Bifrost (Rainbow Bridge) is a DeFi foundational protocol within the Polkadot ecosystem and one of the first parallel chains to launch on Kusama, dedicated to becoming an infrastructure that provides liquidity for staked assets. Currently, it has introduced vToken derivatives aimed at Staking and Polkadot’s parallel chain slot auctions (Crowdloans). It has successfully secured multimillion-dollar funding from NGC, SNZ, DFG, CMS, among others, and received a grant from the Web3 Foundation. Bifrost is also part of the Substrate Builders Program and the Web3 Bootcamp.
What is Bifrost (BNC)?
Bifrost (BNC) is a Polkadot-based parallel chain designed to provide liquidity and staking without nomination delays. As a decentralized finance (DeFi) project within the Polkadot ecosystem, Bifrost allows users to deposit their staking tokens and mint vTokens (staking derivatives voucher tokens) to gain staking liquidity while earning staking rewards when their tokens are locked by a smart contract. With Bifrost, you can convert proof-of-stake (PoS) tokens into vTokens; for example, DOT can be converted into vDOT.
The development of Bifrost began in the third quarter of 2019. According to its developers, the project aims to solve issues such as ensuring staking liquidity without affecting the governance structure of the original chain and lowering the barrier to entry for staking in a decentralized manner.
Organizations supporting Bifrost include Hypersphere Ventures, NGC Ventures, Longhash Ventures, WEB3, SNZ Holding, Consensus Lab, Digital Renaissance, Liebi, Youbi Capital, and Digital Finance Group. Bifrost is also a member of the Substrate Builders Program and the Web3 Bootcamp.
Who Founded Bifrost (BNC)?
Lurpis Wang is the CEO and co-founder of Bifrost. He holds a degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He previously worked at Weibo Corporation and Ping++. He also founded the DeFi project Hunting Coin Pool on the IOST network.
In 2019, Wang assembled a team with Maarten Henskens, Bonnie Nie, Ross McDonald, and Dawns Xu, launching Bifrost.
What Makes Bifrost (BNC) Unique?
Bifrost aims to provide liquidity to 80% of PoS networks by allowing users to convert PoS cryptocurrencies into vTokens via a transfer bridge. This can be done at any time, with the option to earn additional income and liquidity from staking.
vTokens can be used in various scenarios to optimize data, including DeFi, decentralized applications (DApps), decentralized exchanges (DEXs), and centralized exchanges (CEXs). According to Bifrost’s developers, vTokens allow users to hedge lockup risks and double DeFi and staking rewards.
Bifrost maintains high transparency for all actions on its parallel chain, enabling regulatory oversight through democratic governance, providing cross-chain support through the Polkadot relay, offering vToken rewards regardless of which validator is used, and being 100% staking-friendly.
How Secure is the Bifrost Network?
Bifrost is a Polkadot parallel chain project. Polkadot uses a relay chain plus parallel chains framework. Parallel chains do not need to provide security but can leverage Polkadot’s security. Polkadot also provides secure communication between networks. With the help of the relay chain, cross-chain message transmission can occur under the concept of “shared security” without requiring any additional trust mechanisms.
To enhance the security of parallel chains and incentivize proper validator behavior, Bifrost implements Polkadot’s slashing mechanism and nominating proof-of-stake (NPoS) rules in a local solution called the “Slashing Risk Prevention and Control Mechanism.”
