SatoshiPay, a blockchain-powered payment solution built on Stellar, announced that it has received a research and development grant from Stellar Development Foundation to start the development of the Pendulum network — a new second-layer blockchain that connects Stellar to the wider DeFi ecosystem by adding smart contract support and bridges to Ethereum and Polkadot.
Connecting Stellar to the DeFi Ecosystem
Stellar is an open-source network that makes it possible to easily create, send and trade digital representations of all forms of crypto and fiat currencies. Launched in 2015, the Stellar network now processes over 6 million operations daily and is widely used in the payments space and for asset tokenization. On the Stellar network, businesses and developers benefit from near-instant settlement within 5 seconds and transaction fees that are fractions of a cent.
With its unique focus on fiat token payments, Stellar is perfectly suited to serve as the missing link between traditional finance and the growing DeFi industry. To achieve this, the Stellar network needs to support custom smart contract capabilities — a premise for advanced DeFi apps — and to establish bridges that connect it to other relevant blockchains in the ecosystem. This is exactly what SatoshiPay’s new project Pendulum aims to accomplish.
Stellar Development Foundation Grant for Pendulum
In order to bring more complex features to the Stellar network without sacrificing the network’s efficiency, SatoshiPay recently proposed Pendulum, a suite of open, decentralized protocols on which smart contracts can be developed and executed. The Pendulum chain acts as a second layer on top of Stellar, with additional bridges to two of the most popular smart contract platforms, Ethereum and Polkadot.
“SatoshiPay has a proven track record as a key Stellar network and ecosystem participant, and we couldn’t be more excited that they are exploring an opportunity to connect Stellar to the thriving DeFi ecosystem. Pendulum has the potential to build bridges that increase Stellar’s interoperability with other networks, which could enable new use cases and help unlock the world’s economic potential by making money more fluid, markets more open, and people more empowered.”
– Justin Rice, VP of Ecosystem at Stellar Development Foundation
After completing the initial proof of concept, Pendulum will be further developed into a full-fledged decentralized layer-2 blockchain that will be accessible for everyone.
“With Pendulum, SatoshiPay is entering the protocol space, which is an exciting opportunity for us to drive forward permissionless innovation and to increase our impact on the blockchain ecosystem. We’ve been discussing options to execute arbitrary smart contracts with the Stellar team for quite some time and we are delighted to receive their technical input and financial support for this. We aim to bring together the best of two worlds — DeFi applications as we know them from Ethereum with Stellar’s compliant fiat tokens. It will be exciting to see liquidity enclosed in Stellar’s $9 billion market cap and the $7 trillion foreign exchange market interact with the booming DeFi economy via Pendulum.”
– Meinhard Benn, CEO at SatoshiPay
Unlimited Opportunities for Stellar Users
The combination of the existing Stellar ecosystem around compliant payments, remittance, and asset tokenization with new smart contract capabilities open a multitude of new opportunities.
Leveraging Pendulum, Stellar-based services will be able to utilize all the different types of DeFi protocols with a focus on fiat tokens, including automated market makers (AMMs) that enable foreign exchange without middlemen, or lending protocols for instant on-demand liquidity in different currencies. All of these services can be connected to the traditional banking system via regulated and in many cases instant, local on-ramps and off-ramps on Stellar in a large and growing number of countries.
Fiat token holders on Stellar, such as individuals, institutions as well as services, will be able to put their funds to work, for example by depositing them into lending pools or by providing liquidity to AMMs.
The proposed bridges to the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems will further foster the integration of traditional financial services with the booming DeFi ecosystem on these blockchain networks, allowing fiat tokens and liquidity to freely circulate between Stellar, Pendulum, and the wider DeFi economy.
Pendulum Layer Model
Pendulum for DTransfer
SatoshiPay’s cross-border money transfer service DTransfer relies on efficient foreign currency exchange, as source currency must be transparently exchanged to destination currency during the transfer process.
While this is technically possible via SDEX, Stellar’s built-in decentralized exchange order book protocol, it requires the active involvement of currency traders for each transfer as market makers, which can cause friction such as delays and outdated exchange rates.
The arrival of fully automated market-making via decentralized smart contracts solves this issue and Pendulum is being developed with services like DTransfer in mind. Once Pendulum is up and running with AMM smart contracts deployed, DTransfer will benefit from instant currency exchange at optimal rates.
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