Wanchain’s 2022 year in review
From NFT bridges to world-class academic institutions, get the scoop on what Wanchain achieved this year!
2022 was an interesting year. While the crypto industry, as a whole, experienced a few highs, like the successful Ethereum Merge, the year was marked by many more lows including the implosion of multiple major industry players. While this year has yet to be historically contextualised, 2022 did prove two things. First, there are no shortcuts on the road to decentralisation. Second, we truly are all connected.
Projects like Wanchain, who have survived and thrived through multiple industry cycles, learned these lessons long ago. As such, against the backdrop of a tumultuous year, Wanchain’s 2022 proved incredibly fruitful as development continued unabated; hitting numerous milestones on the road to building a cross-chain infrastructure that empowers developers to build truly decentralised cross-chain applications to power the future of Web3.
So, without further ado, here’s a look at what Wanchain was up to this year!
An unwavering commitment to the mission
Wanchain’s mission is to drive blockchain adoption through interoperability. As such, 2022 started off with a simple goal: expand Wanchain’s cross-chain ecosystem as far and wide as possible while making life as easy as possible for developers.
Arguably, the year’s most important development occurred in the middle months: the Wanchain blockchain’s successful hardfork, dubbed Saturn. Saturn brought numerous upgrades including a new EVM, a sustainable per-transaction $WAN burning mechanism (setting the stage for a deflationary $WAN coin), new gas limits, full compatibility with classic Ethereum-based tools like MetaMask, Remix and Truffle, and the seamless migration of existing Solidity smart contracts and Dapps from Ethereum to Wanchain to enable developers and users alike to benefit from Wanchain’s incredible speed and affordability.
In many ways, rock solid reliability and unparalleled security have come to define Wanchain’s offerings. In 2022, the Wanchain blockchain crossed another endurance milestone by confirming it’s 24,000,000th block after nearly 5 years of uninterrupted uptime. This year was also a big year for Wanchain’s Bridge nodes. This iteration of the Bridge node group underwent a major upgrade following the Ethereum Merge before celebrating their two-year anniversary late in the year!
New bridges galore
Wanchain reinforced its position as the most innovative bridge builder in blockchain in 2022 by launching two new bridge types: NFT bridges and XFlows.
NFT bridges, as the name implies, allows any user to move their ERC721 and ERC1155 NFTs seamlessly between different chains in a decentralised, non-custodial manner using the $WAN bridge. These NFT bridges launched with full support for multiple marketplaces as well as select premier collections like the Zoo Ecosystem’s ZooGenes.
XFlows is a new inventive service enabling native-to-native cross-chain transfers for assets that are minted on multiple blockchains, like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, by combining the lock-mint-burn-unlock and liquidity pool cross-chain mechanisms. XFlows allow users to move their assets between chains without ending up with a wrapped token. XFlows currently works on Arbitrum, Avalanche C-Chain, BNB Chain, CLV, Ethereum, Moonriver, OKX Network, Polygon, Tron, Wanchain, and the XDC Network.
In addition to these two ground-breaking developments, several new public Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains were added to Wanchain’s cross-chain infrastructure this year, including CLV, Moonbeam, OKX Chain, XDC Network and Tron. Other networks, like the XRPL, were upgraded to support any and all XRPL tokens in addition to the XRP coin. Multiple tokens bridges – including the world’s first EUROC cross-chain bridge – were deployed. Wanchain’s wide area network of blockchains now includes more than 19 public networks, supports nearly 100 tokens, and has processed nearly half a billion dollars-worth of assets.
Haskell meets Solidity
One of Wanchain’s key differentiators is the team’s research and development prowess. By constantly pushing the limits of academia, Wanchain’s solutions are able to make truly heterogeneous networks interoperable. One of the biggest highlights of 2022 was the revelation that Wanchain and IOG are collaborating on enabling interoperability between the Cardano mainnet and other blockchain networks. This means that Wanchain’s industry-leading cross-chain solutions will be leveraged to deploy bi-directional bridges connecting the Cardano mainnet to other Layer-1 blockchains. It was also revealed that work is underway to have Wanchain’s blockchain serve as a sidechain to the Cardano mainnet, similar to how Polygon acts as an Ethereum sidechain.
A growing DeFi ecosystem
The Wanchain blockchain ecosystem had a big year in 2022 as well. New developers and existing stalwarts alike joined forces to create a rich ecosystem with something for everybody – no matter your experience level. The Zoo Ecosystem, in particular, had a big year, launching multiple products including Wanchain’s first NFT marketplace, OpenZoo. The Zoo Ecosystem also revealed the ZooGames protocol and its first game: ZooRacers! Incredibly, ZooRacers has already seen three separate BETA releases and is sure to be a highlight of 2023.
Other mainstays of the Wanchain blockchain ecosystem helped make 2022 memorable. In response to user demand, WanLabs brought back Instant Cross, a semi-decentralised cross-chain transfer solution, ideal for new users, that prioritises maximising speed and minimising cost. They also launched one of the Wanchain blockchain ecosystem’s hidden gems: StreamTrade. StreamTrade is a decentralised, programmable dollar-cost-averaging tool that doubles as a practical solution to avoid slippage when trading large amounts. WanSwap, for their part, launched a new product called Football Forecast just in time for the World Cup. Football Forecast let users predict the outcome of every match during FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 to try and win some $WAN. WanSwap also announced details of their forthcoming WanSwap V2.
