why do developers love Avalanche?

Avalanche is a second-layer solution for Ethereum, which is similar to Polygon and solves two problems at once:

1. Low bandwidth: due to the high demand on the Ethereum network, transaction delays occur, and the cost of fees (gas fees) becomes high. Avalanche provides a bridge between its network and Ethereum, enabling cheaper and faster transactions.
2. Scalability: In its current state, the Ethereum network is only capable of processing a limited number of transactions per unit of time. Second-tier solutions relieve the main network by taking over a part of the transactions.

Avalanche ranks fourth among all blockchains in terms of the number of log-locked assets (TVL) exceeding $3 billion, after Ethereum, BNB, and Tron. Avalanche’s second-layer solution began rapidly gaining popularity in August 2021, ahead of the mainnet’s September launch. At its peak, the Avalanche ecosystem’s TVL was $13.7 billion.

Why create your own smart contract?

Smart contracts execute simple instructions on their own. They’re useful when two parties need to make a transaction without trust. A smart contract is an algorithm that ensures the security of a transaction by meeting predefined conditions.

For example, Alice wants to buy 1 ETH for 1900 USDT on the Uniswap exchange. She then creates orders and signs the corresponding transaction. According to the algorithm, the smart contract withdraws 1900 USDT from Alice’s wallet and blocks it in the ETH-USDT liquidity pool, and “withdraws” 1 ETH from the pool and transfers it to Alice’s wallet. And all this happens without the involvement of an intermediary.

There are many opportunities for the use of smart contracts: ICO, insurance, trading, intellectual property and copyright, lending and so on. Anyone can create a smart contract and publish it on the blockchain or use the services of developers.

Can I write my own smart contract without programming experience, and how difficult is that?

If the source code is ready, compiling and deploying a smart contract is not difficult, even if you’re doing it for the first time. In this article, we will go over that process step by step using the very popular Remix IDE.

If you can’t find the source code or write it yourself, you can order the development of a smart contract for your needs. Smart contracts are written in the Solidity programming language, and all applications on Ethereum and BNB Chain (Polygon) are created, so knowledge of this language is required.

How to create a smart contract

To use a smart contract in the Avalanche network, you need a MetaMask wallet because it allows you to add your own networks and test smart contracts and a development environment (IDE).

For this article, we will use Remix IDE. It is easy to use, and even beginners can easily use it. But the sequential steps needed to deploy smart contracts in all development environments are similar.

Step 1. Adding the smart contract code

Go to Remix IDE, and create a new folder and a file with the *.sol extension. You will need to add the future smart contract code to it. You can find the source code of a smart contract in open sources, for example, on the Open Zeppelin Github, write it yourself or order development from a team of professionals if you need a unique SC with advanced functionality.

Paste the source code into the *.sol file. As an example, we have used the standard smart contract provided by OpenZeppelin. Please note that Avalanche is a second-layer network for Ethereum and uses the same token format — ERC-20.

Don’t forget to add other source code files required for import.

Step 2. Compiling the source code

Go to the “SOLIDITY COMPILER” tab on the left side of the Remix IDE editor and select a compatible compiler version. In our example, compiler version 0.8.0 or higher is used. Then click on “Compile *.sol”.

The smart contract code has been successfully compiled, but it still needs to be deployed (published on the blockchain). Please note that the smart contract code cannot be changed once it has been deployed. Therefore, the developers first publish the SC on the test network, and only after extensive testing do, they then deploy it on the main network. But first things first.

Step 3. Deploying the smart contract

So to deploy the Smart Contract, we need the Avalanche test network to add to MetaMask and coins to pay the network commission. As an example, we will use the FUJI testnet.

Add it to MetaMask: Networks > Add Network

FUJI C-Chain Tester Setup Data:

• Network Name: Avalanche FUJI C-Chain
• New RPC URL: https://api.avax-test.network/ext/bc/C/rpc
• ChainID: 43113
• Symbol: AVAX
• Explorer: https://testnet.snowtrace.io/

C-Chain test network added successfully.

Now you will need coins to make transactions on the test network, including deploying a smart contract. Get them with Avax Faucet or any other faucet you find.

Then return to the Remix IDE and go to the “DEPLOY & RUN TRANSACTIONS” tab. Select Injected Web3, since we’re using a non-Ethereum network, and then add the address. If the address is correct, your wallet balance will be automatically retrieved in the coins of the selected network. By default, all balances are displayed in ETH, including AVAX. Don’t pay attention to this. Leave the commission settings as default. When you’re ready to get started, just click Deploy.

And confirm the transaction.

If everything goes well, the editor will show you the following message:

A transaction of the type “Contract Deployment” is displayed in the history of MetaMask Wallet:

Congratulations! You have successfully deployed the smart contract and can now test it on the FUJI test network as if you were interacting with a real SC on the Avalanche blockchain.

Conclusion

Creating and deploying a simple, smart contract on the Avalanche blockchain is not particularly difficult, even for beginners, as the source code for the templates is publicly available. Once you learn the basics of Solidity, you can add your own features and modify the code of the examples to your liking. Your boundaries are limited only by your experience and imagination.

However, developing a more functional smart contract to create full-fledged DApps is a complex and multi-layered process that requires professionalism. Not to mention that a contract needs to be carefully vetted before it is published on the mainnet. It would be wise to put the solution in the hands of experienced developers.

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For several years now, developers of decentralized apps have based their projects on the world-famous blockchain Ethereum. That day has passed, and as a worthier, a more promising alternative has come to the fore — NEAR Protocol. This platform has the potential to become all the rage among dApps developers, processing up to 100,000 transactions per second and operating at a speed that is 3,333 times greater than that of Ethereum and charging 10 times fewer commission fees.

The Story of NEAR Protocol’s Creation

Alexander Skidanov and Ilya Polosukhin designed NEAR Protocol as a blockchain that would allow for the creation of decentralized apps, remove restrictions on dApps’ developers, and maximize developer potential.

5 months after its launch in 2020, the entire community gained access to managing it.

The Basics: Developer Convenience

NEAR’s operations are designed first and foremost to benefit developers based on a delegated Proof-of-stake blockchain supported by smart contracts written in AssemblyScript and Rust. For greater efficiency, the project has implemented sharding within the bounds of the Nightshade mechanism. All protocol chains are modeled in the form of a unified blockchain. In other words, every block created in NEAR stores transaction records in all the chains. Based on the “Doomslug Finality” principle, all transactions are final upon their completion under the conditions that the blocks are functional and that only half of the members of the transaction are online.

