Can we please bridge the gap?🔗

Good Morning, Switchers 🌞

👋Welcome to Switch Daily.

What’s up? With only ten days left, how are we feeling about 2023? We are super duper excited to see what the new year can bring to the Web3 table. Actually, 2022 wasn’t so bad, either. 

Despite the challenging year it was—we’re talking LUNA, 3Arrows Capital, FTX and the n number of big hacks that haunted us all—the funding for Web3 has never been better. According to CoinTelegraph research, 2022 saw a VC fund flow of $36.1 billion which is almost $6 billion higher than 2021’s $30.3 billion. 💰💰💰

BTW, if you like reading this newsletter, give us a shout-out on Twitter and get your friends to subscribe. It will mean a great deal to us!

Here’s what we’ve got for you today: 

• Market pulse

• Blockchain bridges

• Mid-week news

• Meme of the day

Market pulse 📈

The market is glowing green 💚

The onshore crypto market is up 2.05% over the past 24 hours, cheering up traders and investors. Most top cryptos like BTC, ETH, and XRP are also trading in the positive zone, registering gains of 1.42%, 2.05%, and 2.14%, respectively. Amid all that green, Metal (MTL) — an Ethereum-based fiat-to-crypto converting project is making heads turn, gaining 17.35% since yesterday.

Equities also rose after the Bank of Japan unexpectedly increased the target range for its 10-year government bond yield earlier Tuesday. The S&P 500 gained 0.10%, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.01%.

C'mon, aren't you gonna let your friends in on how the market is performing today?

🌉🔥The Burning Bridges🔥🌉

Have you heard of the ‘train robber's bridge’?  

In the early 60s, a regular bridge in England witnessed one of the greatest train robberies. Legend has it that the thieves chose a bridge because there was nowhere for the victims to escape, and they were often undetectable till late. 

Wait, why are we talking about this? Coz most of the crypto hacks in 2022 happened by attacking bridges on the blockchain. Crypto hackers are following a ‘train robbers bridge’ technique, except they are attacking cross-chain bridges instead of actual bridges. 

What are cross-chain bridges?

Like the Howrah bridge connecting Howrah and Kolkata, cross-chain bridges help connect different blockchains so that tokens can be moved between them. 

Blockchain/cross-chain bridge allows users to transfer their data, smart contracts, and, most importantly, coins from one blockchain to another. It is quite literally used to bridge the gap between blockchains.

But to understand blockchain or cross-chain bridges, we must look at individual blockchains as parallel universes. 

While they function in like manner, they are not connected and what one network may entail, the other lacks and vice versa. 

So much talk about the most common blockchain bridge use case — transferring tokens. 

But why can’t we do that by merely cashing out one token to buy another? 

• One of the top reasons investors avoid this method is — the high transaction fees. 

• Cross-chain bridges also help investors pivot unwanted exposure to inevitable price volatility in the crypto industry. 

• Blockchain bridges facilitate interoperability between chains, ascertaining that dominant networks like Ethereum do not monopolize the DeFi domain.

Wait. Wait. Wait. We are doing it again, aren’t we? I am switching from English to gibberish, huh? 

Alright, so to explain the interoperability bit and make sure Ethereum becomes the kingpin, let’s look at the facts. 

So, Ethereum is the origin point for most ERC20 coins in the market today.

Therefore, the network pushes the Ethereum version for these coins via major centralised crypto platforms. In light of this, these platforms do not sell the original coin. 

So, if the users wish to acquire the original version of an ERC20 token, they need to shift to the native blockchain directly. 

And cross-chain bridges help in making that shift, capiche?

What capiche? This is rubbish! All these use cases but no idea how to use them? 

No problemo, we are like Shahrukh in Main Hoon Na. At your service, even when you don’t think you need us (we will even do the open arms pose for you guys)

Let’s try to understand how to use a cross-chain bridge using the Polygon MATIC example.

MATIC is the Polygon network’s native utility token which also exists on the Ethereum blockchain (supporting the ERC20 version of tokens). 

Now, let’s assume a user bought their MATIC on a CeFi, which supports the ERC20 version of the coin. But they need to convert it to the Polygon network’s version.

In this case, the user will follow certain simple steps using the Polygon blockchain bridge to execute the transfer —

• First, they will add the polygon chain, aka MATIC mainnet, into their wallet, for instance, Metamask; which is already linked to their CeFi account. 

• Once they have added the polygon network to the list, they will need to go to Polygon’s official website. 

• On the website, the user will select the option - ‘Use Polygon’ and further choose ‘polygon bridge’ to go ahead with the process. 

• The bridge will then seek permission to connect our user’s metamask wallet to the polygon bridge. 

• Upon successfully linking Metamask to the Polygon bridge, the user will choose to deposit and transfer their Matic token from Ethereum to Polygon. 

• In this scenario, the transfer process will merely take up to 8 minutes, but it may differ based on the bridge. 

• The user is charged a gas fee that also varies from time to time. 

Interestingly, in this specific situation, the user will need to own Ether in their Metamask wallets to make the payment for the transaction fees. 

In blockchain bridges’ multiverse of madness, you are Dr Strange, and we are your Wong. So, why don’t we try switching to another universe and make some magic happen?

What is making the headlines? 🗞

🏀Basketball legend Scottie Pippen’s NFT drop sold out in 77 sec

NBA champion Scottie Pippen's 1,000-piece NFT collection was sold out in 77 seconds. The collection's rapid sales outpaced other high-profile drops by former President Donald Trump and actor Anthony Hopkins.

🦄Uniswap users can buy crypto using debit/credit cards

Decentralized trading Uniswap has teamed up with fintech company Moonpay to enable users to purchase cryptocurrency on its web app using debit cards, credit cards, and bank transfers. This is available to users in most of the US, Brazil, the UK, and SEPA.

🪙Waves founder announces new stablecoin

In the backdrop of the Waves-backed stablecoin, Neutrino USD depegging against USD, Sasha Ivanov, founder and CEO of the Waves blockchain platform, plans to launch a new stablecoin.

Meme of the day!

Thank You,

See you later, folks. 👋

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