Darwinia: decentralized Golden Gate Bridge to Polkadot
When you using a blockchain such as Bitcoin, it's limited for its base purpose. For example, Alice can send some value to Bob through the Bitcoin network but that's it. Alice can also use DeFi products on Ethereum and trade various types of ERC-based tokens on it, but nothing beyond the Ethereum network. But what if Alice wants to use bitcoin in some Ethereum DeFi service? This is a moment when bridging different blockchains comes into play.
Darwinia is a decentralized cross-chain bridge network based on Substrate. It provides a safe, permissionless and non-custodial bridge solution that connects Polkadot with other blockchains such as Ethereum, Tron and others. Its main qualities are efficiency, low costs, and a high level of decentralization.
Darwinia enables cross-chain crypto assets and also general remote chain calls. By using Darwinia, assets can be used in DeFi, NFT trading markets, games and so on.
Darwinia bridge solution integrates technologies including super-light client, zero-knowledge, and optimistic verification mechanisms. By that safe heterogeneous cross-chain solution without middlemen, making the cross-chain asset transfer with Darwinia is way safer, cheaper, and more frictionless.
The approach of Darwinia Network is to make decentralized, secured and efficient service, which makes it a decentralized Golden Gate Bridge.
Interstellar Product Coding Standard
The unique functionality of Darwinia is also a single identifier code (Darwinia ID), that can mark and identify the same assets on multiple blockchains. This feature makes easier tagging and developing a standardized database. It also makes transfers protected from loss of value while the asset could be sent across different chains at the same time.
Community Request for Comments proposals
Besides the research of the development team, Darwinia accepts Request for Comments (RFC) proposals for modification and improvement purposes from the members of the Darwinia community.
Team
Darwinia Network was launched in 2019 by Itering company from Singapore. They focus on developing blockchain infrastructure with cross-chain capabilities. Itering already received grants from the Web3 Foundation and Polkadot and they won the Substrate Builders Program as well.
Tokens
Darwinia has two different tokens, RING and KTON. Let’s take a brief look at them.
RING token
RING is the main utility token of Darwinia Network and its use for those purposes:
- Gas payment for transactions
- Contract executions
- Network bandwidth
- Storage
- Staking
RING is an inflationary token and besides Darwinia mainnet, it goes on Ethereum as an ERC-20 token and on Tron as a TRC-20 token as well.
KTON token
KTON is a derivative of RING tokens. When RING is staked for 3–36 months, there are generated KTON tokens as rewards and also compensation for liquidity loss, that encourage users to HODL RING and commit to long-term lock periods. Since KTON can be minted only when RING is locked, the initial supply of KTON is zero.
KTON has one key purpose and its governance. In the future, it can be also used as the token for registering DApps on the Darwinia Network.
Staking tokens
Both the RING the KTON tokens can be used as a bond for staking. As mentioned earlier, by locking RING tokens for 3–36 months, the user will receive a KTON token as a reward. For that locking period, users can’t withdraw their RING tokens, unless they pay the penalty fee.
Darwinia’s canary network Crab
Darwinia Crab Testnet is a Canary Network for Darwinia, similarly as Kusama is a canary network for Polkadot. Crab has the same parameters as Darwinia Mainnet and uses the same staking mechanism and inflation model. Crab will be participating in the incoming Kusama parachain auctions trying to secure one of the first parachain slots.
Crab’s tokens are cRING and cKTON. The initial supply of cRING is 2000M, and the supply of cKTON is 0. Darwinia Network is injecting 1% of its value into Crab network, so cRING and cKTON have a real value.
After the Darwinia Mainnet launches, there will be built a bridge between Darwinia Mainnet and Crab, so the cRING and RING tokens will be mutually exchangeable in the long term, with a conversion ratio of 1 RING = 100 cRING.
Conclusion
The initial problem of current smart contract platforms is their isolation. Each blockchain has its own usage limited by its borders. That also prevents the usage of NTFs, DeFi protocols, decentralized exchanges from being usable across different blockchains. This is where cross-chain bridges such as Darwinia came into play.
In the not-so-distant future, there will be many bridges out there, but most of them will be custodial bridges. Darwinia provides the safest and trustless (without a middleman) heterogeneous cross-chain bridge solution. Darwinia will bridge other Polkadot ecosystems parachains cross-chain with other blockchains such as Ethereum (and its ERC-based tokens), Tron, EOS and others, which will increase the level of interoperability of the whole Polkadot ecosystem. This will bring even broader asset circulation and liquidity to decentralized exchanges.
Darwinia serves as the main bridge in the Polkadot ecosystem to increase its interoperability within blockchains beyond
Recently we made an interview with the co-founder of DARWINIA Mr. Alex Chien. So if you are truly interested in Darwinia, you can get even more information about this amazing project.
Stay tuned for further information about the Polkadot ecosystem projects here on Medium, our Twitter channel Polkadotters as well as in our Facebook Group Polkadot unofficial! If you are feeling really generous, you can send some DOTs to our donate address 🙂
16etYNuwvwbZYxy4FifqMq4KwZCMVSmTJ4XtE3WE3Cn1fQRQ