Each existing segment is supported by its own network of validators. This feature ensures that all segments work in unison. That, in turn, has a direct impact on the transaction processing speed, raising the transaction throughput to up to 100,000 operations per second and allowing them to be instantly concluded due to the minuscule one-second time size required to create the block. Developers can also publish “lisks” designed to analyze zeroed-in segments of the primary chain. In addition, developers can acquire built-in chains for applications along with all the necessary functions, freeing up users’ time and energy exclusively for app development on the front end. NEAR accomplishes this at a fraction of the cost of its competitors.

Efficiency, Low-Cost, and Portability

NEAR supports all WebAssembly languages, which eliminates the need to have to learn a potentially new coding language that they might not know. Legacy apps are easy to port as well. Its own Aurora operates smart contracts within its own network, avoiding the need for a new separate blockchain. Thus, with every passing day, ever more developers are finding out about NEAR and considering making the transition to the blockchain platform. An example of a company that has abandoned Ethereum in favor of NEAR is Mintbase. Mintbase is a marketplace which organizes the sale of non-interchangeable tokens. Originally created on Ethereum, the game project Hash Rush has followed suit. An increase in the quantity of transactions within the bounds of the game and high commissions of the network have served as the main reasons motivating their transition from one platform to another that are cheaper and faster.

Some of the NEAR blockchain’s main qualities include:

✓ 100,000 transactions per second (thousand times more efficient than other networks);

✓ rock-bottom commissions (10,000 times less than that of Ethereum);

✓ no rigid restrictions for dApps developers;

✓ the ability to designate accounts using more user-friendly addresses;

✓ having its own NEAR token and wallet “Near Wallet”;

✓ a Rainbow Bridge for converting ERC-20 tokens to $NEAR tokens.

In the near future, developers of decentralized apps will be able to duplicate their products currently on Ethereum on NEAR without any major changes required for them. That will be possible after the moment that the EVM software stack is integrated into the project for launching dApps.

Such a clever system also comes with its drawbacks. For instance, this system renders communication more challenging as well as rendering the system secure since it effectively amounts to what is a sub-blockchain system. Individual shards do not have the number of validators that the main chain has, which entails a weakness for maleficent persons to exploit. NEAR has addressed this with creative randomness methods, however, by undermining most such attempts. NEAR plans to lower the requirements for validators to help address this as well.

Despite that the EVM compatibility feature has proven highly effective in attracting developers initially, the number of developers on multiple chains doubles the number of native developers. In addition, some of NEAR’s efficiency rates in practice have not been proven to necessarily reach their claimed lightning-fast efficiency.

A couple of NEAR’s main disadvantages are a large number of potent competitors to NEAR, which are better marketed. On top of that, there is a relatively limited quantity of exchangesNEAR listed, none of them in the United States.

Wallet Versatility

Whereas the wallet addresses of competitors such as Ethereum and Bitcoin are represented in the form of a scrambled collection of symbols, in NEAR’s case, it’s an identifier that is easy for ordinary people to understand.

Examples: coolblocl.near, alex89.near.

You have to admit that remembering an address like this will be particularly effortless, unlike memorizing other blockchain platforms’ addresses consisting of all kinds of symbols that people don’t necessarily use much in their daily lives. Nevertheless, if one prefers to stick to the old complex gibberish, he or she can still name accounts in the NEAR project with the same breadth of symbols. App developers have their own accounts set up for them providing them with the ability to configure and test smart contracts. The wallets function within the browser instead of via an extension. These wallets, in turn, allow developers to produce their own tokens through the browser wallet in addition to single-use private keys and receive startup tokens. These tokens are easily transferable to users in other systems. NFT builders can even sell their accounts, thus providing the opportunity for continuous revenue generation.

Serious Developer Incentives

NEAR has put a particularly generous incentives system in place for its developers that renders it hard to resist. NEAR has 800 million dollars in grants to use, the largest public chain grant ever amassed, which allows it to share 30% of its fee revenue from contracts with developers. Existing developers are consequently receiving 250 million dollars. It further rewards users for keeping tokens inside the NEAR system by increasing their revenue the larger the network becomes. It has implemented a 10% transaction fee to further help finance the system, which, in turn, helps minimize the rate of inflation.

NEAR is among the fastest-growing options for developers, with a whopping 291% growth in full-time developers in 2021. Its full-time developers have topped 100. The gas costs and commissions are planned to grow as the platform becomes more popular. NEAR has also implemented many small competitions both for small developers and even college students, which it will be able to use to increase its pool of developers.

User Commissions

There are 2 different types of commission fees that dApps developers pay who have their apps based on the NEAR platform along with the users’ accounts:

1. Information storage fees: there has to be a certain number of tokens on the holder’s account, which correspond to the quantity of kilobytes of data used.

2. Transactions fees: the size of the commission depends on the complexity of the operation and is priced using the variable gas unit. The same system of calculations is implemented in other networks as well, but on NEAR, the commission fees are dramatically lower (by ~ 10,000 times).

If the blocks are reloaded in light of heightened demand, so too will the commission rise. But that won’t for long since the transaction throughput of the network is growing dynamically, increasing the quantity of shard transactions required for cost stability.

Conclusion

As you can see, NEAR Protocol is much more than just another flash-in-the-pan development; but is quite a promising blockchain project with advantageous conditions and an advanced range of functions that will provide a significant boost for convenience, innovation, and favorable investment conditions.

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There are many platforms out there today vying for the title of “Ethereum killer”. We are going to weigh the pros and cons of one of its top challengers. NEAR Protocol is a new blockchain designed to address the issues weighing down Ethereum operations, such as long transaction times, limited throughput capacity, high commissions, as well as poor compatibility with other blockchains and decentralized apps (DApps).

The Upside

Enormous technological efficiency

NEAR provides the ability to launch blockchain apps en masse developed for cryptocurrency operations, identification systems, games, and any other types of DApps. NEAR has addressed the issues experienced on Ethereum by implementing a delegated Proof-of-Stake blockchain along with sharing. Sharding provides that every block in NEAR stores transactional records in all the chains.. This segmentation technology, along with Nightshade consensus algorithms, provides for theoretically endless scalability and renders mass use as well as integration of DApps possible. Each segment receives support from its own network of validators ensuring that all the segments work in unison.

