Waves sets up $3M grant fund to promote cross-chain interoperability

The Waves Association announced on Wednesday a new grant program for cross-chain interoperability development.

The pool consists of 1 million Waves tokens, worth approximately $3 million as of press time. Projects will be eligible for grants of up to 300,000 Waves to develop solutions for interoperability and cross-chain communication.

There will be three separate types of grants: open grants, grants distributed through hackathons and Waves-focused grants. Sten Laureyssens, strategic advisor at the Waves Association, explained to Cointelegraph that open grants will have a wide scope:

"For the open grant category, the grants are open to a wide variety of interoperability projects, that don't necessarily have to be connected to Waves. We're looking for creative solutions to connect existing blockchains and dApps."
The latter two types of grants will have to adhere to certain requirements, which makes it likely that the Waves blockchain will be involved in some form. Nevertheless, Laureyssens said that the association is planning to sponsor blockchain-agnostic solutions as well.

Sasha Ivanov, president of the Waves Association, threw a subtle jab at certain types of interoperability solutions offered today:

"Waves Association aims to support independent developers working on interoperability solutions — especially those thinking outside the box. Solving interoperability by adding a dedicated blockchain and native token as an additional layer would only lead to more complexity, undercutting the potential of the proposed solution."
Grants will be stipulated and decided on by members of the Waves Association, though the disbursement of funds will be automated through a decentralized application.

Waves is a smart contract-enabled blockchain platform competing with the likes of Ethereum and EOS. Its developers have often criticized the mainstream approaches to certain tenets of blockchain technology, notably misleading claims of transactional capacity.

The Waves blockchain was recently used with apparent success in a Russian local election, following a disappointing performance by a similar system developed by BitFury.

Swiss National Bank and BIS announce digital currency trial by 2020 end

The Swiss central bank and the Bank for International Settlements have announced plans to jointly trial a central bank digital currency by the end of 2020, in the latest development in the global race to CBDCs.

The plan was revealed by Benoit Coeure of the Bank for International Settlements earlier this week at a summit in Shanghai. According to local press reports, Coeure said the Swiss National Bank and the BIS would launch the currency in proof-of-concept before the end of this year.

Head of the Innovation Hub at the BIS, tasked with researching CBDCs, Coeure said the Swiss proof of concept would be a precursor to experimenting with the currency in retail settings. The trial will also allow the banks to see how the technology syncs with existing payment systems, as well as providing more effective routes to monitoring compliance.

Coeure said the Bank for International Settlements was already working with several other international central banks on similar projects, helping develop their central bank digital currencies. Among those named were the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank of Thailand, both keen to explore CBDCs for cross-border digital currency transactions.

The announcement follows on from the partnership between the Swiss National Bank and the Bank for International Settlements, first struck back in October 2019. Welcoming the partnership at the time, the Swiss National bank said the new digital currency would be primarily used in settlement between banks and other institutions.

"This new form of digital central bank money would be aimed at facilitating the settlement of tokenized assets between financial institutions."

The move comes at a time of increasing efforts across the world's major central banks to move towards CBDCs, with plans already developing in China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan and elsewhere to launch state-backed digital currencies.

Waves and Fantom enter collaboration

Joint work will be focused on developing a broader DeFi ecosystem using the Gravity cross-chain communication protocol.
We are excited to announce a collaboration between Waves and Fantom. Waves and Fantom are committed to building an open ecosystem between different chains, based on the Gravity protocol, which is essential to the DeFi industry's wider success.

Under the collaboration deal, WAVES, the native utility token of the Waves ecosystem, will join Fantom's DeFi ecosystem as collateral for minting synthetic assets, including fUSD, Fantom's stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.
WAVES holders will be able to use fMint to access fUSD and other synthetic assets, which can be used with other Fantom DeFi products. Specifically, fLend allows users to lend and borrow assets, while fTrade allows users to trade them.

For instance, If you want to go long BTC (without losing exposure to your WAVES collateral), mint fUSD against your WAVES in fMint and use the fUSD to buy fBTC (synthetic BTC) in fTrade. Sell the fBTC for fUSD later to repay the minted debt. Once you've repaid any outstanding minted debt, you can unlock your collateral to withdraw.

About Gravity
Gravity is a decentralized cross-chain and oracle network based on a truly blockchain-agnostic protocol for communication between blockchains and with the outside world, working with the native token economies.
Gravity provides multi-purpose cross-chain interaction without introducing a native token. The true blockchain agnostic no-token approach creates a more inclusive, open ecosystem, while addressing future scaling/stability issues.

About Fantom
The Fantom Foundation is committed to building technology that is open-source, decentralized, DAG-based distributed ledgers with aBFT consensus. Fantom aims to create fast, secure and scalable technologies across various industries, allowing organizations, businesses, and individuals to develop decentralized and secure applications, solving real-world problems.

Ripple motion to dismiss class action lawsuit only partly granted

Cross border payment remittance company Ripple has been part-granted a motion to dismiss some of the claims brought against it by investors, as the firm battles an ongoing class-action lawsuit over alleged securities fraud.

Investors claim Ripple and the company's CEO Brad Garlinghouse failed to register XRP with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and then went on to make misleading statements about the token, leading to the eventual class action suit.

In the U.S. District Court of Northern California last Friday, Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton granted two legs of Ripple's motion for dismissal, with 10 claims total outstanding against the firm.

The judge said that plaintiff Bradley Sostack had provided insufficient evidence to support two of the claims, which relate in particular to purportedly false statements made by the firm back in 2017.

However, for the most part, the judge refused to dismiss the claims against the company, including over misleading advertisements for XRP and allegations of an illegal securities issue.

One particular claim found that Garlinghouse had misrepresented his personal investments in XRP to investors, telling prospective customers that he was personally "very, very long XRP as a percentage of my personal balance sheet." In reality, Garlinghouse had sold off substantial parts of his investment in XRP, adding up to millions of dollars.

Other claims alleged to be misleading included that banks were using XRP for liquidity, and that token demand was being driven by its "value proposition."

Based on this and other of the claims still standing, Sostack now has leave to proceed with the action against Ripple and Garlinghouse.

While the decision by Judge Hamilton leaves Ripple in a marginally better position, the firm will now be expected to account for the remaining claims in the class action lawsuit.