The Centrifuge team recently announced the launch of Altair, their own Kusama parachain. The Altair Kusama parachain is going to have the industry-leading tech from Centrifuge chain and more, as the newest experimental features will be deployed on Altair before they go live on Centrifuge Chain.

Altair plans to be one of the first parachains live on Kusama, so the Centrifuge team encourages supporters to delegate their KSM to the parachain crowdloan.


Altair

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

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

Clover Finance (CLV), or simply Clover, is a blockchain operating system. It provides a one-stop, easy‑to‑use blockchain infrastructure and an ethereum virtual machine (EVM) compatible framework for Substrate‑based applications.

Clover Finance, another offspring of the Substrate-based Polkadot parachain aims at bridging the compatibility gap when building and operating across blockchains.

The project was founded in May 2020 and the mainnet of Clover Finance launched in July 2021.

Efinity is a cross-chain NFT platform developed by Enjin and built on Polkadot. Efinity was created as the next generation blockchain for digital assets with the aim of adapting to the challenges of the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), according to the project.

The main specialization of the Efinity project is the NFT space. With the protocol, traders and gamers can create, distribute, transfer, sell and buy NFTs. Efinity aims to remove barriers to entry into the NFT space/decentralized gaming, and to simplify user experience and digital asset governance.

Efinity Token powers the entire Efinity ecosystem, EFI aims to prioritize the generation, transfer and purchase of tokens using an inter-chain infrastructure of protocols resulting in lower transaction fees. As for incentives, rewards on PoW blockchains with NFT functionality go to miners who create/trade tokens, thereby forming a community.

One of the long-term goals of Efinity is to become a hub for both fungible and non-fungible tokens, accepting tokens from any other chain, facilitating the pricing and exchange of NFTs, increasing transaction volume, and creating network effects.

In December 2021, the project won the Polkadot parachain auction, and in March 2022, Enjin launched their flagship parachain Efinity on the Polkadot Relay Chain — a blockchain platform that provides a decentralized parachain network where people havecontrol over their data and identity.

Efinity Token

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

Covalent leverages big-data technologies to create meaning from hundreds of billions of data points, delivering actionable insights to investors and allowing developers to allocate resources to higher-utility goals within their organization.

Instead of painstakingly sourcing data from a small handful of chains, Covalent aggregates information from across dozens of sources including nodes, chains and data feeds. The Covalent API then sources end-users with individualized data by wallet, including current and historical investment performance across all types of digital assets. Most importantly, Covalent returns this data in a rapid and consistent manner, incorporating all relevant data within one API interface.

Having achieved product-market fit, we are now planning to execute the next phase of Covalent, which is a progressive decentralization that will enable the Covalent Network to be owned and operated by its users. Of course, a critical piece to this is CQT.

CQT is the native token of the Covalent Network. It has three primary purposes:

CQT is a governance token, whereby token holders vote on proposals to change the system parameters.

CQT is a staking asset. Validators will earn fees for answering queries.

CQT is a network access token that fulfills data queries for users of the API.

Developer resources include:

Covalent Knowledge Base for extensive guides on how to use the Covalent API. 

Covalent API Documentation.

Covalent

OCP introduces an innovative relayer mechanism that seamlessly connects applications to a modular permissionless custody protocol. OCP operates a protocol that acts akin to a mesh network, enabling an end-user to leverage a diverse set of key management protocols. We call this “Keychain Aggregation”. Building a protocol that solves for Keychain Aggregation not only simplifies the way developers can build, abstracting risk and complexity, but it also harmonizes and aggregates the economics associated with having multiple bilateral commercial relationships.

With OCP, we have a new custody primitive that embraces (1) modularity, in connecting key management solutions, and (2) decentralisation, in the way users can access key generation and transaction signing services. We are particularly excited to pioneer this, witnessing existing security and custody solutions struggle to adapt to the ongoing proliferation of chains. Additionally, with the impending tokenization of Real World Assets (RWAs) - potentially mobilizing over trillions of dollars into the blockchain ecosystem - the demand for versatile and modular solutions is clear and present.

Open Custody Protocol

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

Phala Network is the Execution Layer for Web3 AI. By enabling AI to understand and interact with blockchains, it unlocks the barrier for the first billion users to join Web3.

Phala Network's multi-proof system is the answer to the AI execution problem. On top of the Phala Network, you can easily build tamper-proof and unstoppable AI Agents that are closely integrated with on-chain smart contracts by AI-Agent Contract

Agentize smart contracts: Create AI Agents for smart contracts using natural and programming languages.

Connect to the internet of multi-agents: Make your agents accessible by other cross-chain AI Agents.

Launch AI Agents and get incentivized: Own your agents and build a profitable token economy.

Phala Network

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

SORA is about creating a supranational economic system that can efficiently provide capital to producers, thus pushing humanity forward, as well as a supranational and democratic governance structure to allocate capital in a fair way. It is both a new economic system that decentralizes the concept of a central bank as well as a network that implements a new way to architect a parachain blockchain that connects to the Polkadot relay chain and ecosystem with built-in tools focused on DeFi.

The SORA Network excels at providing tools for decentralized applications that use digital assets, such as atomic token swaps, bridging tokens to other blockchains, and creating programmatic rules involving digital assets.

SORA XOR is the native utility token that is:

Used for transaction fees (gas) on the SORA substrate network

Elastic supply, managed by atoken bonding curve

Enables holders of a certain amount to become a citizen and member of theSORA Parliament

Used to add liquidity to pairs onPolkaswap

Used to stake to become a validator or tonominate validators on the SORA Network

More aboutSORA tokenomics

SORA

CoinClaim

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

GSENetwork

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

StaFi

Polkastarter is a decentralized fundraising platform empowering Web3 projects to launch and raise funds through multi-chain token pools whilst significantly growing their communities.

The platform supports initial dex offerings (IDOs) across major blockchains, including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Solana, Polkadot, Polygon, Avalanche and Celo.

The platform enables investors to secure early access to IDOs, NFTs and Gaming Web3 innovation. It is most commonly used by early-stage blockchain projects that want to raise capital and easily distribute their tokens at the same time.

Through Polkastarter, blockchain projects can easily create their own fixed-chain swap pools, which allow them to securely raise funds, while users can invest without risks, since swaps are automatically executed by smart contracts.

POLS is the native utility token of the Polkastarter platform. Its main utility is gaining access to pools and giving projects the option to give priority access to POLS holders. Users are incentivised to stake POLS, rewarding the most loyal members.

In Q4 2022, Polkastarter will release new community utility features, such as governance and POLS Power Boosters (increasing your allowlisting success). The platform first went live in December 2020, and has quickly grown to become one of the most commonly used platforms for initial DEX offerings (IDOs) operating on the Ethereum blockchain.

Polkastarter

RARI

Secret (SCRT) is a privacy-oriented blockchain built on Cosmos. Its smart contracts are called Secret Contracts and allow DApps to use private data on Secret, similar to how smart contracts operate on other blockchains. However, Secret Contracts transfer encrypted inputs into encrypted outputs without exposing data. This is made possible thanks to the encrypted contract states during the execution.

Data privacy is guaranteed by combining encryption protocols and key management within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This allows Secret Contracts to compete for several privacy-related use cases that traditional blockchains have found difficult to accommodate. For instance, private voting mechanisms or credit scoring applications become possible since they do not expose sensitive user data on-chain with Secret.