Sharding technology (segmenting) that NEAR uses splits the blockchain up into numerous segments which provides for parallel processing of transactions. This means that the transactions are grouped and executed in all segments simultaneously. All protocol chains form part of one unified blockchain with transaction records stored in all the blocks in the blockchain. Compared to first-generation blockchains Bitcoin and Ethereum, NEAR claims to produce up to one hundred thousand transactions per second, which is approximately 3,333 times the speed that Ethereum operates at. Part of the reason for this is the “Doomslug Finality” principle, according to which all transactions are final. In addition, due to the additional reason that only half the members to a transaction have to be online, transactions are completely sooner still.

Low entry threshold

One of the primary appeals to NEAR blockchain is its low entry threshold and unorthodox portability with other blockchain networks. WebAssembly renders the in-browser blockchain cross-platform and contracts can be created in Rust or JavaScript. NEAR’s creators also produced an array of templates designed for third-party developers. Consequently, even beginner developers can create their own app and launch it in a matter of minutes. Meanwhile, users have the ability to give ordinary names to their accounts that don’t contain long strings of unfamiliar symbols. This time freed up for developers enables them to put more energy producing apps, which is in itself one of the most important factors in the success of a blockchain.

NEAR’s Rainbow Bridge with ETH renders the network totally compatible with Ethereum, rendering ERC-20 tokens to be convertible for $NEAR tokens. Furthermore, DApps developers can duplicate these apps on NEAR without any significant changes. This has become possible in light of the integration of Aurora protocol which is compatible with Ethereum’s EVM. Furthermore, developers are offered startup tokens which can easily be transferred to other networks or they can sell their accounts altogether if they wish, presenting an extra income opportunity. Developers are also given the ability to produce their own tokens along with the ability to use single-use private keys.

Massive capital

With the ease of portability, the additional 800 million dollars in grants that NEAR has received, and 30% of that dedicated to 250 million of that, it is very difficult for developers to resist making the easy jump to NEAR network. In addition, the larger the network becomes, the greater the revenue that developers will get. NEAR’s commission is currently 10 times lower than that of Ethereum. Consequently, NEAR is acquiring a large user base.DApps developers, in turn, receive up to 30% commission off user transactions. NEAR has implemented a 10% transaction fee to further help further finance the system which, in turn, helps minimize the rate of inflation. Consequently, its full-time developers have now topped 100 and its growth over the past year was 291%.

Extensive training and community

This funding has also been sufficient to cover for competitions and education for those who wish to study how NEAR works and develop proficiency. Documentation is excellent and it’s frequently updated on GitHub. NEAR University is a special, sponsored offer that allows anyone to learn to develop apps on NEAR. The program is split up into three levels: beginner level (“Analyst”), intermediate (“Developer”), and advanced (“Instructor”), with each course free of charge. NEAR’s developers form a community on their own, participating in an active forum where they share ideas and make proposals for NEAR’s continued development and management.

The Downside of NEAR

Stiff competition

The sheer number of alternatives trying to supplant Ethereum make fighting for attention difficult. Solana for instance is perhaps NEAR’s most formidable competitor. Both blockchains are financed by venture capitalists. NEAR so far has been inefficient at marketing itself. Solana currently has a more attractive token price and has attracted a greater number of developers. However, NEAR has shown a stunning rate in developer growth with the number of its developers quadrupling in the year 2021.

There currently is only a limited number of exchanges where NEAR is traded, not one of them in the United States, which limits the ability to promote the blockchain to buyers in the world’s largest economy. NEAR can be traded on the exchanges Binance, Upbit, Kucoin, and Huobi; however, the cryptocurrency is not listed on such large exchanges as Kraken, FTX US, BitStamp, and Coinbase. Solana is already actively trading on those exchanges.

Low native developer ratio

The trait that has given NEAR a rapid infusion of developers on its platform is a double-edged sword. Despite that NEAR offers a great incentive for projects to migrate to NEAR, these developers also migrate away from NEAR to other platforms as well. The number of developers on multiple chains is more than double the number of native NEAR developers.

Greater need for validators

NEAR’s sharding creates a special situation for validators whose job it is to oversee transactions. Under the Nightshade system, each block contains all transactions for all of the segments and this also changes their general condition. Each segment in the network is technically treated as a separate chain of blocks which maintains its own resources along with a number of validators checking the transactions.

Thanks to this fragmentation, the state of the entire blockchain doesn’t have to be loaded all at once, which reduces the equipment requirements for nodes. Not a single participant loads the entire state of the blockchain or an entire logic block. Each participant of the network only maintains the state that corresponds to the segment that they are checking transactions for while the list of all transactions is broken down into physical fragments with one fragment per segment. Thus, validators cannot control operations through network segments at once like they can in the case of the main unified blockchain. This calls for an increase in the number of validators necessary.

High validator threshold

However, there is a high cost to become a validator and gain a seat in one of the segments — 60,000 NEAR tokens while the current course is 3.4 $NEAR/USD. This translates to greater than a 200,000 USD requirement to become a validator. That leaves a deficit of validators necessary to account for the security of the blockchain and protect against cyber criminals looking for vulnerabilities to exploit. As a result, there still aren’t 100 validators in the network. NEAR has partially addressed this with creative randomness methods by undermining most such attempts. However, this fails to handle 1/3 of intruder attempts. NEAR network plans to address this issue by lowering the required threshold in order to become a validator. Another issue to address is that these validators, representing a tiny portion of all $NEAR holders, also enjoy all the voting power and make all the decisions when it comes to changes made within the network.

Insufficient testing

Further compounding this circumstance is there hasn’t been sufficient testing providing transaction security, nor have the claims of the platform’s lofty transaction speed been empirically proven. Questions arise as to whether NEAR’s network could in fact scale up to handle a large capacity of users. While NEAR is still in the process of growing, it must conduct testing to prove in practice how well the network holds up to massive quantities of transactions.

Conclusion

Time will tell if it can handle the limitations of numerous formidable competitors, limited presence on exchanges, little testing, security issues, and validator challenges. In any case, NEAR appears to have carved itself a significant notable role in the blockchain technology race for the forseeable future. Low transaction fees, minimal entry threshold, vast amounts of funding, rapid growth in developers, and having a public, adaptable code allowing for third-party component integration with practically any software render NEAR protocol one of the most attractive options currently for developers to base their apps on.

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Over the years, we’ve witnessed several game-changing hacks of BSC DeFi products.

Hackers have been successful in breaking into more than 5 BSC-based projects, making off with the equivalent of about $300 million in cryptocurrency.

Let’s first of all review the top 5 cases when it comes to BSC-based project hacking.

