Depth: What should a user-friendly cross-chain tool do? Farmland has provided the answer

Introduction: Farmland might be the most user-friendly among its many counterparts

With the help of institutional and professional investors, Bitcoin recently reached a value of $18,000 and is heading towards its historic. The explosions of Ethereum and DeFi this year echoed this and many wealthy people have been created as a result. In 2017, the performance of the top two leaders in the cryptocurrency market led to the creation of an unprecedented bull market.

At that time, BTC and Ethereum both shone, but there was no essential connection between the two.

In terms of the community, BTC fundamentalists are strongly averse to Ethereum, particularly the use of various altcoins which it has issued. They believe that ICO altcoins divert funds which originally belong to BTC and destroy BTC’s essential principles: the decentralisation of digital assets and the fact that “code is law”. Furthermore, they even devalue the reputation of the entire coin circle. At that time, many supporters of ETH believe it to be superior in terms of speed and programmability and it has become the cornerstone in the altcoin market due to its one-click issuing feature. This led to blockchain technology no longer being restricted to monetary assets and Dapp was created. At one time, ETH accounted for 60% of Bitcoin’s market capitalisation, threatening its status as the coin king and sparking a feud between the supporters of both currencies.

Technically, public chain projects were the hottest direction. These were in progress but ultimately ended during the initial stages. Under the circumstances, BTC and ETH were unable to make actual connections.

Following three years of a bear market, several cross-chain technologies have been implemented from concept to application. ETH and BTC finally have the chance to join forces and create a more robust bull market. The most notable of all cross-chain channels are WBTC, renBTC and hBTC. These three channels account for over 90% of total BTC on Ethereum. The amount of BTC in ETH has increased significantly since June 2020 and currently stands at 150,000. The total value is now at $2.5 billion.

What are the reasons for such a strong outbreak?

Superficially, this phenomenon can be attributed to liquidity farming, such as Curve and Uniswap. Farming offers users sufficient incentive to map BTC to ETH. According to currency standard calculation, BTC users previously received a 0% annualised rate of return. Placing coins in thrift or lending institutions in order to earn interest leads to the risk of human integrity for centralised fund pools, and this is inconsistent with many hoarders’ decentralised mentality. People would keep coins safe in their wallets rather than risk trusting the credibility of centralised institutions, and in the world of blockchain, code is law. Centralised institutions are always suspicious and they don’t provide a high rate of return, an annualised rate of return of 1% being quite common. This year, liquidity mining has finally provided BTC hoarders with high returns from minimum risk. Many pools offer more thana 1% daily rate of return, which is more than enough to entice BTC hoarders to map their BTC to ETH using cross-chain channels.

At a deeper level, the primary reason is that BTC and ETH complement one another.

As the main cornerstone of digital assets, BTC has become more widely recognised due to its simplicity, openness, transparency and finiteness. When mainstream institutions contemplate involvement in the blockchain market, their first action is generally purchasing BTC. Similar to the Chinese real estate market during the last three decades where an increase in house prices has led to a conditioned reflex by the people, It is easier to become rich through hoarding property than by any other means. BTC has created a massive wealth shock for long-term hoarders and bystanders, showing that continuous hoarding of BTC is the best way in which to earn a fortune. One friend summed this up perfectly: “In the past when people earned money, they would hoard houses. However, BTC is the house in the current digital world. Therefore, BTC’s most important attribute is being an asset with strong expectations of appreciation.”

ETH is easily the best public chain ecosystem. Users who wish to perform decentralised transactions, loans and deposits on public chain, often make ETH their first choice. If it is possible to link BTC to ETH, this means that decentralised core assets will be able to flow across decentralised financial platforms, which perfectly supports cypherpunks’ demand for free wealth. Based on several successful attempts at coin trading and mortgage lending, and although fully replicating the traditional financial system is still a long way away, it is likely that Defi’s blueprint will become a reality.

Following a lengthy cooling-off period, most BTC and ETH supporters are in agreement with each other and hold both assets, thereby merging into a broader community with mutual interests.

As well as strong demand for cross-chain tools under the ecological combination of BTC and ETH, the small ecology of other public chains must also bridge the two. As money becomes scarce and no truly valuable products are on the chain, most public ecosystems will collapse. However, many public chains possess unique advantages which, when used properly, can take on a new life. In general terms, that which these small ecologies lack are scenarios, users and assets, which can all be achieved using cross-chain tools.

Having discussed the multiple necessities of cross-chains, the current situation of cross-chains will now be examined. The rising price of BTC has prompted many people to use digital asset exchanges for the first time, and the increasing popularity of DeFi has taught them how to use wallets. But has rapid cross-chain asset growth attracted a large number of cross-chain users?

The answer to this is no. From multiple online and offline inquiries, it was found that a significant majority of users who have successfully learned to use wallets have not used cross-chain tools, particularly in China and other countries in Asia. This is also true of me and if you were to ask your friends if they have ever used cross-chain tools, the answer will almost always be no, even for those already familiar with DeFi mining. So what does account for the low penetration of cross-chain users? The three main reasons are technical sophistication, complex operation and slow feedback and distorted usage scenarios.

