Ecosystem Update #3–6 May 2022

Kintsugi Network Updates

Kintsugi has continued to see interesting activities. First, let us look at the latest network stats:

• kBTC minted: 22.71 (~$820k)activity
• KSM collateral locked: 16.78k (~$2.1 million)
• Vaults: 46
• KINT staked: 179k, avg. stake duration ~ 66 weeks

Two vaults have been liquidated for (accidental) theft.

• a3d…kzz due toKintsugi Network Updates
• a server misconfiguration, allowing an attacker to gain access and drain the BTC wallet.
• a3b…xg8 due to running two Vault clients on a single BTC wallet. This led to the clients executing a redeem request twice which was flagged as theft, leading to liquidation.

The Kintsugi system behaved as correctly and as expected in both cases.

KSM price drop & rebalancing

We have seen KSM dropping from a high of $185 to a low of $121 in the last 3 weeks, with a 19.5% drop in the last 7 days.

This led to several Vaults getting close to and in a few cases falling below the 200% premium redeem threshold. Recall: below 200% collateralization any kBTC holder is incentivized to redeem with the Vault, earning up to 5% of the freed-up KSM collateral as a premium. The premium redeem feature worked as expected and as a result, no Vault reached critical collateral levels — keeping the system stable.

Other

RomeDAO acquired a position of kBTC/wBTC Solarbeam LP tokens, adding BTC to their treasury.

INTR Claim Process Started

The INTR crowdloan airdrop claim process has started. Please follow the steps described in the blog post.

Events

Interlay @ Financial Crypto Conference

Interlay is a sponsor at the most impactful academic blockchain conference: Financial Cryptography & Data Security. We attended the event and met with leading blockchain, DeFi & cryptography researchers. I had the pleasure to participate in a DeFi panel with Phil Daian (Flashbots), Patrick McCory (Infura), and Daniel Perez (Backd, Gyro).

Interlay @ Polkadot Marketing Retreat

Organized by Parity, Polkadot parachain teams came together to brainstorm and improve collaboration on marketing and community building efforts. Our community manager Remy attended and was able to set in motion a few interesting collaborations that will become visible over the next weeks.

Interlay ❤ Spanish-Speaking Community

Polkadot Esp hosted Chris, our BD Manager, as a guest to talk about Interlay and chat with the Spanish-speaking community. This marks the start of our strengthened efforts to expand our community geographically.

Meet the Team & Welcome New Members

Starting this week, we’ll be introducing new team members to our community.

Dom — our CTO & DeFi expert. Dom leads our engineering & product teams. If you’re active in tech discussion in our Discord, you’ll be seeing Dom quite a bit.

Alexei (this is me) — I get to wear the CEO hat, whatever that means. My job is to make sure we deliver the promises we make to you, our community, and our partners — by supporting the team with whatever I can. You’ll see me on Twitter, Telegram, across Discord channels, and in our monthly AMAs.

Our star engineers:

• Coding wizards Greg, Sander, and Nik building amazing tech on the parachain and client level. You might not see it directly but this is where the magic happens.
• Tom, Anton, Brendan, and Peter are on the frontend side — making Interlay’s tech into the product you see. It’s thanks to their magic that our Dapps are lightning-fast and easy to use.
• All-rounders Theo & Dan connect the dots between parachain and Dapp and do some of the bleeding edge research you see e.g. on Cointelegraph, as well as collateral risk modeling.

Alex, whom you’ll see across all channels, coordinating dev & product efforts, while leading integration with partners.

Designers Jay (user experience) and Ondrej (creative) — doing their best to make you like Interlay’s look & feel and to make our Dapps as easy to use as an ATM.

Remy, Sue, and Liv leading our community and outreach efforts — spreading the word to as many potential users as possible and welcoming hundreds of new members every day. If you’re active in our community, you’ll get to know these lovely people who are dedicated to helping you find your way around.

Chris, Henry, and Zhixi leading our business development efforts. What does this mean? They make sure we prioritize the right integrations, speak to the right DeFi teams, and partner & integrate with leading institutions both within and outside of crypto.

And, last but not least, Caroline and Priscilla — who make sure Interlay works as a company. The list of things they do is never-ending — it’s thanks to them that we’ve been able to grow and keep delivering.

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.