1 The Qubit Finance DeFi Platform Hack — $80 million

Hackers took advantage of a vulnerability in the QBridge cross-chain service, which enabled them to generate an «astronomical» number of xETH tokens. The latter was put up as collateral for an illegal loan that was taken out through the site.

You’re able to take out loans via Qubit Finance that are secured by digital assets. The QBridge technology gives users the opportunity to utilize cryptocurrencies as collateral for loans even when the BSC is not involved. They also don’t have to be transported from one blockchain to another when being transferred to another.

According to the explanation provided by the security company CertiK, the vulnerability gave attackers the ability to issue xETH without really making a payment. Following that, they changed the assets into BNB.

2 The PancakeBunny DeFi Project Token Hack

A flash lending system launched an attack against the yield aggregator PancakeBunny, which resulted in a decline of more than 95 percent in the value of the project’s token.

According to PancakeBunny, the hacker influenced the price of BNB coins relative to the Binance USD stablecoin and Bunny tokens by using PancakeSwap to borrow enormous sums of BNB coins. The enormous quantities of Bunny tokens that the hacker had obtained were subsequently dumped onto the market. As a direct consequence of this action, the price of the asset plummeted from $146 to $6.17 — this marks a drop of more than 95 percent.

3 The DeFi protocol xToken Hack — $25 million lost

Around 10 minutes after it had begun, the professionals observed «discrepancies in pricing and supply,» and they halted the operation of the smart contracts as a result.

The xBNTa and xSNXa liquidity pools were promptly depleted once the unknown had intervened. Both BNT and SNX tokens stayed put in their respective xToken contracts. Since the hacker used Ethereum as part of a debt hedging plan, he was able to steal 416 ETH from the xSNX contract without getting caught.

The asset value of the liquidity pools Bancor and Balancer decreased by around $25 million.

The attacker obtained a payday loan in the amount of 61,800 ETH and then utilized two vulnerabilities:

– An unknown user managed to utilize the cryptocurrency to manipulate the Kyber Network’s oracle, which gives data on the price of SNX to the blockchain. The hacker was able to create a huge quantity of synthetic tokens, which were subsequently exchanged for ETH and SNX.

– Because xBNT is a «wrapped» token, a promise in BNT is required before it can be issued. The xToken smart contract, on the other hand, did not check for this dependence. Because of this weakness, the hacker utilized less expensive SPD tokens.

4 Attackers steal $6.2 million from Belt Finance’s DeFi Protocol

The scammer managed to withdraw funds over the course of 8 separate transactions.

On the PancakeSwap platform, the attacker borrowed $385 million in BUSD. He then put $10,000 into the bEllipsisBUSD plan. The hacker put $187 million in BUSD into the bVenusBUSD scheme seven times in a row. He then used the Ellipsis platform to trade $190 million in BUSD for $169 million in USDT.

Following that, the attacker withdrew more BUSD from the bVenusBUSD strategy and used the Ellipsis platform to trade $169 million in USDT for $189 million in BUSD. He then funded the bVenusBUSD plan using BUSD. Finally, the hacker repaid the quick loans and pocketed the proceeds.

He did this since the price of beltUSD is determined by the sum of all strategies’ balances on the site. Manipulation of these tactics thus implies the capacity to impact the price of a Belt Finance platform asset.

5 Hackers withdraw over $13 million from the Deus Finance DAO DeFi protocol

The attacker took funds worth around $13.4 million from smart contracts, according to PeckShield, but the project itself «may have lost more». An anonymous user removed almost $3 million from the protocol in March 2022, comprising 200,000 DAI and 1,101.8 ETH. To do this, he employed fast loans. The assets gained in this manner allowed the hacker to control the oracle that calculates the USDC/DEI pair’s pricing. According to analysts, a similar attack vector was utilized on April 28.

The attack was made possible through an immediate loan aimed at manipulating a pricing oracle that reads data from the USDC/DEI pair. Following that, the altered DEI collateral price was utilized to borrow and deplete the pool.

The hacker spent 800 ETH ($2.31 million) to launch the attack, according to the business. He transmitted cash to the Fantom network through the Tornado Cash mixer and the Multichain cross-chain protocol. The attacker exchanged the stolen funds for Ethereum.

Hacking methods unpacked

Now you’re familiar with some of the most famous case studies, we can move on to examining the most prevalent methods for hacking the online terminals of cryptocurrency exchanges, which allow hackers to clean the hot wallets of trading platforms.

XSS

Cross-Site Scripting attacks are possible on almost all trading terminals. Using the discovered vulnerabilities, attackers insert malicious code onto the online resource page, redirecting traders to third-party web resources and/or infecting users’ devices with harmful malware. Stealer infections, for example, steal passwords from wallets or change the sender’s address in the clipboard.

Configuration Vulnerabilities

HTTP headers may be missing from web terminals, which increases protection against some sorts of hacker assaults. The ContentSecurity-Policy header, for example, guards against malicious content injection attacks such as XSS assaults, X-Frame-Options protects against Clickjacking attacks, and Strict-Transport-Security enforces a secure connection using HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS).

Vulnerabilities in code

According to Coverity, a business that specializes in software quality and security testing solutions, there are 0.52 mistakes for every 1000 lines of code in open source products and 0.72 errors in proprietary goods (the quality standard is fewer than 1 error per 1000 lines of code). These flaws may have a detrimental impact on the platform’s security.

Even if the exchange’s engineers create the code flawlessly, there is always the possibility of a vulnerability in third-party software. For example, flaws in the operating system, payment gateway, or messenger can be used to phish or install malicious malware on exchange employees’ devices.

Smart contract weaknesses

Hackers find a flaw in the wallet’s smart contract code, allowing them to grab control of the victim’s cash. Furthermore, this might be a targeted assault on a particular wallet or a mass attack if several wallets are vulnerable.

Phishing and social engineering

The most common method of hacking accounts is to take advantage of human flaws. Malefactors disguised as exchange representatives get access to employees’ computers (which might take months to complete) and steal secret keys. Hacking a private account is significantly easier now that Google Play is available.

SMS authentication

If attackers are aware that a certain individual is trading or functioning as an administrator of a cryptocurrency exchange, his SMS can be intercepted and utilized in authentication or access recovery procedures.

Conclusion

Hackers will continue to find a source of profit in compromising cryptocurrency exchanges for a considerable amount of time to come, given the high level of consumer interest in virtual currencies. Even while the administration of the exchanges is aware of the most common hacking techniques, they are unable to predict whether or not their website will be hacked and how exactly this would occur due to the fact that each usage of bugs is a unique circumstance.

