Acala Enables DOT Bridge in Preparation for DeFi Economy

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Acala

5 min readFeb 7, 2022

Earn an ‘Early Adopter’ NFT by Bridging Your DOT to Acala for Additional DeFi Utility.

We’re nearly one month out from the genesis launch of Acala and the team is quickly approaching the end of Phase 2, as outlined in the launch roadmap. With the distribution of ACA and LCDOT complete, and token transfers enabled, Acala is now ready to begin launching its DeFi protocols while inviting DOT liquidity to arrive on the layer-1 network.

Read on for details on how to utilize the one-directional DOT bridge, what to expect during the Early Adopter Phase, and how to earn an exclusive Early Adopter NFT by being among the first to engage with Acala’s DeFi protocols.

Bridging DOT to Acala

As laid out in our launch roadmap, Acala is enabling each component of its new financial infrastructure in a phased approach to account for any technical dependencies on Polkadot.

One of these dependencies is the XCM Bridge Infrastructure, a component of the Polkadot ecosystem that enables Cross-Consensus Communication between parachains.

Though it’s clear that Polkadot’s core team is nearing completion of XCM, it’s expected that it will take an indeterminate amount of time to appropriately test and deploy for the broader ecosystem. But because Acala is a parachain building financial infrastructures centered around DOT, our team was excited to take on the challenge to build an interim solution — as our community has made clear its desire to bring DOT liquidity to Acala as soon as possible.

Today we’re pleased to announce the launch of a one-directional bridge to support DOT transfers to Acala, a non-custodial solution endorsed by Parity.

Acala Enables DOT Bridge

With the one-directional DOT bridge live, users can now begin to transfer their DOT liquidity to Acala in preparation for the parachain’s fast-approaching DeFi protocols and liquidity mining incentive programs. The bridge is non-custodial, and will be fully-compatible once XCM becomes available. At that point, there will be no migration required for DOT holders who will be able to utilize the XCM technology to support two-directional transfers.

Please Note: The one-directional DOT bridge only enables the transfer of DOT to Acala, with no immediate way to transfer out, as users will only be able to exit with their liquidity when the platform is completely enabled. With this in mind, it’s advisable that only our most DeFi-savvy supporters participate during this Early Adopter Phase.

See details on the Early Adopter incentives program below.

Navigating the Early Adopter Phase

In the coming weeks and months, we can expect a multitude of protocols and operations to be made live, including:

Acala Dollar (aUSD), a decentralized, multi-collatateralized stablecoin that enables users to mint aUSD using collateral such as ACA, DOT, BTC, or ETH. Minting aUSD adds additional utility to existing assets while enabling development teams to integrate the Polkadot-native stablecoin to their DEXs, money markets, DeFi platforms, EVMs, and more.
Acala Swap, a trustless cross-chain exchange, which will feature trading pairs and liquidity pools beginning with LCDOT/DOT, aUSD/DOT, and ACA/aUSD. (Details of bootstrap periods and liquidity mining incentives to be revealed soon.)
DOT Liquid Staking, a DApp that enables users to earn staking rewards on their DOT while maintaining access to its liquidity through receipt of LDOT, an unlocked, yield-earning token that can be used as collateral for an aUSD stablecoin loan, for trading within Acala Swap, or for becoming a liquidity provider (LP) in future LDOT pools.
Acala EVM+, an Ethereum-compatible, smart-contract platform that not only enables deployment of Solidity builds with familiar toolsets (Metamask, Truffle, Waffle), but also delivers chain-level features unique to Substrate: including customizable economy policy; flexible fees, which allow users to pay transaction fees with any of the supported tokens; on-chain auto scheduler (e.g. Keepers); native cross-chain capabilities; an on-chain governance apparatus; and full-upgradability (without contract migrations).
Various Ecosystem Projects. In addition to its DeFi primitives, and layer-1 smart contract platform, Acala’s core functions as a decentralized monetary reserve primed to support the new digital economy. The community can expect to see a growing ecosystem of projects launching on Acala: cross-bridge bridges, yield engines, multi-chain lending & borrowing protocols, and community reserve DAOs.

The vision is clear, but it’s important to underscore that we’re still early days in the launch process and we anticipate that some platform features will initially launch with limitations, specifically, an unknown timeline for XCM’s two-directional DOT transferability.

Introducing the Early Adopter Program

With these limitations in mind, we’re pleased to invite our community of DeFi-savvy users to transfer DOT to Acala and try the apps, and in return earn an exclusive Early Adopter NFT through our Early Adopter Program.

In addition to earning an NFT, Early Adopters also gain the opportunity to be among the earliest participants in liquidity pools and incentive programs, which will be announced throughout the duration of the program.

The Early Adopter program is meant to give the most advanced Acala users the opportunity to gain experience with Acala while the platform moves toward fully enabling every feature, but it’s best suited for those who have a clear understanding of the roadmap, knowledge of Acala (or Karura|) protocols, and awareness of XCM bridge limitations.

To qualify for the NFT reward, participants must complete all of the qualifying on-chain events outlined here on Acala’s Wiki between 12:00am UTC Feb 7, 2022 and 11:59pm UTC March 28, 2022.

Get Started

Review the steps to Transfer DOT to Acala on the guide here.

Learn more about qualifying on-chain activity on our Early Adopter Program guide and sign up for an alert on your Early Adopter status on our website.

Join the Acala Discord for further assistance and check out today’s YouTube Live for more exciting announcements.

About Acala

Acala is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform optimized for DeFi and scaling DApps to Polkadot. The blockchain has built-in DeFi protocols for application developers to leverage, including a decentralized stablecoin (Acala Dollar — aUSD), a trustless staking derivatives (liquid DOT — LDOT), and a decentralized exchange.