Sifchain Weekly Update: 20 June - 26 June

Sif
Sifchain Finance
Published in
7 min readJun 27, 2021

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Sifchain and IBC

The Sifchain team is hard at work trying to deploy an IBC-compatible version of BetaNet by mid-July. This would make Sifchain the first blockchain that enabled users to swap Ethereum assets and Cosmos Network assets!

It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of IBC’s importance, we’ll need to create a separate article on its impact for the cryptocurrency market. In short, CosmosSDK chains already secure tens of billions of dollars of assets. Connected together through IBC, they form the Cosmos Network. The Cosmos Network’s focus on application-specific blockchains forms a robust alternative to smart contract specific applications running on the same blockchain (primarily on Ethereum).

Osmosis has already shown the tremendous excitement for DeFi over IBC and Sifchain intends to take this further by unifying the EthFi and new CosmosFi worlds.

Sifchain’s IBC Relayers

The Cosmos Hub’s vision is to be a router of liquidity throughout the Cosmos Network; CosmosSDK chains can connect to it for access to all Cosmos Network tokens rather than connecting to each chain individually. This is certainly appealing, why manage dozens of relayers for each chain when you can manage just one to the Cosmos Hub?

However, Osmosis does run relayers directly between it and every chain because tokens that make their way through Cosmos Network have a fungibility issue. That is, if 2 TKN start out in Chain A where one takes the route Chain A -> Chain B -> Chain C and another takes the route Chain A -> Chain C, those two tokens will not be fungible with each other at Chain C. Sifchain intends to ultimately address this through Trusted Source Fungibility Groups which we originally proposed for our Omni-EVM feature. Until those are implemented, we will work with both the Cosmos Hub and other chains already in the Cosmos Network so that Sifchain users can have access to at least one copy of every IBC-compatible token.

If you’re from an IBC-compatible chain and are interested in a direct relayer connection with Sifchain, please reach out so that we can coordinate. Sifchain will enable users to export Cosmos Network tokens to Ethereum and import Ethereum tokens to the Cosmos Network through Peggy. Whether you choose a direct relayer connection to Sifchain or an indirect one, it’s likely to be heavily used as the part of the first route your chain has to Ethereum.

Incentives for Ethereum <> Cosmos Network Liquidity Provisioning

We’re currently considering the best models for incentivising the unification of EthFi and CosmosFi through Sifchain and Peggy. Obviously, we’ll want deep pools of tokens EthFi and CosmosFi tokens on Sifchain, but there may be more we can do to spur adoption, like incentivising Rowan:[Cosmos Network TKN] tokens on Ethereum DEXes like Uniswap or Rowan:[Ethereum TKN] tokens on Cosmos Network DEXes like GravityDEX and Osmosis.

We aim to keep Peggy fees as low as possible but still want its cross-chain functionality to drive value to Rowan holders which we can do through these Rowan pairs. The additional liquidity would also help spur adoption of CosmosFi tokens on Ethereum and EthFi tokens on Cosmos Network, which is a win for traders and exchanges on both sides.

If you have suggestions for how we should role out incentives, please let us know on Telegram, Discord, or Aha. If you’re interested in coordinating promotion efforts with us, please let us know as well.

Data Services

We recently added circulating supply and total supply to https://data.sifchain.finance so that data aggregators like https://coinmarketcap.com, https://coingecko.com, and https://stakingrewards.com can accurately display them. Please be on the lookout for changes from those teams.

Kudos to Provalidator for updating Sifchain’s Telegram price bot with the new circulating and total supply data already!

Community Hosted Sifchain Front-Ends

We want to encourage community members to host front ends for Sifchain. That’s why we’ve separated the Sifchain’s front end logic from the Sifnode repo to its own new repo — https://github.com/Sifchain/sifchain-ui. This pretty much works now but it has very limited documentation and isn’t currently able to generate revenue for FE providers. We also need to do some more end-to-end testing.

If you’re interested in hosting a front end for Sifchain and earning revenue for traffic from it, please we’d love to hear your feedback!

Akash Grant Update

A few weeks ago expressed interest in documentation for deploying a Sifchain validator to Akash, the unstoppable decentralized cloud. Since then, Akash and Sifchain have sponsored a contest for these docs.

With the contest over, we’ve gotten four strong contenders, thanks Minato Fund, Harish, Fishy Moves, and 7race!

Entrants should reach out to Akash for their AKT rewards. When a community vote selects a winner, we’ll reach out to them for their USDC reward as well!

Your Ideas are Welcome

We’re also collecting feedback and ideas from the community here. We’ve had a blast following up with users on the following ideas:

Make your voice heard on these or other issues!