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Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency and the first widely popular blockchain, appeared in 2008. As this technology became popular, other networks gradually were introduced to the market: Litecoin, Ethereum, Bytecoin, Dash and others.

Each of these protocols offered something new:

• the hard fork of the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash, implemented an increase in the block size, allowing it to accommodate more transactions;
• Dash implemented a two-tier blockchain running on PoW and PoS, introduced masternodes and the original InstantSend and PrivateSend features;
• Ethereum was the first to introduce autonomous smart contracts, allowing simple operations between two parties without the involvement of intermediaries.

Thanks to Ethereum, developers were able to create new tokens and even blockchain applications on the main network (DApps) using their own smart contracts. This laid the foundation for DeFi, and blockchains themselves became full-fledged decentralized platforms offering autonomous financial services using smart contracts: cryptocurrency-backed lending, trading (atomic swaps), issuing synthetic assets backed by cryptocurrencies, and more.

However, all of these ecosystems had one key drawback: they were closed, which resulted in the fragmentation of the crypto market. In other words, you could not use BTC on the Ethereum network, but you could use ETH on the BNB Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain) and vice versa.

In the 13 years of its existence, the blockchain industry has changed and evolved into a whole ecosystem consisting of numerous financial applications (DApps): decentralized exchanges, marketplaces, launchpads, oracles, lending protocols, and finally,,, blockchain bridges.

In this article, we will analyze what blockchain bridges are, what they are, what role they play in DeFi and how to create them.

What are blockchain bridges, and why are they needed?

Put simply, a blockchain bridge is a special application that allows users to transfer cryptocurrencies from one blockchain to another.

Previously, you could not use Bitcoin or Ethereum outside of your own blockchain. But with the advent of blockchain bridges, everything has changed. Now BTC, ETH, BNB, USDT and other coins can be used as tokens backed by these coins in other networks like Ethereum and BNB Chain (ex-BSC).

Without blockchain bridges, users were dependent on a centralized intermediary: a crypto exchange or other financial institution providing custody services for digital assets. But at the same time, cryptocurrency owners delegated their private keys to companies and were forced to trust them, and these companies charged additional fees for transactions. The main value of blockchain bridges is that users can transfer cryptocurrencies from one network to another without giving up their ownership.

How do they work, what are blockchain bridges used for, and what problems do they solve for users and developers?

Their only function is to transfer a digital asset from one blockchain to a similar token on another network, with the main asset serving as a reserve. This means that tokens don’t disappear or reappear anywhere.

Suppose you transfer ETH from the Ethereum network to the BNB chain. Then to create 1 BEP-20 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) token, you lock 1 original ETH (ERC-20) in a smart contract.

At that moment, 1 new token is generated. This is a non-original ETH, but it’s just a token of another network secured by ETH and bound to its price. Meanwhile, you have to pay a commission for the transactions both on the Ethereum network and on the BNB chain (calling the smart contract function to lock coins in the first case and issue tokens in the second). Your coins are securely locked by a smart contract at their address until you reclaim them.

To get the original ETH back, you have to burn the wrapped tokens, whereupon the ERC-20 coins are unlocked by the smart contract and returned to the wallet. At the same time, you pay a commission twice on both networks because the transaction uses two smart contracts on Ethereum and on the BNB Chain.

We have figured out the working principles of blockchain bridges. But what are these blockchain bridges for?

Savings on commissions

The Ethereum network became known for the most expensive commissions due to its high transaction activity and low throughput (only 7 transactions per second). Those commissions are more expensive than Bitcoin’s. This does not even take into account that when working with smart contracts, users perform «complex transactions» whose cost sometimes exceeds $150 or even $300 due to gas fees.

For holders who own dozens of ETH and rarely transact, this is not critical. But what about users who regularly conduct small transactions, such as trading on DEXes or yield farming? BNB Chain and Tron are popular with such users because commissions on their networks are often less than $1. BNB Chain’s throughput reaches 65 transactions per second and Tron’s 1,000.

Access to DeFi

Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is an ecosystem of blockchain platforms whose existence was made possible by smart contracts. For a long time, Bitcoin was perceived to belong outside DeFi because it is not a platform and, unlike Ethereum, BNB Chain, Tron, Solana, Cosmos and other smart contract networks, Bitcoin is not characterized by Turing completeness.

In other words, Bitcoin holders can transfer coins only to other Bitcoin users. Thanks to cross-chain bridges, Bitcoin holders now have access to DeFi and Yield Farming. All they need to do is transfer BTC to the Ethereum or BNB chain network, and they can exchange coins for other crypto assets, add them to liquidity pools with ETH, BNB or USDT or put them up as collateral for a crypto loan.

Cross-chain transactions and cost reduction

Imagine you own ETH coins and want to buy or borrow BNB. Then you would first have to transfer ETH from one network to another and then switch to BNB. But in reality, all of this can be completed in a single transaction. Cross-chain bridges enable using cross-chain collateral and cross-chain swaps, which avoids unnecessary transaction costs. However, this option is more complicated, as liquidity pools must be used to meet user demand.

Blockchains themselves cannot exchange data. This function is performed by price oracles and cross-chain bridges. Thanks to them, the transfer of assets and data to another network becomes possible.

What are blockchain bridges?

There are two main types of blockchain bridges:

• Centralized (federated): in this case, a company or group of people fully controls the operation of a smart contract and also provides a liquidity pool from its own funds. This method requires trust, as the owners can block access to the pool or withdraw all funds from it at any time.
• Decentralized (trustless): with such cross-chain bridges, anyone is able to become a liquidity provider. All transactions are carried out using a smart contract. It automatically freezes cryptocurrency in one network and generates a corresponding number of similar tokens in another. However, not all supposedly decentralized bridges are really decentralized. Check the source code carefully for backdoors and features that allow sole access to liquidity pool assets.

How to create a blockchain bridge?

All smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps) based on the Ethereum and BNB blockchains are created using the Solidity programming language. Therefore, you need to learn this language if you want to develop your own DApps, including bridges between BNB Chain and Ethereum. If you want to build a bridge but are not familiar with the Solidity language, the BC team, which has been developing blockchain solutions for over 5 years and provides other services, including consulting and smart contract security audits, will help you.

Choosing a Development Environment (IDE) and Creating a Blockchain Bridge Code

Popular editors for coding on Solidity are Remix IDE and ChainIDE. Both editors work with either Ethereum or BNB Chain. Therefore, they are perfect for creating an ETH <> BNB bridge. The sources for blockchain bridges’ infrastructure can be found online or directly on GitHub. If you don’t find a suitable code and create it yourself, order it from BC team.

