## **What Is Interlay Network (INTR)?**

Interlay is a modular, programmable layer between Bitcoin and the multi-chain ecosystem that unlocks decentralized (financial) use cases for BTC.

Interlay’s vision is to help Bitcoin achieve mass adoption by unlocking decentralized (financial) use cases for BTC and removing the need for centralized services. Interlay’s achieves this by creating the necessary infrastructure and financial tooling for both users and builders:

* **DeFi for Bitcoin**: Interlay’s DeFi hub a one-stop shop for all things decentralized Bitcoin finance featuring BTC swaps, lending, and staking. High throughput, low fees payable in any asset, and native stablecoin integrations aim to provide an experience competing even with centralized providers.

* **Bitcoin for DeFi**: Interlay’s BTC bridge is the secure way to use Bitcoin in the multi-chain ecosystem. iBTC, a 1:1 BTC-backed asset, is secured by a decentralized network of vaults. BTC deposits are insured by a multi-collateral system and secured by cross-chain light clients.

* **Building Bitcoin dApps**: Interlay will support Bitcoin dApp development on top of its modular network.

The INTR governance and utility token’s main purposes are:

* Stake-to-vote. Lock INTR to participate in governance & earn staking rewards. The longer the lock, the higher to voting power & staking rewards.
* Utility. Transaction and cross-chain fees can be paid in INTR.
* Collateral. INTR can be used as one of the collaterals to back iBTC and other Interlay assets.
* Outlook: Product benefits: In the future, INTR may offer stakers additional security and product benefits, e.g. better liquidation and collateral rates, or lower swap fees.

The Interlay network launched on 11 March 2022.

## **How Many INTR Coins Are There in Circulation?**


INTR features an unlimited supply. The emission schedule is defined as follows:

* 1 billion (1,000,000,000) INTR emitted over the first 4 years
* 2% annual inflation afterwards, allocated to the protocol treasury to fund future development and maintenance.

70% of the supply is distributed to the community as airdrops and block rewards: 30% to Vault rewards 5% to governance staking rewards (“stake-to-vote”), and 35% to the on-chain treasury controlled by network governance (of which 10% are airdropped during the first crowdloan). 10% are allocated to a reserve, to be spent on network development and community & ecosystem building. 20% are airdropped to the (current and future) team and early backers who funded the initial development.


### **Who Are the Founders of Interlay Network?**

Interlay was created by Alexei Zamyatin and Dominik Harz. The two met in 2017 during their PhDs at Imperial College London where they were the first researchers in the cryptocurrency lab. Both have been researching Bitcoin and Ethereum since 2015/16, authoring over [30 papers with over 1000 citations](https://docs.interlay.io/#/about/research). Both regularly presented their work at Bitcoin and Ethereum conferences, including DevCon IV, EthCC, Building on Bitcoin, and Breaking Bitcoin.

The first steps towards Interlay and Interlay were made when the XCLAIM paper was presented at the Scaling Bitcoin in 2018 - describing the first-ever protocol to move cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to Ethereum in an economically trustless and decentralized manner. In 2020, the two founded Interlay to bring research into practice. Today, Interlay employs 23 staff, including developers with experience at Google, Morgan Stanley, Trivago, Accenture, PwC, Worldpay, and Atlassian.


### **What Makes Interlay Unique?**

Interlay is a modular, programmable layer situated between Bitcoin and the multichain ecosystem. It is the only Bitcoin-centric layer 1 that is decentralized across the entire stack: from trustless BTC bridge to BTC DeFi hub

Leveraging BTC as the main reserve asset and source of liquidity, Interlay’s stack provides a set of custody and bridge tools that allow applications to tailor asset management to their specific use case. Structured as a marketplace, Interlay already supports collateralized bridges, and will add threshold shared custody (incl. institutions and 3rd party providers), as well as discrete log contracts (DLCs), and zero-knowledge contingent payments (ZKCPs). To enhance security and user experience, Interlay will incorporate social sign-in options like Google-sign in and opt-in recovery mechanisms via federation counter-signing and identity verification.

