November 9th, 2022! Exactly one year since Hashport went live and oh what a year it has been!
After rigorous testing and successful audits, Hashport began its journey in late 2021 supporting the movement of 3 native network tokens and looking to educate a nascent Hedera community on the benefits of cross-chain interoperability. Fast forward 12 months, Hashport now supports an ever-growing number of tokens (currently 32!), multiple popular wallets, and 5 EVM-compatible chains!
In this article, we commemorate the platform’s achievements in its inaugural year, highlighting major milestones, and shedding light on the roadmap ahead.
Table of Contents
- Technical & Product Announcements
- Tokens & Networks
- Wallets
- API, UI, Middleware
- Validators
- Community Engagement
- Highlights of the Year
Technical & Product Updates
Tokens & Networks
Within Hashport’s first year, we’ve grown from supporting just three tokens ($ETH, $MATIC, & $HBAR) from three networks (Ethereum, Polygon, & Hedera) to supporting 32 tokens (and counting) across five of the most popular decentralised networks. This growth is due in part to our validators, the continued support and constructive feedback from our community, and the Hashport team's own market research.
At Hashport, we understand that token utility is a primary driver of adoption. Users are always searching for their ideal environment to explore and learn within the broader crypto space. Hashport enables a secure and efficient means for users to enter the Hedera ecosystem, offering them a host of unique and powerful features in the process. Over the first year, most of these opportunities have come in the form of DeFi liquidity pools for Hashport-supported tokens on Hedera-native DEXes as well as numerous performance and security enhancements for developers looking to breathe new life into their dApps.
Within the DeFi opportunities, users can swap tokens at leading AMMs (Automated Market Makers), provide liquidity to various pools, and use the LP tokens to earn interest from swap fees from platform transactions. Users can further stake their LP tokens and receive $SAUCE, $OM, and $HBAR emissions respectively for their staked LP tokens. The two leading DEXes on Hedera at the time of writing are SaucerSwap & Heliswap.
Wallets
In its first year, Hashport has integrated some of the most popular web3 wallets available in-market today, including MetaMask, Venly, & HashPack. In doing so, the platform has provided its users with various secure means to connect with Hashport, ensuring a smooth porting process. The platform has also released frequent educational content explaining the value behind the wallets we have chosen to integrate and how they benefit builders and users alike.
Technical Updates (API, UI, & Middleware)
Another significant technical update came in the form of the Hashport API. The release of this functionality enabled Hashport to expand beyond its website and allow developers of other dApps to plug and play Hashport’s secure, cost-effective interoperability directly into their dApps’ UI. At the time of the release, we published a blog fully detailing these new capabilities and how developers can start implementing them.
Hashport will always be working to improve both its backend capabilities and its user experience to provide users with seamless interoperability. Our goal is to empower users with the ability to take their digital assets to wherever their desired application may be. Part of making this goal a reality means providing an understandable and intuitive UI that creates minimal friction in a user’s experience transferring their assets. On July 5th, 2022 we did just that, unveiling a new UI that addressed previous pain points and further enhanced how users interact with our platform.
Finally, Hashport upgraded its node infrastructure from Hedera’s public mirror node to Arkhia; the enterprise-grade middleware solution for Hedera. Arkhia is built with dApps like Hashport in mind that are looking to scale and request large amounts of data from the Hedera network at any given time. Since the switch, our services have been vastly improved with the number of support tickets decreasing significantly. To learn more about Arkhia, visit Arkhia.io
Validators
Our industry-leading validators help to make Hashport what it is. We are proud that our first year was full-up of talks, blogs, campaigns, and more, all brought to our users in cooperation with our validators and industry personalities. This section will cover our validators and our work with them throughout the year. Below are the main highlights from each validator. To keep this article relatively concise, we’ve included just a sampling of the best topics.
Worldpay from FIS
On August 15th, we published a blog detailing the value propositions behind stablecoins, including that Worldpay had recently announced they will be the first global merchant acquirer to provide merchants with the ability to receive $USDC settlements on Polygon.
The HBAR Foundation
A month after our launch, we hopped on a Twitter Spaces hosted by Hedera alongside The HBAR Foundation and Worldpay from FIS. It was great to have such big names speak on the value Hashport brings to the community and how users of all kinds benefit from interoperability.
In August, The HBAR Foundation was featured in our Validator Spotlight Series as our validator of the month.
Polygon
In addition to being a supported network on Hashport, Polygon joined us on plenty of campaigns throughout the year. One highlight includes a fantastic Twitter Spaces with Hashport and Calaxy where we discussed how the creator economy, the scalability of networks, and interoperability will all play an integral role in the future of Web3 and distributed ledger technologies.
Hex Trust
In late May, Hashport and Hex Trust participated in an exclusive interview with The HBAR Bull. The interview is a great discussion on the importance of interoperability and secure custody of digital assets while also touching on DeFi, staking, and other wider industry topics.
Animoca Brands
Late last year, we launched a REVV Racing campaign through our partnership with validator Animoca Brands. We hosted a series of giveaways featuring Hashport-themed REVV Racing cars! Winners of this joint promotion were airdropped a Hashport-themed REVV Racing car NFTs, which they used to trade, rent, or play in the game.
StableNode
October featured StableNode in our Validator Spotlight Series, where we curated collaborative content between StableNode and Hashport. This included a Twitter Spaces, a blog, and various other content throughout the month!