Deploying Bridge Components on Ethereum and BNB Chain Networks

Unlike other decentralized applications, a blockchain bridge requires a contract to be used on each network. In our case, these are Ethereum and BNB Chain. Each smart contract is given a unique address, but this can be the same on all networks because Ethereum and BNB Chain use the same address format, which starts with 0x.

Creation and Burning of Custom Tokens

In a blockchain bridge, one token is used to secure another. To do this, you must first mint the token on an alternative network (BNB chain) and then burn it. The tokens are generated when a smart contract locks a reserve asset on the Ethereum network. After that, you need to program the token migration mechanism.

Create a basic token smart contract

This also needs to be done for both networks, and then you need to add the token migration function.

Deploying the ETH <> BNB bridge

You also need to program the API and add private key and token balance functions for the blockchain bridge. All that remains is to test the operation of the bridge on the test network, and if everything is successful, the bridge can be deployed on the main Ethereum and BNB Chain networks.

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Blockchain games have become popular because players can more than just pass the time by immersing themselves in the gameplay but also monetize their free time. Blockchain games have spawned trends such as Play-to-Earn (P2E), Free-to-Play (F2P) and other similar genres: Move-to-Earn (M2E) and Build-to-Earn (B2E).

The growing interest in decentralized games is keeping pace with the hype around Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and the metaverses. Of course, not all of these became popular, but some of them managed to make a lot of noise and still attract the attention of crypto users. In this article, we will talk about the top games on the blockchain.

What are blockchain games in general?

Blockchain games are games developed with the help of blockchain technology and using a real economy (tokenomics). In other words, game items in blockchain games are real goods that can be bought with platform-owned assets or other cryptocurrencies.

Players can collect items, buy and upgrade game characters, earn money with them and then sell them on marketplaces to other participants or collectors.

There are many genres of blockchain games, from action to MMORPG. In addition, blockchain games are divided into areas that determine how players earn money:

• Play-to-Earn or P2E: this method involves investing to buy and upgrade characters. The more money a player invests, the greater the advantage over other players and the higher the chance of winning competitions and receiving rewards in the form of tokens, valuable in-game items, and NFTs.
• Free-to-play or F2P is a series of blockchain games that allow you to earn money without investing. Many P2E games have a high minimum entry threshold, which makes it difficult for players with a small capital to compete with rich players and win and earn money accordingly. In Gods Unchained, for example, players can get a free card set to compete against other players. This set cannot be sold, but you can sell the trophies you win with it.
• Move-to-Earn or M2E is a new type of game where players buy special items (shoes or clothes) and earn digital tokens while moving around in the real world. This method has become very popular thanks to Stepn, which we will discuss in more detail in this article.
• Build-to-Earn (B2E) and Learn-to-Earn (L2E) are new emerging trends in the crypto industry. In B2E games such as Metacity, players can build virtual objects and earn money, while in L2E games, they can learn new disciplines and earn money in return. Although the concept of learn-to-earn is not new and has already been used by Coinbase Earn and CoinMarketCap Earn, blockchain technology can take this direction to a new level. At Let Me Speak, for example, users can buy NFTs that generate income while learning English. This is a great way to combine business and pleasure and provide additional motivation to learn.

Here are the top 10 blockchain games that enabled millions of gamers around the world to earn money just by playing games.

Decentraland (MANA)

This is a unique project that combines a Metaverse and a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Decentraland positions itself as a virtual reality platform on the Ethereum blockchain.

In other words, Decentraland is a fully decentralized virtual world where users can own and trade digital properties on the blockchain.

The project’s native token MANA is the largest gaming asset in the crypto industry and ranks 34th on CoinMarketCap, with a cap of over $2 billion at the time of writing. Users can buy and sell land in the virtual metaverse with MANA tokens. The virtual land itself is offered in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) LAND.

The Sandbox (SAND)

Another virtual metaverse with its own NFTs and tokenomics. The Sandbox was inspired by another famous game, Minecraft, wherein players can create freely pixelated virtual worlds and entire universes with their own stories. The Sandbox uses blockchain technology at its core, and players can buy and sell digital properties.

The main currency of the platform, for which users buy and sell virtual properties, is native SAND tokens. The Sandbox project was initially supported by leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which issued SAND tokens as part of the launchpad.

Despite the fact that The Sandbox was released relatively recently (in 2021) by Pixowl, it has become one of the leading gaming platforms that have popularized the play-to-earn direction. The project has seen investment from such well-known companies as Atari, Helix, and CryptoKitties, who have developed the world’s first blockchain game on the Ethereum platform.

SAND tokens rank second among gaming projects and 39th among all cryptocurrencies in terms of capitalization. According to CoinMarketCap, SAND’s capitalization is about $3.8 billion. Like Decentraland, The Sandbox is also based on the Ethereum blockchain and uses the functionality of smart contracts. The platform also implements the concept of Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO).

Axie Infinity

The game leads the way in terms of the daily volume of funds interacting with the protocol’s smart contract, which exceeds $17 million at the time of writing. This places Axie Infinity second among all blockchain games in terms of the number of smart contract assets, which is ~$492 million. Despite this, the number of users is around $10.8k. This indicates that the game is in demand among large investors and holders, for whom the game’s characters have become valuable collectibles.

Axie Infinity is a popular blockchain reminiscent of Pokemon. Pokemon inspired the game’s creators. The game was developed on the Ethereum sidechain called Ronin, which also acts as a blockchain bridge between these two networks.

The core principle of the game is that players buy playable Axies characters, whose appearance can be customized to their liking, and then use them to fight or breed new virtual monsters, similar to the other well-known game CryptoKitties. The new Axies come in different levels of rarity, from common to legendary. The more unique the figure, the higher its value in the marketplace.

Axie Infinity has not only become one of the biggest games but has also gone down in the history of the crypto market as the victim of the biggest attack on the network. Hackers penetrated the Ronin network and were able to withdraw more than 600 million dollars in ETH coins.

Despite this, the game remains one of the leaders in the crypto industry, and the creators promised to compensate for all losses. The native token of the AXS project, like MANA and SAND, is among the top 50 cryptocurrencies with a capitalization of more than $1.25 billion.

