Singapore – April 13, 2022 – Moonbeam, the top destination for multi-chain applications on Polkadot, has announced the availability of the Bifrost native token, BNC, on Moonriver. Bifrost’s token can now be used as xcBNC (an XC-20 representation of BNC) across the Moonriver ecosystem, and the MOVR token is now available on Bifrost. This cross-chain channel and the listing of the xcBNC asset were each launched following a successful on-chain governance vote. The connection between these two growing parachains is made possible by XCM, native cross-consensus messaging, which continues to enable rich inter-parachain integrations across the broader Kusama ecosystem.
As another parachain on Kusama, Bifrost specializes as a DeFi protocol that provides staking derivatives and liquidity to bonding assets. Within the larger Dotsama ecosystem, Bifrost powers vTokens (Staking Derivatives Voucher Token), which allow users to exchange PoS tokens for vTokens and obtain liquidity and staking rewards through Bifrost protocol at any time. In the future, the Bifrost MainNet will migrate from Kusama to Polkadot, and there will only be one Bifrost Token BNC.
The integration with Bifrost was enacted through on-chain governance votes. While on-chain governance, in general, has been available on Moonbeam since launch, the recent integration with Polkassembly dramatically improved the ease with which MOVR holders could participate in on-chain referenda and provided an outlet for discussion and learning. Now, token holders can use either Polkadot.js web application or Polkassembly with MetaMask to vote — the latter of which was made possible by the introduction of a new democracy precompile, allowing EVM-based applications to reference and interact with Substrate-based democracy actions.
The introduction of the XC-20 standard enables users to “deposit” tokens from elsewhere in the Kusama ecosystem, like Bifrost, to be used in Moonriver-based applications. Developers can create EVM-style fungible assets on Moonriver that are capable of moving from one Kusama parachain to another, or import Substrate-style assets from other parachains to be used within Moonriver-based DApps.
As the Kusama ecosystem continues to become more interconnected, users are increasingly given choice with where and how to use their Kusama-based tokens. The underlying technology that enabled the XC-20 standard is called XCM (Cross-Consensus Messaging) which is uniquely made possible by the Polkadot architecture. Other chains have to use third-party bridges to move tokens between chains, whereas XCM allows parachains in the Polkadot ecosystem to exchange messages with the same security as the underlying network. In this way, any parachain built on Polkadot or Kusama is able to communicate with other parachains connected to the Relay Chain. Learn more about XCM.
About the Moonbeam Network
Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on the Polkadot network that makes it easy to build natively interoperable applications. This Ethereum compatibility allows developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and DApp frontends to Moonbeam with minimal changes. Like Moonriver, its sister parachain on Kusama, Moonbeam is expected to accumulate developer and user activity from the 80+ projects building DApps and protocols on the network. As a parachain on the Polkadot network, Moonbeam benefits from the shared security of the Polkadot Relay Chain and integrations with other chains that are connected to Polkadot. Learn more: https://moonbeam.network/.
