Ecosystem Update #2 — April 29th

It’s been a while since the last “weekly” update — and a lot has happened since then!

• KBTC launched on Kintsugi and integrated with Moonriver (Solarbeam) and Karura
• Interlay was at Bitcoin Miami 2022, the largest Bitcoin conference ever with 30 000 attendees
• We co-sponsored & presented at Amsterdot — the first (and definitely not the last) parachain dev conference & hack (big shoutout to Jakub from HydraDX for making this happen).
• The Interlay team has grown to 23 people and we continue searching for the brightest minds to help us revolutionize how people use Bitcoin.
• Interlay launch progress

KBTC Launch, Scaling, and Multi-Collateral Launch

Looking Back at Launch

After months of testing and 4 audits (3.5 if strictly seen — SR Labs did an auto-scan and a full audit is being scheduled) kBTC launched on Kintsugi.

The initial launch was with a low collateral ceiling, limiting the potential damage in case of an unforeseen issue. With almost everything going smooth and high demand on Karura and Moonriver, we’ve been maxing out capacity pretty quickly — and ceilings were raised to 7.5KSM and then to 15k KSM (~$2.3 million). The latest proposal by one of the leading Vaults is aiming to raise the KSM collateral ceiling to 60k KSM ($9.2 million) to ensure enough KBTC can be minted ahead of upcoming new integrations.

Integrations — Karura and Moonriver

Currently, there are two main integrations:

• kBTC/wBTC stable pool on Solarbeam (Moonriver), incentivized by KINT, SOLAR, and MOVR
• kBTC/aUSD pool on Karura, incentivized by KINT and aUSD

We’ve got a huge pipeline of parachain integrations over the next few weeks — we won’t stop until every single DApp on Polkadot that wants BTC can get it easily.

KBTC Scaling & Multi-Collateral

Those of you who’ve been using kBTC probably noticed — there is immense demand and we’ve had a hard time keeping up.

As part of our scaling and security efforts, we’ve run risk modeling simulations for USDC and KINT as possible collateral assets. We’ve published our results on the Kintsugi governance forum — proposing adding both USDC and KINT as collateral within the next 2 weeks. Both proposals are up for discussion right now. You can find more info there about the motivation and technical nuances.

This also allows Vaults to de-risk ahead of the big KSM unlock on the 13th of May.

(Fun fact: behind the scenes, the battle for the incoming KSM liquidity has already been raging for the past weeks).

Bitcoin Miami 2022 — Maximialsim Dying Out?

Interlay was one of the sponsors of the largest Bitcoin conference ever. While we’re putting together a longer post about our experience — what I say is that we were surprised by the positive feedback we got about Interlay (I’m not even exaggerating here).

Bitcoin users want to use Bitcoin in DeFi — the Bitcoin way. Fullstop. And Interlay allows them to do so — it will take a while but we’re on the right path to break through the skeptic about other DeFi on other chains.

This brings me to the last point: there is a feeling in the air — maximalism is dying. There are thousands of new people joining Bitcoin every day who do not care about old feuds. They want financial freedom and won’t let maximalism stop them. It is hence not a surprise that we were not the only “beyond Bitcoin” team, joined by Thorchain, RSK, and others pushing the boundaries of Bitcoin.

The future of Bitcoin will be multi-chain — Bitcoin Miami 2022 was all the confirmation we needed to continue full steam ahead towards bringing trustless Bitcoin to DeFi on all chains.

Amsterdot & Dotsama Community Growth

The event sold out before we could announce it beyond the Polkadot community. Everyone was waiting for a chance to finally a chance to meet all the hard-working teams in person. Organized by the heads of Hydra(DX), Amsterdot was everything one could wish for from a dev & hack event: talks about the latest tech, heated panels, and deep-dive workshops helping newcomers get started with the building.

There has been a lot of concern about Polkadot not being active enough in terms of marketing efforts. I think Amsterdot is the first step to solving this. More events are already being planned — on a scale, I was honestly surprised to see. DOT is coming to a neighborhood near you — no matter which continent you are. Keep a close eye out for massive DOT side events at all major DeFi conferences across the globe ;)

Interlay Team is Growing Fast

Over the past weeks, we’ve grown to 23 people. It might seem small compared to some other teams — yet we prefer efficiency and execution as a measure of successful growth.

We’re hiring the brightest minds all over the world — both within and outside of crypto — and everyone excels at what they do. It might take a bit longer — but this is how we manage to ship more code and products faster than teams twice (or more) our size.

Now that travel restrictions are lifted and conferences are back — you’ll be seeing us much more in-person across DeFi events & hackathons all over the globe. To make the meeting in person less awkward, we’ll be introducing the Interlay team to you in our next week’s update.

Interlay & INTR Launch Progress

The last point I’ll cover this week is our progress on launching Interlay on Polkadot. Many of you were expecting a launch this week. The latest update is: we’re at 95%. Our focus right now is on scaling kBTC on Kintsugi so we can achieve even faster growth for interBTC on Interlay.

We had quite a few learning from Kintsugi launch — so we are doing things differently this time.

Interlay will launch with all features enabled on day 1:
— Transfers, wallets, and explorers

• Staking
• interBTC bridge (leaking alpha hear: with INTR as a collateral asset)
• First integrations are ready to use within a week or two

This will happen over the next weeks, definitely, in May — a more detailed update and timeline will follow early next week.

Final Words

As always, we thank you for your patience and trust.

You’ve seen that we always deliver. If it takes a bit longer sometimes then it’s because we want to ship products you’ll love using — and we stand by that.

Rome was not built in one day :)

Have a great weekend and do drop by our Discord if you want to have a chat

About Interlay

We envision a future where blockchains seamlessly connect and interact: anyone can use any digital asset on any blockchain, trustless and without limitations. We work with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, and others to expand interoperability, capital efficiency, and openness.

Our flagship product is interBTC — Bitcoin on any blockchain. A 1:1 Bitcoin-backed asset, fully collateralized, interoperable, and censorship-resistant, realizing the true free nature of BTC and decentralized finance.

Follow our Twitter, Telegram, and Discord to keep up to date with daily updates from the team.