Stepn (GMT and GST)

This is a relatively new project with GameFi elements launched in August 2021 on the Solana blockchain and rapidly gaining popularity in the NFT space due to its high throughput and low network fees. Stepn positioned itself as a «Web3 lifestyle app» and also became the creator and populariser of the move-to-earn genre, offering users monetization and gamification of fitness. Such was the hype around the app that Stepn was followed by many clones seeking to emulate its success, such as Step App on the Avalanche blockchain, Dotmoovs on Ethereum, and Movey and Jumpn on the BNB Chain blockchain.

Stepn users buy virtual NFT shoes through the app, which they can use to earn native Green Satoshi Tokens (GST) by simply walking or running, as long as they have their smartphone with them. The more expensive the shoes are, the more you can earn with them. Also, it is enough to own only one NFT to earn income, or you can buy multiple tokens to increase your earnings even more.

The project has also released the GMT governance token. Despite the fact that the project has been around for less than a year, the capitalization of the GMT token has already reached almost $8 billion. Almost immediately after the release of the IDO, the token was listed on major crypto exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Huobi Global and OKX, and project investors included such renowned companies as Solana Capital and DeFi Alliance. The Stepn team plans to add more blockchains in the future.

5 Splinterlands (SPS)

Splinterlands is the leading trading card game with over 350,000 users, according to DappRadar. The game runs on its own Hive blockchain, which is compatible with Ethereum, Tron and WAX networks.

Splinterlands users can buy and sell playing cards and collect and customize a set to earn cryptocurrency by competing with other players on PC or mobile devices. All cards are divided into factions: Fire, Water, Earth, Death and so on, as is often the case in other popular games such as Magic: The Gathering. Users can earn rewards by completing daily quests and participating in ranked matches and tournaments.

The main game currency in Splinterlands is the native token SPS. The uniqueness of the game is that every player, regardless of their skill and collection size, can earn money in the game by obtaining trading cards or their sets, potions and Dark Energy Crystal Tokens, for which playing cards can be bought and sold.

Foreign Worlds (TLM)

Alien Worlds is a decentralized metaverse based on the Ethereum, BNB Chain and WAX blockchains that represents a real universe. Players can buy properties on different planets, form alliances and complete intergalactic quests, all of which are rewarded with the local cryptocurrency Trilium (TLM). Alien Worlds was one of the first projects of its kind.

Players can also move between planets with their own or rented spaceships. The project was initially supported by the crypto exchange Binance, which issued the TLM token as part of its launchpad.

The TLM token is both a utility and governance token, allowing its holders to participate in the management of the platform and control its development.

MOBOX (MBOX)

Another metaverse or, as the team calls it, MOMOverse, which was also supported by Binance in the beginning. The MOBOX platform combines the power of decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT in a functional GameFi multiverse consisting of different zones: gaming, governance, and trading.

Players can buy, rent and trade NFT items called MOMOs in the marketplace. These NFTs can mine cryptocurrency. MOBOX also introduces a new concept of NFT farming.

Players can upgrade their characters to increase the hashrate of their MOMOs and earn more cryptocurrency. MOMOs also increase the strength of other playable characters competing in games like Blocks Blower. Users can earn MBOX tokens by farming or winning weekly game tournaments.

Upland

The unique feature of Upland is that the game has created an alternative virtual world where players can buy land with the same addresses as in the real world. In other words, users own and trade land in the form of NFTs linked to real addresses.

On their own website, players can build virtual real estate properties and earn UPX tokens in the process. In a sense, it can be said that the Upland game is the founder of the build-to-earn direction, even if it has not yet been as widespread as play-to-earn and move-to-earn styles.

The aim of the game is to blur the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds. Previously, UPX tokens issued on the EOS blockchain were listed on some exchanges, but then the developers decided that players could only use them within the game. You can still exchange tokens with other players and buy and sell properties for them, but you cannot trade them outside the Upland metaverse. It is also possible to buy and sell virtual objects for fiat currency.

The creators of the project justify this by saying that they are striving to meet all the regulatory requirements of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which could recognize tokens as securities.

DeFi Kingdoms

DeFi Kingdoms is both a gaming and an exchange platform (DEX) on the Harmony blockchain. Players travel through virtual worlds that represent specific areas of DEX: Marketplace, Barter, Liquidity, etc. The project was backed at an early stage by major investors, including Coinbase and Galaxy Digital.

In fact, DeFi Kingdoms is not a game in the usual sense but just makes using a decentralized exchange an exciting gaming experience for now. Over time, more play-to-earn features will most likely be added, and the platform will evolve into a full-fledged role-playing game with its own economy, which will be based on versatile GameFi.

Gods Unchained

Gods Unchained was one of the first and most popular free-to-play trading card games based on the WAX blockchain. Each individual player receives a starter set of cards to use in battles with other players for prizes.

In fact, Gods Unchained is a blockchain version of the popular card game Magic: The Gathering, where players can earn money by playing. Cards are NFTs that can be traded in the marketplace, while native GODS tokens are the main in-game currency in which all transactions are conducted.

Summary

This was the list of the top games on the blockchain. The blockchain gaming space continues to evolve, with more and more new products appearing to find their audience and new ways for users to earn money. Perhaps you would like to fill this niche and develop your own blockchain game? The blockchain development service BC team will help you!

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BNB Smart Chain (BSC), formerly known as Binance Smart Chain, is a public blockchain and platform for decentralised apps launched by Binance, the world’s largest digital asset exchange, in September 2020. It supports the BEP-20 token standard and operates independently from BNB Beacon Chain (formerly known as Binance Chain), which is used primarily for exchanging digital assets based on the BEP-2 technical standard. Together, these two blockchains comprise the BNB Chain, which is based on the BNB coin. They are designed to maximise native cross-compatibility, though they are entirely separate and either one could operate if the other went offline. BNB, formerly known as Binance Coin, stands for Build and Build, highlighting the ecosystem’s status as a hub for new on-chain applications based on smart contracts.

While the BNB Beacon Chain serves as a decentralised exchange with a focus on governance powered by proof of stake, BNB Smart Chain prioritises Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility for building DApps — meaning decentralised applications, a term that is often used interchangeably with smart contracts — and uses a validation algorithm based on proven authority. BNB Beacon Chain is relatively inflexible and DApps can congest the system. BNB Smart Chain, however, is designed to allow for decentralised development without sacrificing throughput.

The decision to add a second chain rather than upgrade the original Binance Chain was made in order to maximise efficiency and avoid a repeat of the kinds of issues that have been seen on other blockchains in recent years, most notable among them being the CryptoKitties congestion crisis. The crypto pet project, which allowed users to breed and trade digital kittens, went viral and clogged up the Ethereum network with a sixfold increase in transactions that threatened to bring down the entire blockchain. Though BNB Smart Chain is technically a fork of the Ethereum protocol’s Go Ethereum implementation, the decision to change the consensus mechanism reduced block processing times and transaction fees significantly.

