Overview of Binance Labs Season 7 Incubation First Batch Projects

Author: Nan Zhi, Odaily Planet Daily

Yesterday, Binance Labs announced the first batch of projects selected for Season 7 incubation, including Astherus, CYCLE NETWORK, DILL, and EigenExplorer. Their concepts and businesses are quite cutting-edge, and the first two have already launched early interaction activities linked to future airdrops. Odaily will analyze the business, features, and interaction activities of each protocol in this article.

Astherus: The Liquidity Hub for LRT Assets

Protocol Business

The re-staking market for BTC and ETH has a space of up to $20 billion and is still growing rapidly. Re-staking allows blockchain validators to deposit ETH or liquid staking tokens (LST) into the platform to earn APR rewards and secure the network. However, Astherus believes that most re-staking protocols in the market have not seriously considered: what is the utility of re-staked assets?

According to official information, Astherus is building a comprehensive DApp ecosystem for re-staked assets like LST and LRT. Users' assets can not only earn staking APR but also be used for trading spot and derivatives, stablecoin yield, and other profit strategies. Astherus supports multi-chain re-staked assets, including Arbitrum, BNB Chain, and Ethereum.

The Astherus protocol consists of three modular layers:

• DApp Layer: Includes various DApps for practical use cases of re-staked assets, such as the cryptocurrency spot and derivatives exchange AstherEx and the DeFi, CeFi profit strategy protocol AstherEarn.
• DeFi Infrastructure Layer: Aggregates liquidity from multiple LST and LRT pools, enabling the construction of stablecoin and spot yield aggregation protocols and innovative derivatives clearinghouses based on this infrastructure, while also allowing developers to easily build LST-based DApps.
• L1 Chain: Asther Layer is a Layer 1 blockchain built using the Cosmos SDK, which will connect to multiple other chains, with specific details to be disclosed later.

Interaction Activities

A month ago, Astherus launched the Stage 0 interaction activity aimed at increasing the protocol's TVL, explicitly stating that the activity's points are related to future airdrops.

The activity is very simple and straightforward; users only need to deposit specific assets into the protocol, with supported chains including BNB Chain and Ethereum mainnet.

Supported assets include BNB, USDT, BTC, ETH, lisUSD, slis BNB, WB ETH, STONE, CAKE, LISTA on BNB Chain, and USDT, BTC, ETH, USDC, rs ETH on Ethereum.

Among them, staking slisBNB, lisUSD, LISTA, STONE, and rsETH will earn an additional 15% score bonus.

(Note: Binance announced today that slisBNB deposited in its Web3 wallet will also count towards Launchpool, achieving a triple benefit.)

CYCLE NETWORK

According to Binance Labs, CYCLE NETWORK is a universal, secure, and verifiable chain abstraction that provides a bridge-less aggregated liquidity network for all blockchains (whether L1, L2, EVM, or non-EVM).

Project Vision, Functions, and Features

With the rapid development of Web3 and blockchain technology, numerous different blockchain platforms have emerged, each with its own protocols and assets, leading to liquidity being scattered across different chains, affecting user experience and market operation efficiency.

In a multi-chain environment, users need to manage their assets through complex bridging and solutions, while developers need to redeploy their applications across different ecosystems to meet the needs of various users. Additionally, cross-chain operations pose security risks and complexities.

Cycle Network is an innovative solution aimed at achieving interoperability, security, and efficiency between blockchains. It utilizes Verifiable State Aggregation (VSA) technology to construct a universal, secure, and verifiable on-chain abstraction architecture. In this way, Cycle Network enables seamless interactions between different blockchain platforms without relying on traditional cross-chain bridging technologies.

Core features of Cycle Network include:

• Decentralized Application Center Infrastructure (DACI): Facilitates the development of decentralized applications and the popularization of Web3.
• Omni State Channel Indexer (OSCI): A decentralized multi-chain indexer that enables trustless verification and determination of Cycle ledger states.
• Zero-Knowledge Hardware Acceleration: Improves efficiency and scalability by accelerating the generation and verification of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) through dedicated hardware.
• Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE): Allows computations to be performed on encrypted data without decryption, enhancing data privacy and security.

Points System

Cycle Network's current interactions are all external joint activities, previously collaborating with projects like BEVM, Macaron, and IoTex to launch activities, with the latest being a joint activity with Tap Up, where completing tasks can earn Cycle points and Tap Up's U prize pool.

The activity method is also very simple; users only need to perform actions like linking social media and following, so this section will not elaborate further.

DILL: Enhancing DA Network Scalability by a Factor of 100

Dill is a next-generation data availability (DA) network with high scalability and security. It aligns with the full sharding technology solutions in Ethereum's future roadmap, employing core technologies such as subnet sharding, 2D erasure coding, KZG (Kate-Zaverucha-Goldberg), and DA sampling. Dill offers 10 to 100 times the scalability compared to other current DA networks.

Dill is a permissionless, decentralized proof-of-stake (PoS) network that supports millions of validators. It allows for the staking and re-staking of Bitcoin (BTC) to participate in PoS network consensus, further enhancing the network's security.

Financing

On July 16, the modular network DILL announced the completion of its Pre-Seed round of financing, led by FSL Ecosystem, with participation from LayerZero Labs, Modular Capital, Pendle co-founder TN Lee, and Manta's victorji.eth, among others. The specific amount has not been disclosed.

It is reported that Dill is a data availability layer proposing a paradigm-shifting scalability solution, utilizing the same technology stack as the Ethereum Go client to ensure high performance, with its validity proofs guaranteed by aggregating KZG polynomial commitments for fast finality. As applications accumulate a large number of user behavior data points, data sovereignty is crucial for these applications. In extreme cases, when a permissioned DA (e.g., a DA with only 100 nodes) stops operating for some reason, most chains will be unable to do anything, while Dill will allow consumers of any application chain to participate in a permissionless network through light clients, thus protecting the data sovereignty of products.

EigenExplorer: A Nested Doll or Another New Asset Class?

EigenExplorer is a platform dedicated to serving the core entities within the EigenLayer ecosystem, including re-stakers, AVS, and Operators. EigenExplorer features an innovative asset class specifically designed for the EigenLayer ecosystem called Liquid AVS Token (LAT).

The launch of LAT aims to address the current issue where users cannot directly support AVS. Users must allocate their staked assets through operators or use the LRT platform to control AVS participation and reward distribution. LAT allows users to bypass the operator selection step and directly support any AVS of their choice.

Features of LAT include:

• Direct re-staking to an AVS;
• Automatic operator selection;
• A liquid token that can be used for other DeFi activities while maintaining staking status;
• Enhanced utility, efficiency, and user experience. Users can build their own liquid re-staking portfolios to match different risk preferences, choosing supported protocols based on their preferences rather than bundling staking contributions for general validation.

According to official tweets, the testnet will launch in mid-August 2024.