[PoS Round-Up] Centrifuge and Matic Launch Mainnets, Band Protocol Launch Approaches, Wrapping Up…

PoS Round-Up is our focused biweekly report on the major news in and around the Proof of Stake ecosystem

stakefish

10 Jun 2020 — 5 min read

[PoS Round-Up] Centrifuge and Matic Launch Mainnets, Band Protocol Launch Approaches, Wrapping Up GoZ

PoS Round-Up is our focused biweekly report on the major news in and around the Proof of Stake ecosystem

Over the past month, we’ve seen an explosion of mainnet releases for Proof of Stake projects. In the last edition, we covered the launches of Polkadot, NEAR, and Celo. This week, those networks are joined by Centrifuge and Matic, and Band Protocol is set to launch tomorrow.

We’ve also got updates on Game of Zones, plus a couple of surprises we’ve been working on here at stakefish.

Mainnet Launches

Centrifuge

On May 26, Centrifuge announced the launch of Centrifuge Chain, their Proof of Stake blockchain for tokenizing real-world assets, and Tinlake, an Ethereum dapp aimed at bringing these real-world assets into the DeFi lending ecosystem.

“…by building what we need to safely lend against real-world assets, businesses around the world can tap into this new source of capital.”

Congratulations to the Centrifuge team!

Matic

The Matic Network mainnet went live on May 31! The team’s goal is to add “firepower” to Ethereum by offering a scaling solution based on a hybrid system combining Proof of Stake with Plasma sidechains.

Congratulations to the Matic team on the culmination of 2 ½ years of development!

Band Protocol

The countdown to Band Protocol’s mainnet launch is almost over. BandChain Phase 0 (Wenchang) will launch tomorrow, June 10, at 2pm UTC. Band Protocol is a cross-chain decentralized oracle solution aiming to bridge the gap between smart contracts and real-world data.

Testnet Launches

Oasis

The Oasis Team’s Oasis Quest incentivized testnet came to a close on June 4. The team has published a blog post reviewing the competition and outlining the Amber Network, a release candidate for the Oasis mainnet.

NuCypher

On May 11, NuCypher published a blog post outlining the results of their successful Come and Stake It (CASI) incentivized testnet program.

The team also recently announced their research project Sunscreen, which aims to develop a scheme for privacy-preserving smart contracts on Ethereum. The results of the project will be published on Github as they become available.

We wish NuCypher all the best on their journey to the mainnet!

Elrond

As of June 4, Battle of Nodes: Onchained, Elrond’s incentivized testnet, is underway! Less than a week after the competition was announced, the prize pool has increased to $60,000, and the number of community nodes has reached 1,700.

Cardano

Earlier today, Cardano announced the public launch of the Shelley testnet, the next phase in their quest to increase the decentralization of the Cardano network.

Coda

Phase 3 of the Coda testnet went live yesterday, June 8. Coda is a cryptocurrency with a tiny blockchain with the goal of enabling anyone to participate directly in securing the network.

General News

stakefish

Tamagotchi Zone

As part of our participation in Game of Zones, we’ve built the Cosmos GoZ Tamagotchi Zone! Based on the Japanese digital pet, your job is to keep your Tamagotchi alive by sending food, toys, and cleaning supplies from the tamagotchi-resources zone to the tamagotchi zone. Create your own Tamagotchi on our website!

grant.fish

On Monday, we announced the second cohort of our grant.fish program. We believe both of the grantees have the potential to make significant contributions to the Cosmos ecosystem.

Chainapsis aims to increase adoption by building tools that make it painless to use and develop Cosmos applications. The team recently caught the attention of CoinDesk with their digital art project AstroCanvas.

CosmWasm is bringing cross-chain smart contracts to Cosmos. The Cosmos community seems to be a big fan of the project: the team’s community funding proposal passed with 99.99% approval.

Keep an eye out for our interviews with the Chainapsis and CosmWasm teams starting next week.

Cosmos

Game of Zones (GoZ), the adversarial testnet designed to stress test Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC), has ended! The official closing ceremonies will be held tomorrow, June 10, at 7pm UTC. Check out Persistence One’s blog post for an overview of what we learned from Phase 3, in which teams attempted to launch confusion and deception attacks against other zones.

We had a lot of fun participating in GoZ and look forward to seeing what the future will bring for IBC and the Cosmos ecosystem.

Tezos

This week’s episode of Cosmos Unchained featured Tezos founders Arthur and Kathleen Breitman and Cosmos core developer Sunny Aggarwal fielding some of the most frequently asked questions about the differences and similarities between these two Proof of Stake heavyweights.

Also, check out our updated list of projects in the Tezos ecosystem!

Celo

Band Protocol has partnered with the Celo Foundation to provide oracles and mentorship to the teams participating in Celo Camp, Celo’s virtual bootcamp and accelerator program.

If you’re a stakefish supporter, consider voting for us to become a validator. We’ve been involved with Celo since the launch of their testnet and believe we have a lot to contribute to the network.

NEAR Protocol

With the NEAR mainnet launched, the team has announced Stake Wars: Episode II, an event designed to smooth the network’s transition into the next phase, in which the network will be fully handed over to the validators.

Ethereum

The Ethereum Foundation has announced that Devcon 2021 will be held in Bogotá, Colombia. Devcon is the Ethereum Foundation’s annual gathering and one of the biggest events in crypto.

The EF also recently published “The State of Eth2,” an in-depth look at the current state of Ethereum 2.0 development.

Polkadot

The much-anticipated Polkadot mainnet launched last month, and the blockchain community is closely following its progress. Since launch, the team has published an updated overview of the network and announced the first “builder’s bounty,” run via Gitcoin. Founder Gavin Wood also published a blog post exploring CC1, Polkadot’s first chain candidate.