How blocks are validated on BNB Smart Chain

This BNB Smart Chain proof of staked authority (PoSA) algorithm is a combination of two other consensus mechanisms known as delegated proof of stake and proof of authority. It is based on the staking of identity, where blocks and transactions are verified by pre-approved participants who are deemed to be reputable and have confirmed their real-world identities. In the case of BSC, a group of 21 validators is selected by the token holders, or delegators, on a rotating basis after being approved by Binance. The validators ultimately receive a portion of the transaction fees as a reward for their staked BNB. This mechanism is much faster than the proof of work concept used by the likes of Bitcoin with the ability to carry out a high number of transactions per second, making it far more scalable while remaining community-driven and open source. The chain is able to achieve block generation times of around 3 seconds. This is significantly faster than Ethereum’s 13 seconds, and far superior to Bitcoin’s time frame of 10 minutes.

How to use BNB Smart Chain and make trades

A wallet is required in order to interact with applications running on BSC. One of the most popular options is MetaMask, an open-source Ethereum wallet that can be connected to BSC via a browser extension or mobile app, supporting intermediary-free trades and prioritising interaction with smart contracts. Also supported is Binance Chain Wallet — Binance’s official cryptocurrency wallet for accessing BNB Smart Chain, BNB Beacon Chain and Ethereum. Binance Chain Wallet offers one of the easiest solutions for converting BEP-2 tokens on the BNB Beacon Chain into BEP-20 tokens on the BNB Smart Chain and vice versa. Trust Wallet, which is also owned and maintained by Binance, supports interactions with DApps on BSC, conversion between BEP-2 and BEP-20 tokens, and the staking of tokens for rewards. Other supported wallets include TokenPocket, which is also compatible with BTC, ETH, TRON and other blockchains, and the hardware Ledger wallet.

Blockchain explorer BscScan, which was developed by the team behind the highly popular Etherscan, offers a free analytics platform for BNB Smart Chain and allows interested parties to check the progress of transactions, view the latest blocks added to the chain, check the balances of wallets, look up and interact with smart contracts deployed on the chain, and research token supply figures for cryptocurrencies.

Using the BNB coin and wrapped BEP-20 tokens

The native token of the BNB Chain ecosystem, BNB, was launched as Binance Coin in July 2017. Initially created as an Ethereum token using the ERC-20 standard, the coin was converted to BEP-2 with the launch of the original Binance Chain. Rather than overhauling the coin for compatibility with the new BNB Smart Chain under the BEP-20 standard, the Binance team opted for a dual token ecosystem with easy conversion between the chains. Transactions on BNB Smart Chain are therefore able to use BNB as gas to deploy smart contracts, with the token also issued as a reward for validators. BNB is not an inflationary token, and the supply decreases over time with burns taking place according to a fee schedule on a quarterly basis. Burning is set to continue until the supply is reduced from its initial maximum of 200 million to 100 million. Fees for issuing new assets and minting NFTs are also charged in BNB across the chain, while trading fees on the Binance cryptocurrency exchange can also be paid in BNB.

Another feature of the BNB Smart Chain is wrapping, where tokenised versions of coins or utility tokens belonging to other blockchains are wrapped as BEP-20 tokens, allowing them to be used in the Binance DeFi environment. These wrapped tokens are highly popular and the Binance-Peg Ethereum Token, a wrapped version of Ethereum, is one of the most traded tokens on BSC. Other major tokens such as Bitcoin (BTC), Chainlink (LINK) and Cardano (ADA) are available in their wrapped form, in addition to Binance-Peg BSC-USD (BSC-USD), as USD-pegged stablecoin operated by Binance. Binance Bridge is a popular interoperability tool run by Binance which allows anyone to create a new token for the Binance DEX and BNB Chain ecosystem and peg it to the value of an original token issued on a separate blockchain.

Why use BNB Smart Chain?

The proof of staked authority (PoSA) consensus mechanism makes BNB Smart Chain a particularly accessible option for newer market players, as transaction fees are lower than more established platforms like Ethereum and TRON, which use proof of work and delegated proof of stake algorithms respectively. As of early June 2022, average gas prices on the BNB Smart Chain stood at 6.5 gwei, which is almost ten times lower than the average of 63 gwei on ETH. 1 gwei is equivalent to 0.000000001 ETH.

As mentioned above, transaction times are also four times faster on BSC than the Ethereum network. The compatibility with Ethereum virtual machine and the ability to wrap tokens from other chains increases overall token liquidity and value, as well as making the ecosystem attractive to the existing community of Ethereum developers.

Applications and innovations in the decentralised ecosystem and the metaverse

In practice, the creators of BSC are emphasising large-scale applications across a range of digital asset segments such as DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi and the metaverse, as well as NFTs and token swaps. Compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) means that the huge community of Ethereum developers can easily port their projects over to BSC, paving the way for accelerated adoption. The chain can also take advantage of the mature applications already launched on the Ethereum platform, which is currently the world’s largest smart contract platform.

One of the most popular DApps running on the BNB Smart Chain is automated market maker (AMM) PancakeSwap. It offers decentralised, trustless trading between BEP-20 tokens and allows participants to generate passive income by adding funds to liquidity pools on the exchange. It has 4 million monthly users and regularly sees over half a billion dollars in daily trading volumes.

Other popular projects include SecondLive, a 3D sandbox and metaverse world allowing users to socialise, shop, work and more while represented by virtual avatars, and X World Games, a decentralised gaming ecosystem seeking to bring traditional gamers into the blockchain world and which already boasts 2 million registered gamers.

What does the future hold for BNB Smart Chain?

BSC has enjoyed a great deal of success in its early years, seeing a rapid rise in daily transactions from 10,000 in September 2020, the month of its launch, to over 13,000,000 in May 2021. This was far higher than that of Ethereum, which processed around 1.7 million transactions per day in the same month.

The continuous evolution of the BNB Chain and particularly the BNB Smart Chain make it difficult to predict future evolution and adoption. Dual-chain interoperability is a major competitive advantage, as it allows developers, investors and other ecosystem participants to enjoy rapid transactions on one side and flexible, modular programming on the other side. Extensions that can be expected in the coming months and years include further compatibility with Ethereum and other blockchains, improved wallet management, a streamlined user experience, and increased market data coverage from Binance DEX.

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