Blockchain projects TRON and Waves have inked a strategic partnership with the aim of achieving mass adoption of inter-chain DeFi. The landmark inter-chain initiative owes a debt to Gravity, the decentralized blockchain-agnostic oracle network that facilitated the integration.
When Chains Collide
TRON and Waves use completely different smart contract languages, the former having been written in Solidity and the latter using Ride. To bring the pair onto the same page, Gravity’s interoperable oracle queries data on each chain, thereby enabling the ecosystems to increase access to services for both user bases.
In practical terms, the link-up means that TRC20 tokens including JST, plus TRX and BTT, are now readily available on Waves’ blockchain and tradable on the platform’s DEXs. Similarly, assets such as NSBT and WEST will be opened up to the TRON community. Swaps between both blockchains’ collateralized stablecoins – TRON’s USDJ and Waves’ USDN – is also now feasible thanks to Gravity.
With the incompatibility and fragmentation of disparate blockchain ecosystems often cited as a major impediment to mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency, the initiative is a major boon for the rapidly growing DeFi sector. Developers from TRON and Waves will now be able to create cross-chain dApps compatible with both networks and capable of being further expanded to other chains via wallets and browser extensions.
Oracles Aim to Build Blockchain Bridges
Oracles have been around for a short while in crypto, with various DeFi protocols such as MakerDAO and UMA introducing oracle designs for price feeds in 2019, though it was Chainlink, of course, that started it all. As far as linking entire blockchains is concerned, the Gravity protocol is making major moves: as well as facilitating the TRON-Waves integration, the inter-chain solution recently partnered with open-source digital identity blockchain Ontology. Gravity’s mainnet launch is scheduled for the end of the year, though a public testnet has been released to dApp developers and node operators in the meantime.
The deal comes at an interesting time for TRON in particular – their newly-launched JUST (JST) token has soared in value over the past month, having listed on the likes of Binance and Huobi. The native governance token of the JUST platform, TRON’s debut DeFi project, it can be used to pay interest and have a say in the evolution of the network.
The entente between TRON and Waves should prove to be an interesting case study for both the utility of oracles and the future of the DeFi movement, whose products continue to ship at a meteoric rate. Global DeFi markets recently hit an all-time high in terms of value locked, reaching $4.75 billion on August 11.