Propelled by the launch of Wanchain’s BD-focused outreach program, Wanchain Thrust, several new developers joined the ecosystem to launch tools, Dapps and other new products on the Wanchain blockchain. Of note, Autofarm, a top yield aggregator designed to optimise yields launched on Wanchain with support for WanSwap and ZooKeeper pools. To highlight a few others, DIA, a multi-chain, end-to-end, open-source data and oracle platform for Web3 deployed on Wanchain to provide data feeds for a variety of assets to ecosystem developers such as WanLend; Shield Protocol, a multi-chain wallet and security tool, integrated Wanchain to allow users to store their assets and backup their 2FA accounts on the Wanchain blockchain; and WAN Web3 Domains, a Wanchain-based Name Service, launched to give users the option to secure human-readable ENS-like NFT domains. Elsewhere, BlocksScan launched two new Wanchain explorers that provide certain developer-focused features found nowhere else on Wanchain, while WanScan underwent several rounds of improvements throughout the year to surface more on-chain data and include better support for WRC721 and WRC1155 tokens. Multiple new public faucets were also launched including a cross-chain faucet giving first-time users a bit of $WAN to cover their first few transactions, a telegram bot faucet allowing anyone to request some $WAN, and a new testnet faucet to make it easier for developers to test features on the Wanchain testnet.
From the outside looking in
Outside the confines of the Wanchain blockchain, more and more projects – centralised and decentralised alike – took notice of Wanchain’s unflinching progress. Though thankful for the support of all projects who supported Wanchain in 2022, there are too many to provide an exhaustive list. Still, a few can be highlighted: Binance, the world’s top centralised exchange, added $WAN to their Convert & OTC Portal; Dappsy, the anonymous SocialFi platform, integrated Wanchain to allow users to trade and track $WAN via their dashboard; LetsExchange, a boutique trading platform, listed $WAN thereby providing kyc-free swap opportunities to users around the world; Rabby and Nabox, two leading alternative wallets, both integrated Wanchain granting their users direct access to Wanchain-based tokens and Dapps; Defi Watch, DefiLlama, DeBank and Tin Network, all well-known DeFi trackers, integrated Wanchain to allow users to accurate track assets in their dashboards; Ape Bridges and DeBridge, two bridge aggregators, added the Wanchain Bridge to their platforms; DexTools, a price data analytics tool to help traders more easily navigate decentralised networks, fully integrated the Wanchain blockchain; and Impel, a fintech company offering an alternative to legacy financial messaging solutions like SWIFT and SEPA, integrated Wanchain-wrapped BTC to its ISO20022 Financial Messaging API as optional collateral for instant settlement.
From data to information
With so much going on, it can be quite difficult to stay abreast of all of Wanchain’s developments. That’s why Wanchain launched two new video series on YouTube: WANTED, a series of in-depth one-on-one conversations with figures from the Wanchain ecosystem, and Wanderings, a monthly news recap and Wanderings. Wanchain was also amongst the first projects invited to launch on CoinMarketCap’s new Community page, where Wanchain has already gained nearly 20,000 followers. Finally, Wanchain launched a new primary website and documents to surface more and more relevant information about the project.
Bridging communities
Not all of Wanchain’s accomplishments in 2022 were technological achievements. Following the pandemic, the Wanchain team ensured to be more visible in the media and at industry events – both online and in-person. Leading the charge was none other than Wanchain’s VP of Engineering, Dr. Weijia Zhang.
Dr. Zhang started off the year by publishing an article entitled Conceptual Considerations of Crosschain and Blockchain Security, where he emphasised the importance of blockchain security and best security practices for the future growth of the industry. Indeed, this was a recurring theme all year throughout the year. Following a string of bridge exploits, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin published his concerns regarding the security of cross-chain applications. While there is no debate that most second-rate bridging solutions prioritise growth over security, the Wanchain R&D team connected with Altcoinbuzz to provide a formal retort.
Meanwhile, Dr. Zhang travelled the globe speaking to fellow researchers and developers. He was a frequent presenter to the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), a member-led industry organisation that brings together various start-ups, Fortune 500 companies, technology vendors, academics, subject matter experts and innovators. As the EEA’s Regional Head in China and the EEA’s Cross-chain interoperability Working Group Co-Chain, Dr. Zhang was featured in the EEA’s Member Spotlight series ahead of the launch of his latest book: Blockchain and Ethereum Smart Contract Solution Development: Dapp Programming with Solidity.
Other major academic institutions also took notice of Wanchain in 2022. Dr. Zhang gave an executive education seminar to the Blockchain Business Imperative program at the University of Maryland, while he and Wanchain’s Director of R&D, James Zhu, were invited to introduce the concept of cross-chain NFT transfers at the IEEE ICBC Crosschain Workshop 2022. Wanchain was even covered by INSEAD in their course: Web3 and Blockchain Leadership for Transformation. Other Wanchain team members also did their part, attending major industry events like Consensus 2022, Token 2049 and others to expose more people to Wanchain’s unique solutions.
A final word
2023 promises to be another packed year for Wanchain. After all the bridge exploits that occurred in 2022, combined with the continued failures of centralised solutions (oftentimes posing as decentralised solutions), the need for true decentralised interoperability between blockchains has never been more important. The Wanchain team looks forward to sharing its goals for 2023 and beyond. See you next year!
For a trip down memory lane, check out Wanchain’s 2021 recap.