Interlay is launching both EVM (for compatibility) and Rust smart contracts that are optimal for BTC-centric development (compatible with widely adopted Bitcoin-core libraries and tooling). Thereby, builders can seamlessly access built-in DeFi tooling (AMM and lending) and assets from other ecosystems, including stablecoins and blue-chip L1 assets. This puts Interlay in a unique position to help improve upon the rather centralized BTC stack (Lightning nodes, Nostr servers, indexers, CEXes) with decentralized custody and smart contracts.


### **Related Pages:**

Learn more about Interlay, and interBTC [here](https://docs.interlay.io/#/).

New to cryptocurrency? Find all the information you need with [Alexandria](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/crypto-basics), CoinMarketCap’s dedicated education resource.

Here are some other articles that you may be interested in:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/interlay-introduce-xcc-protocol-to-enhance-bitcoin-s-reciprocal-relationship-with-defi

https://cointelegraph.com/news/interlay-aims-to-advance-bitcoin-s-defi-potential-with-new-interoperable-bridge

https://cointelegraph.com/news/interlay-raises-6-5mm-to-accelerate-bitcoin-defi-interoperability

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-interoperability-platform-interlay-raises-3m-in-seed-funding

Interlay

Interlay is a modular, programmable layer between Bitcoin and the multi-chain ecosystem that unlocks DeFi and other decentralized use cases for BTC.

Polkadot

Subsocial

Karura is an all-in-one decentralized finance (DeFi) hub and stablecoin platform built on Kusama (KSM) and integrated into Polkadot (DOT). Karura was created by the Acala Network, which has won four Web3 Foundation grants and founded the Substrate Developer Academy.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Karura.

Both Karura and Acala are backed by multiple funds, including Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Polychain Capital and Hypersphere. Karura and Acala operate in parallel. Specifically, Karura is implementing DeFi on Kusama in the same way that Acala is offering DeFi on Polkadot. The network is built with almost the same codebase as Acala: the two platforms provide scalable, convenient and fast DeFi cross-chain ecosystems for Kusama and Polkadot.

Parachain Karura is a platform that allows users to create effective, low-cost and complex financial applications, saving time and increasing trading efficiency.

The platform itself provides a multi-collateralized stablecoin backed by cross-chain assets (kUSD), a trustless staking derivative (liquid KSM), and an automated market maker (AMM) decentralized exchange (DEX) for unlocking liquidity and supporting financial innovation.

Karura is the decentralized financial hub of Kusama, a scalable multi-chain network for radical innovation and early-stage Polkadot deployments. Karura is the sister network to Acala. It hosts multichain liquid staking token (LST) protocols (such as liquid KSM - LKSM), an AMM decentralized exchange, and an app platform that is EVM-compatible and highly customizable (based on Substrate). Karura is secured by Kusama, and is the liquidity gateway of Kusama parachains, Acala and L1/L2 blockchains

Karura

Acala Token

Vega Protocol provides the derivatives scaling layer for Web3. It is a custom-built proof-of-stake blockchain, which makes it possible to trade derivatives on a decentralised network with comparable experience to using a centralised exchange.

VEGA is the network governance and staking token. It is used for:

Voting on the creation of new markets on the network

Running validator nodes on the network via staking VEGA tokens

Earning fees from traders through staking and delegation

Governing important network parameters which ensure markets are secure and fair

Vega Protocol

Hashflow is a DEX Aggregator that offers deep liquidity across the leading blockchains. Hashflow offers traders the best prices, access to $8B in liquidity, and the ability to trade every token both interchain and cross chain. Since launching in April 2021, Hashflow has facilitated over $18B in total trade volume.

Hashflow's team consists of top minds from both web2 and web3 including Airbnb, Amazon, Arbitrum, Citadel, Genesis Trading, and more. Backers include Dragonfly Capital, Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Trading, and Balaji Srinivasan.