LimeChain
LimeChain played an integral role in the backend development of Hashport, among other projects in the Hedera ecosystem such as the new DEX on Hedera, HeliSwap. Shortly after our launch, they wrote a blog detailing their motivation and passion behind building Hashport, providing a unique insight into the birth of Hashport.
Calaxy
More than 1,300 people tuned in to our AMA with Calaxy Co-founder & CEO Solo Ceesay, CSO Rusty Matveev, CTO Cooper Kunz, Polygon’s DeFi Lead Aishwary Gupta, and Hashport’s Director of Business Development Jesse Whiteside.
In February, Calaxy Co-Founder & CEO as well as NBA Player Spencer Dinwiddie shared this video on Hashport and the potential benefits it can bring to the space.
BCW Group
BCW Group is a venture studio & enterprise consulting firm dedicated to building Web3 infrastructure & applications that connect and interact with the on-demand digital universe. They’ve contributed largely to the go-to-market strategy of Hashport and all collaborations with other validators.
In July 2022, The HBAR Foundation and BCW Ventures launched a Market Development Fund to accelerate growth on the Hedera network by providing necessary resources and funding to projects looking to or already building on Hedera.
In August, BCW Group, Arkhia & Mantra participated in Hong Kong’s first Hedera Heat Wave event.
In September, BCW Group becomes a member of the Hyperledger Foundation to provide enterprise solutions, build key partnerships, and find innovative new use cases for Hyperledger Fabric.
Community Engagement
Throughout the past year, Hashport has conducted giveaways and polls to gain the community’s voice as part of the platform's compass helping shape our technical roadmap. We sincerely appreciate everyone who took the time to give us their honest opinions. Here are a couple of examples of our polls:
In February, we asked Hashporters which networks they wanted to see integrated onto Hashport, with three categories: EVM, non-EVM, and Rollups. The poll received more than 1450 votes.
In July, we asked a similar question regarding networks to add. More than 1250 Hashporters voted for Avalanche, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, and Algorand to be the networks they would like to see integrated into Hashport.
Sure enough, Hashport was listening as two months later, and in response to our community’s wishes, we announced the integration of both BNB Chain and Avalanche into Hashport with more coming in the future.
Highlights of the Year
It was a pleasure to be able to be so involved in the community during our first year of launch. From monthly podcasts, Twitter Spaces, interviews, social mentions, blogs, and participating in Hedera’s annual hackathon, we were able to contribute to the wider DLT space while helping to bring Hashport to the masses. With such a jam-packed year, let’s run through some highlights.
Educating & Engaging the Community
Throughout the year we were appreciative in having multiple platforms to speak to the community on Hashport as well as a variety of other interesting topics surrounding interoperability, Hedera, and the broader DLT space. Some platforms we spoke with included:
- The HBAR Bull
- Hedera Hashcast
- Gossip About Gossip
- The HBAR Foundation Twitter Spaces
- Official Hedera Twitter Spaces
Hashport Hacks At the Hackathon
Alongside our validators Calaxy, BCW Group, The HBAR Foundation, and many others outside the validator swarm, Hashport sponsored the Hedera22 Hackathon, with over $500k in cryptocurrency rewards.
Hashport hosted the Browser Extension Challenge, where participants were eligible for $5,000 USD worth of $HBAR. For this challenge, we instructed participants to build a robust client-side browser extension that enables the creation of decentralised applications on Hedera. This extension should have similar access control isolation as MetaMask and fill the need for injection functionality similar to popular wallets such as Klaytn’s Kaist and Parity’s Polkadot.js.
Hashport IRL
In June, we attended Consensus2022, which was a huge success and an opportunity to meet many dApps and industry professionals from the DLT space.
Alongside the Hedera team who sponsored Blockchain Futurist Conference and ETHToronto, our Director of BD Jesse Whiteside spoke to the Ethereum community about interoperability and the benefits that Hashport brings.
In September, we attended Token2049 in Singapore alongside our validators from Worldpay by FIS, Polygon, Hex Trust, and BCW Group.
Becoming Part of Hedera’s Core Infrastructure
In June, Hedera officially recognised the platform as official issuers of wrapped $HBAR on Ethereum and Polygon networks.
In July, Hedera minted an NFT with the help of Hashport and others and moved it to Ethereum to be used as their Twitter PFP. We were happy to help make this a reality and the whole process is narrated in this blog.
Conclusion/Road Ahead
We hope you enjoyed this year in review covering Hashport’s activity during its first year live. With the launch of DeFi on Hedera, and the many new networks and tokens live on the Hashport platform, we’re extremely bullish on the next year and beyond. We want to thank everyone that has been with us so far, and we’ll continue to expand our interoperability features to empower all our users with the ability to seamlessly navigate the DLT ecosystem as they please. Visit hashport to port your digital assets to access worlds of possibilities. Happy Porting!
Website: hashport.network
Follow us on Twitter @HashportNetwork
Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter
About Hashport
Hashport is the enterprise-grade public utility that facilitates the movement of digital assets between distributed networks, extending their functionality in a quick, secure, and cost-effective way. In order to remain platform-neutral, hashport functions without the use of a proprietary token. The network is built on a robust and performant architecture, secured and operated by a group of industry-leading validator partners from around the world. hashport has passed a rigorous security audit and follows industry best practices; regularly performing comprehensive network tests to ensure the integrity of the network.
Website | Twitter | Reddit | Telegram | LinkedIn | YouTube | GitHub
Disclaimer: The information provided on Hashport’s website does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other sort of advice. You should not treat any site content as advice.