DevOps

What new is your team working on

  • Dispensation/Airdrop delivered to validator subsidy and liquidity mining participants.
  • Continued work with CosmosSDK 0.42 deployment.
  • Standing up IBC relayer between Sifchain and Cosmos Hub.
  • Continued technical debt cleanup within ChainOps.
  • Partner support.

Describe briefly about the new feature

Similar theme to last week (and others) in that much of our work is internal. Working towards a release of Cosmos SDK 0.42 (including IBC), as that’ll open up a number of opportunities for all participants.

Front-End

What new is your team working on

  • We successfully processed the first batch of claimed rewards for users! All users who submitted claim requests on their LM or VS rewards last week have now received these rewards.
  • We made a lot of progress on our Frontend Provider Initiative. Once this is completed, we will have our ‘Frontend Provider Kit’ up and running that will compensate other groups to spin up their own FEs into Sifchain and bring more traffic into the ecosystem.
  • We continued on the frontend specific changes needed to support IBC. Along with these changes, we will be including some slick new updates to our DEX UI.
  • Finished upgrading our Block Explorer to ensure it is .42 compatible.
  • Continued to dive deeper on integration with xDeFi wallet.

Peggy

What new is your team working on

  • IBC Double Pegging Implementation

Describe briefly about the new feature

IBC Double Pegging Implementation — As mentioned in an earlier update, when Sifchain is connected to other Cosmos chains via IBC, we plan to allow for Cosmos native tokens to be imported into Sifchain and exported to Ethereum. The team has been working on the following subtasks to make this happen:

  • Removing the e-prefix from tokens exported to Ethereum (except for eRowan)
  • Removing the lock/burn limit on how many tokens can move through Peggy
  • Creating a bimap between ibc symbols and sifchain denoms
  • Smart Contract Refactor to lower ethereum gas costs

Extensive testing and auditing of these features will be performed before release.

How does this feature help Sifchain community?

IBC Double Pegging Implementation — Enabling this functionality will mean that Cosmos native tokens connected to Sifchain via IBC will be able to be exported to Ethereum as an ERC20 token. This means that these tokens will have access to the vast Ethereum application ecosystem via Sifchain.

Sifnode

What new is your team working on

  • The team ported the new distribution claims logic to the upcoming .42 upgrade. The team also assisted with the distribution that took place over the weekend.
  • The team continues work on IBC compatibility for Sifchain as the CosmosSDK .42 upgrade undergoes an audit.

Data Services

What new is your team working on

  • Data services has been supporting the continuous deployment of the rewards program
  • We are continuing on the work needed to support the new airdrop rules, to ensure that only those participants that follow the new rules are awarded subsequent airdrop amounts.
  • Data Services is currently implementing the ability to import and export tokens from the ClientSDK

Describe briefly about the new feature

  • The additions to the ClientSDK will allow for greater flexibility in the way partners interact with Sifchain ClientSDK
  • The new support for airdrop will allow us to accurately trace and track airdrop distribution funds
  • The continued support of the rewards program will ensure all our users receive accurate rewards

How does this feature help Sifchain community?

  • Continuing work on this feature allows us to onboard various partners and ultimately introduce more liquidity to the protocol
  • We will be able to closely monitor airdrop to ensure a fairer distribution event
  • We will be able to closely monitor Liquidity Mining rewards to ensure a smooth distribution for all participants of the program

Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

We welcome traders and developers to give feedback and participate in our network! The best ways to join our community are Telegram, Github, and Discord.

For now, in order to take full advantage of the Sifchain DEX, you must have a Keplr wallet for managing assets on Sifchain and a MetaMask wallet for managing assets on Ethereum. Check out our usage guide article, video tutorials, and “getting started” documentation!

Validator and Delegator Rewards

It should take half an hour to set yourself up as a validator. Sifchain has been running a validator subsidy program that started on February 19, 2021, at 5:00 AM GMT alongside the launch of BetaNet. You’ll see details about this incentive program in the BetaNet usage guide article. Delegation is a great way to earn validator income without running your own validator. You can do so in Keplr.

Validator in a Box: Plug and Play Passive Income Generator

Running a Sifchain Validator on Kubernetes (K8S)medium.com

Liquidity and Swapping Rewards

Sifchain allows users to swap any asset on any bridged chain (like Ethereum) for any other assets. Liquidity providers can add liquidity into Sifchain’s liquidity pools where they earn income.Check out our article about swapping and our article about liquidity pooling!

Global Media

If you are a content creator with a following, contact us to collaborate: info@sifchain.finance!

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Sif
Sifchain Finance

Goddess of harvest and fertility. Wife to the storm-god Thor