Hashflow

Astar Network helps developers build decentralized applications (dApps) and layer 2 solutions by providing interoperable web 3.0 infrastructure, financial incentives, incubation programmes and technical support. It seeks to provide the best solution for all developers by supporting EVM and making a parachain where EVM and WASM smart contracts can co-exist and communicate with each other.

Astar connects the Polkadot ecosystem with layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum and Cosmos. It's a Polkadot Parachain, and was designed as a multi-chain Polkadot dApp hub with support for DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, where developers can move beyond infrastructure and focus more on application development.

The project, which is backed by Binance Labs and Coinbase Ventures, operates on two layers: the first layer is built on the Substrate framework, and the second is built using OVM or Optimistic Virtual Machine, for scalability.

Astar

Centrifuge is a decentralized asset financing protocol. It connects decentralized finance (DeFi) with real-world assets (RWA) while trying to lower the cost of capital for small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) and provide investors with a stable source of income. The main goal of the project is to generate profits that are not tied to volatile crypto assets; the developers are pursuing the task of transferring real monetary value from fiat to cryptocurrencies.

Companies are using Centrifuge to access the liquidity that DeFi has to offer. They can tokenize real assets and use these tokens as collateral to access financing through Tinlake, a decentralized application (DApp) lending protocol. The Centrifuge blockchain is built on Polkadot (DOT) for speed and low fees, while its financial DApp Tinlake is built to access Ethereum (ETH) liquidity.

Centrifuge provides liquidity to everyone and investors receive income and rewards in the form of CFG tokens. Centrifuge links assets such as invoices, real estate and royalties with decentralized finance (DeFi). Additionally, borrowers benefit from the fact that they can finance their real assets without banks or other intermediaries.

Centrifuge

Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on Polkadot. Moonbeam makes it easy to use popular Ethereum developer tools to build or redeploy Solidity projects in a Substrate-based environment.

Moonbeam is much more than just an EVM implementation: it’s a highly specialized parachain that mirrors Ethereum’s Web3 RPC, accounts, keys, subscriptions, logs, and more. The Moonbeam platform extends the base Ethereum feature set with additional features such as on-chain governance, staking, and cross-chain integrations.

Moonbeam’s Ethereum compatibility is unmatched:

Minimal Changes: developers can use existing Solidity smart contracts right away, with no need to rewrite or reconfigure

Use Existing Developer Tools: connect popular tools like MetaMask, Hardhat, Waffle, Remix, and Truffle via a complete set of Web3 RPC endpoints. Use well-known Javascript libraries such as Web3.Js or Ethers.Js.

Unified Accounts, Addresses, and Signatures: use your existing Ethereum H160 accounts & ECDSA signatures to interact with Moonbeam

Tap into the Most Integrations on Polkadot: use existing oracles, bridges, wallets, and other tools that are already building on Moonbeam

Moonbeam provides integration and connectivity between Polkadot Parachains as well as with other chains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin via bridges. Moonbeam was started in 2019 by Derek Yoo of Pure Stake.

Moonbeam

Chia Network (XCH) is a layer 1 blockchain that uses its own custom-designed programming language called Chialisp and a novel consensus mechanism called proof-of-space-and-time (PoST). The combination of these two allows the blockchain to use less energy without compromising network security. In contrast to most other blockchains, Chia Network is a public, for-profit, open source company that aspires to become listed on NYSE or NASDAQ. Its blockchain is aimed at enterprise use, which is why Chia Network plans to have XCH on its balance sheet in case of a listing.

Chia Network’s first proof-of-time function was released in 2019, with the first beta version of its blockchain launching in 2020. Chia Network achieved full functionality, including wallet functionality, transactions and smart contracts, with its mainnet launch in 2021.

Chia

Self-described as "Polkadot's wild cousin," Kusama is an experimental blockchain platform that is designed to provide a massively interoperable and scalable framework for developers.

Kusama is built on Substrate — a blockchain building kit developed by Parity Technologies. Kusama has almost the same codebase as Polkadot — one of the most successful interoperable blockchains.

By deploying on Kusama, fast-paced projects gain access to a highly scalable, interoperable sharded network, with features that are not yet available on Polkadot. To that end, Kusama describes itself as a “canary network.”