The first reason is the most obvious. When comparing the process of understanding BTC’s basic principles to climbing a mountain, the comprehension of cross-chain knowledge is similar to climbing up to heaven. What is the nature of cross-chain? How does it work? Is it safe? It is quite difficult for those who are only familiar with public chain terms such as TPS or block speed, to learn new concepts within this field. Because of DeFi, the popularisation of wallet use has been a great success. Many wallets, such as the Metamask, do not have cross-chain conversions, as folding purses are not multi-chain purses, and most multi-chain purses do not have cross-chain functionality either.

The second reason is that users often find it difficult to master cross-chain processes. Six confirmations are required for a cross-chain node to confirm receipt and users must then wait for an hour before they receive a packaged BTC in their ETH wallet. If this is a user’s first operation, they will be likely to spend an hour staring at their screen with trepidation. This can be quite an ordeal for users who are familiar with ETH wallets and are used to receiving feedback in as little as one or two minutes.

The third reason is that the path from BTC to putting packaged BTC into a certain usage scenario is extremely meandering. A typical path for a beginner taking part in DeFi using BTC and dig renBTC pool in Curve looks like this:

Step 1: Learn about cross-chain and utilise renVM to cross a chain.

Step 2: Learn how to use renVM and find relevant functions on the website.

Step 3: Link to Metamask and inject BTC into renVM using a BTC wallet.

Step 4: Wait a long time.

Step 5: renBTC will appear in Metamask.

Step 6: Find the curve and learn how to use Curve to find the renBTC pool.

Step 7: Deposit into renBTC.

Step 8: Take out earnings.

Step 9: If you wish to take back the BTC, renVM must be used in reverse and most of the above steps must be repeated.

The majority of cross-chain projects have a greater focus on building infrastructure and implementing core functionality, rather than focusing on the product’s usability. Projects in every era have their own historical missions. In the cross-chain era, its mission is to solve the basic problems of asset and information connectivity. As long as it is possible to realise the function and the cost is reasonable, it will be a huge success. However, now that the cross-chain ecosystem is improving, the time has come to consider how the technology can be made easier to use and more user-friendly.

Farmland is a cross-chain protocol whose main objective is becoming a cross-chain entry-level platform. More specifically, Farmland initially provides a decentralised cross-chain tool. Users are able to deposit BTC into Farmland, similar to using a wallet. Farmland then converts BTC into renBTC using liquidity mining or borrowing.

Considering the potential difficulties which are faced by users when using cross-chain technology, Farmland has undertaken a number of innovative developments and realised the following breakthroughs relating to usability:

1. No learning of cross-chain knowledge. When people use Farmland, -chain mining and other purposes can easily be realised through the use of Metamask and BTC wallet. For simple operations, Farmland crosses the assets on both chains through contracts. It’s unlikely that users will know what cross-chain is after receiving mining or loan interests.

2. Quick feedback. With Farmland’s unique TTS technology (Transition-to-Trans), a message is shown that BTC has been received just a few seconds after the user deposits BTC into Farmland. The user can then close the browser and wait for automatic transfer. There is no longer a need for users to wait for a long time. If a small test operation is performed, quick feedback can be obtained and errors in addresses or paths can be found in time.

Considering Farmland’s entirely decentralised approach, the above advantages are of great value. In addition, in order to cope with the “new normal” of mining and single-digit loan yields, Farmland has adopted an aggregation method for income and gas expenses, which greatly reduces a single user’s costs and eliminates obstacles which can hinder the participation of small and medium-sized users.

In an active financial ecosystem, small and medium-sized users are incredibly valuable. 80% of A-shares trading volume comes from retail investors with only 20% of assets. More importantly, only a financial ecosystem which can accommodate different sized users is a healthy ecosystem where everybody has the right and opportunity to become rich. It is precisely these small and micro users who traditional finance despises who have triggered the wave of digital assets and supported the start of the blockchain world.

Farmland’s easy-to-use, low-cost characteristics aim to solve the difficulties of small and medium-sized users who hold only a small amount of BTC. Participating in Defi and learning about cross-chain can be troublesome and the handling fee may never be recovered. If you do not participate in Defi, there will be no gains based on the currency standard. You will then ultimately be reduced to a bystander of the wealth creation party.

Farmland’s second step is eligibility for improving some of the current underlying technology problems of cross-chain. Using the common node mortgage cross-chain method as an example, if node collateral is mainly project tokens, as the volatility of project tokens is often greater than that of Bitcoin, the project side’s tokens may fall sharply, and the previous multiple mortgages can still lead to insolvency, causing a greater risk of node malfeasance.

In addition, at the product level, Farmland performs some auxiliary functions around the objectives of entry products, including multi-chain based asset statistics panels.

Phase I products have currently passed Know Chuangyu and Certik’s auditing process. Users can start mining BTC on the official website, www.farmland.finance. The Curve mining pool is open, and the DODO mining pool will be opened shortly. If you are interested, please join the Telegram group to discuss this further: https://t.me/farmlandfi.