Avalanche, the highly-scalable, open-source platform for launching decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, has begun the final phase of testing of a bridge to connect its ecosystem to Ethereum, it said in a release shared with CryptoSlate.When deployed to the mainnet, the bridge will open a gateway for simple, secure transfers of assets between Avalanche and Ethereum.
A bridge connecting Avalanche and Ethereum enters its final phase of testing with @ChainSafeth, @protofire, @hashquark, @poanetwork, and @avascanexplorer. A new stream of liquidity will be unlocked: https://t.co/lezz6gE9kJ
— Avalanche (@avalancheavax) November 23, 2020
More yield farming for Avalanche and Ethereum usersThe bridge has been in the works for a long time and uses ChainSafe’s ChainBridge to connect Avalanche’s Contract Chain (“C-Chain”) and Ethereum. The C-Chain is an instance of the Ethereum Virtual Machine that is compatible with Ethereum tooling and token standards, while offering faster finality, higher transaction throughput, and lower fees.
“Bridges will play an increasingly important role in the evolution of DeFi, and the emergence of the first wave of DeFi applications and assets that function across chains,” said Kevin Sekniqi of Ava Labs in a statement.
Sekniqi added that with the bridge’s launch, the market can expect new and familiar assets moving between the Avalanche and Ethereum ecosystems, in turn providing users with more “choice and opportunities for yield.”The testnet implementation of the Bridge will be secured by Avalanche partners Protofire, Hashquark, POA Network, and Avascan, who will function as “Relayers.” Relayers will approve and reject transfers based on a vote using Gnosis Safe Multisig. If the vote passes a certain threshold, the token transfer is approved and facilitated.How to use ETH on the Avalanche bridgeBridge users will be able to use ETH within decentralized applications on Avalanche by locking WETH (wrapped ETH) in the ChainBridge contract, and an equivalent token will be minted on Avalanche.The Bridge can be used either by interacting with apps that integrate the Bridge or with an Avalanche-Ethereum asset swap app.Ava Labs, the team behind Avalanche, is also releasing the Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge codebase open source on its Github, so community members can run their own bridges, if interested.Since launching mainnet on September 21, Avalanche has over 600 full, block-producing validators participating in network consensus, and an additional 2,500 delegators participating in staking. Collectively, they account for over $1 billion in AVAX staked to secure the network.