The platform is designed to provide a testbed for developers looking to innovate and deploy their own blockchain and can be used as a preparatory network before launching on Polkadot — though many projects opt to stick with Kusama for their final product.

Kusama benefits from a low barrier to entry for deploying parachains, low bond requirements for validators, and is most commonly used by early-stage startups and for experimentation.

Kusama

Aurora is a product that helps Ethereum users and dApps to easily move to the NEAR blockchain. It allows users to do two distinct things: upload and interact with Solidity smart contracts on NEAR blockchain and move assets (including ERC-20 tokens) between Ethereum, NEAR and Aurora via the Rainbow Bridge..

Aurora’s base token is ETH to deliver the best user experience and familiar tooling for developers.

AURORA token is a governance token to ensure proper upgrades to the protocol.
Aurora is governed by AuroraDAO which includes representatives from different ecosystems and sectors of the blockchain industry.

Aurora

Galxe is the world's leading Web3 credential data network and was launched on April 28, 2022, on Binance Launchpool.

Galxe is built on open and collaborative infrastructure that allows Web3 developers and projects to profit from credential data by building better products and communities.

Data curators are rewarded when users employ their credentials in Project Galaxy's Application Modules, Credential Oracle Engine and Credential API at the same time.

Galxe

Multichain (MULTI), previously known as Anyswap, claims to be the ultimate router for web3 and has positioned itself as an infrastructure developed for arbitrary cross-chain interactions.

As claimed in their official documentation, Multichain offers solutions that enable nearly all blockchains to interconnect – regardless if it is EVM chains (e.g., Avalanche), Layer 2 chains tied to Ethereum (like Polygon), Parachains networks like Moonbeam on Polkadot, and so on.

Multichain is a prominent name in the cross-chain space, with a rapidly growing network of 26 chains, with Total Value Locked (TVL) reaching highs of over $10.45 billion, and a sustained daily volume of over $100 million. However, the onset of the bear market and recent news of Multichain CEO being uncontactable saw TVL dropping to $1.38B.

Multichain

Moonriver is an Ethereum-compatible, smart-contract parachain on Kusama. It is intended to be a companion network to Moonbeam, where it will provide a permanently incentivized canary network. New code will ship to Moonriver first, where it can be tested and verified under real economic conditions. Once proven, the same code will ship to Moonbeam on Polkadot.

It does this by providing a full EVM implementation, a Web3-compatible API, and bridges that connect Moonriver to existing Ethereum networks.

This allows developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and DApp frontends to Moonriver with minimal changes.

Moonriver

Ethereum-based DYDX ($ethDYDX) is a governance token that allows the dYdX community to truly govern the dYdX Layer 2 Protocol built on Ethereum ("dYdX v3"). ethDYDX is currently undergoing a migration from Ethereum to the dYdX Chain. More information is available here. If you want to migrate ethDYDX to dYdX Chain DYDX, to enable staking, security and governance of the dYdX Chain you can follow the how-to-bridge guide here.

If you want to read about the new token utility for dYdX Chain DYDX you can read the blog here

ethDYDX (dYdX) is the governance token for the layer 2 protocol built on Ethereum. By enabling shared control of dYdX v3, ethDYDX allows traders, liquidity providers, and partners of dYdX to work collectively towards an enhanced dYdX v3.

Built on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine, layer 2 is used for trading of cross-margined perpetuals on the platform. The scaling solution allows dYdX to increase transaction speed, eliminate gas costs, reduce trading fees and lower​​ minimum trade sizes on the protocol.

A total of 1,000,000,000 ethDYDX have been minted, and started to become accessible over five (5) years, on August 3rd, 2021, at 15:00:00 UTC.

dYdX (ethDYDX)

Axelar claims to deliver “secure cross-chain communication for Web3.” The project provides a decentralized network and tools to help builders of decentralized applications (dApps) with seamless cross-chain communication through its protocol suite, tools and APIs.

Axelar features three core components – a decentralized network, a software development kit of protocols and APIs, and a set of gateway smart contracts for cross-chain connectivity.

Powered by a decentralized network of validators, anyone can join the network, build on it, or use it. Apps builders can interact with a simple API atop a permissionless network that routes messages and ensures network security via proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.

AXL is the native token of the Axelar network. The protocol also supports the cross-chain transfer of several native tokens via their wrapped ERC-20 versions, including AVAX (Avalanche), ETH (Ethereum), FTM (Fantom), GLMR (Moonbeam), and MATIC (Polygon).

Meanwhile, Axelar has raised capital from top-tier investors, including Binance, Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Capital and others.

Axelar

Mina Protocol is a minimal “succinct blockchain” built to curtail computational requirements in order to run DApps more efficiently. Mina has been described as the world’s lightest blockchain since its size is designed to remain constant despite growth in usage. Furthermore, it remains balanced in terms of security and decentralization. The project was rebranded from Coda Protocol to Mina in October 2020.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Mina Protocol.

The Mina network has a size of only 22 KB, which is miniscule when compared to Bitcoin’s 300 GB blockchain.

Mina

Phala Network is a coprocessor for blockchains. Developers deploy “Phat Contracts,” off-chain program for coprocessors, enhancing dApps with connectivity, internet access, and heavy computation, overcoming web3 constraints.

Phala Network has one of the largest Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) on Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) hardware, which means that any code/data on Phala Network is protected from unauthorized access by users. Phala addresses developer concerns with expanded developer language support such as JavaScript and more, and ready-to-deploy Templates for seamless Phat Contract integration, streamlining the experience for web3 developers.

Phala stands at the forefront of Web3 innovation, fostering development through its Builders Program.

Phala Network

Aptos is a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain that employs a novel smart contract programming language called Move, a Rust-based programming language that was independently developed by Meta (formerly Facebook)’s Diem blockchain engineers.

Aptos’s vision is a blockchain that brings mainstream adoption to web3 and empowers an ecosystem of DApps to solve real-world user problems.

The PoS blockchain can achieve a theoretical transaction throughput of over 150,000 transactions per second (tps) through parallel execution.

In March 2022, Aptos raised $200 million in a seed round led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Other crypto heavyweights like Tiger Global and Multicoin Capital took part in the funding round. Fast forward to July, the startup raised another $200 million in a Series A round with participation from Dragonfly, Apollo Global, Franklin Templeton, Animoca, Jump Crypto and others.

Two months later, Binance Labs made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount in Aptos.

On Oct. 18, 2022, Aptos announced the mainnet launch, while the Aptos genesis occurred on Oct. 12, 2022.

Aptos

Optimism (OP) is a layer-two blockchain on top of Ethereum. Optimism benefits from the security of the Ethereum mainnet and helps scale the Ethereum ecosystem by using optimistic rollups. That means transactions are trustlessly recorded on Optimism but ultimately secured on Ethereum.

Optimism is one of the biggest scaling solutions for Ethereum with over $500 million in TVL. It is home to 97 protocols, the biggest being Synthetix (SNX), a derivatives exchange, Uniswap (UNI), a DEX, and Velodrome (VELO), an AMM. Users can begin their journey on Optimism by adding the chain on their Metamask and bridging tokens like ETH to the L2. On May 31, 2022, Optimism conducted a highly anticipated airdrop of its OP token.

Optimism

Immutable positions itself as the first layer-two scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum. According to Immutable, its blockchain does away with Ethereum’s limitations like low scalability, a poor user experience, illiquidity, and a slow developer experience. Instead, users benefit from instant trading and massive scalability while enjoying zero gas fees for minting and trading NFTs without compromising user or asset security.

Thanks to this technology, users will be able to create and distribute assets like ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens on a massive scale. Chris Clay, the game Director of Gods Unchained, a project already building on Immutable, stated that Immutable allows Gods Unchained to implement a new meta-system that was previously impossible. In this fashion, Immutable aims to create a world-class experience for users and developers alike.