Matic Cross-chain Bridge Router Protocol Ushers in the New Wave of Cross-chain Service

From the Outbreak of DeFi to the Progress of Public Chain Ecosystem

Judy_Host of EncryptClub: The upcoming launch of Router Protocol reminds me of the bull market in 2017, in which the speculation wave started from mainstream to public chain and then to cross-chains projects, incredibly similar to the current bull run. However, compared with the 2017 speculation which only touched the theory as there were neither many public chains nor great crosschain/parachain chain demands, the current relatively-diverse public chains ecosystem appeals for numerous crosschain projects to fulfill DeFi asset transfer among different chains.

Thanks for coming, Ramani Ramachandran. Could you introduce yourself to the community?

Ramani :

Hi everyone, I am the CEO of Router Protocol. We are a cross chain liquidity aggregator, focusing on aggregating liquidity across Layer 1 and Layer 2 chains. I have been in crypto since 2014. Previously I was in banking and investments, based out of Singapore, London and NYC. I have an MBA from MIT Sloan.

Our team has previously built multiple blockchain and crypto products including the world’s first stablecoin DEX with a grant from the 0x foundation. We also run a very popular newsletter called Satoshiand.co. So Routerprotocol.com is the project we are currently building out and focusing on Routerprotocol.com.

Q1: As the first crosschain bridge, what Router Protocol is？Ramani, could you introduce Router for us?

Currently, the liquidity is fragmented across different blockchains and there is no chain that acts as a superhighway to allow transition from one chain to another. Router fixes this by offering a superhighway to distributed liquidity islands.

With Router you will have the ability to seamlessly traverse between blockchains. Also it is low fees, highly scalable. Also the key vision here is：In traditional markets — you are necessarily limited to trading in one pair on one venue — like a tech stock on Nasdaq or an ETF on Frankfurt for instance. With the Web 3.0 crypto markets there is no need to be subjected to such silos. You can seamlessly trade across chains, any pair you like .

Q2：Those who don’t experience the 2017 bull market may be unfamiliar with crosschain bridge, could you tell us the function of crosschain bridge, and why it is indispensable to DeFi and public chain Ecosystem?

I sort of touched upon that in the answer above with the comparison to traditional exchanges and how you cannot trade across them. Let me expand upon that a little bit more.

Ultimately, crypto ( and money in general) is all energy, the ability to do something, to create something. When we send money to a friend, when a company moves money from Shanghai to Beijing for a project, in both cases what is happening is a transfer of energy, as the recipient effectively now has the power to use this money (direct this energy) to do whatever they want to do and create something new. At a core, all exchanges can therefore be seen as energy transfer mechanisms.

Now, in the traditional world, you have all these rent seeking agencies who, in return for transmitting something for you on a venue controlled by them, take a fee from you as economic rent. The promise of crypto was that these middle men would be eliminated

Unfortunately what we have is a situation where Ethereum, while intended to be the fuel powering a global supercomputer, has now itself become a means of speculation. This has led to tremendous increase in gas costs and congestion in decentralised exchanges and in the ETH network in general. There are other chains that are trying to address these issues, called Layer 2 chains. Thus we have a situation where liquidity is going to be fragmented across multiple L1 and L2 chains. ETH itself has multiple scalability efforts around its beacon chain iteration. Then we have Matic, Avalanche OMG Optimistic Rollups etc.

So when liquidity is so dispersed and fragmented，you will need approaches that unify and aggregate this liquidity and simplify this user experience. We are simplifying the process of crosschain liquidity like you might book a flight on Expedia or any other portal，just choose source and destination.

Q3：Bridging Matic and ETH is just Router’s first step, far away from its goal. The efficient assets liquidity in DeFi ecosystem requires more cross-chain bridges among different public chains, what is the next crosschain bride Router will deploy? Will Router maintain certain financial properties when conducting the crosschain bridge function?

The way we see it, individual chains are like cities, with their own individual liquidity and micro economies. There will be a need to build the connecting infra across these, the bridges and the roads and the highways.

And Router’s primary vision is to address this enabling infra.To achieve this vision we are engaging with multiple existing and developing partners and chains

Whenever we see that a specific chain does not have a native DEX or an AMM we sometimes build that out,This is what we did with Matic, the layer 2 protocol.We built an exchange called Dfyn Exchange.Dfyn.network

On Matic which enables instant, gasless swaps,Dfyn also has farms that you can harvest in via Router.Of course Router has other farms as well,Of course Router has other farms as well.All available at spacefarm.routerprotocol.com

Q4：Cosmos is a universe-grade crosschain service project born in the last bull market, what cooperation has Router reached with these existed crosschain bridge projects? What is the advantage of Router Protocol?

Great question — We are speaking to multiple chains including Cosmos and Polkadot.

We are working closely with the Web3 foundation to explore how the emerging web 3 foundation framework including para chains and Kusama can be leveraged as well.

Also we will shortly announce partnerships with Avalanche and a couple of other emerging protocols. As mentjoned earlier, the key is to work collaboratively and build the connecting bridges between chains. Not necessarily compete with any specific chain or venue.

Q5：I saw on twitter that users can mine Router by staking in ROOK-ETH liquidity pool. May i know the relationship between ROOK and Router Protocol as well as their respective role in Matic ecosystem?

We have partnerships with a number of platforms as I mentioned — including Matic, EasyFi, Sushi, Uniswap etc in addition to Rook. We think Rook is an exciting token with a lot of potential and a very strong user community, and are happy to provide a farm for Rook users to come and stake Rook and earn Route token.

Here comes free QA session, guest can choose 1 lucky question to give brief answer.

User：Why built Router on Matic instead of others?

Ramani: Great question. While the Router framework is initially on Matic (Dfyn), it plans to extend to other chains and strongly leverage polka para chains. Matic is a great partner that supported us through our early days and has a great technology and a great community.

Judy_Host of EncryptClub:Thank Ramani for joining our AMA and sharing so much valuable information with us. Thank you all for watching this AMA. EncryptClub will work hard and bring more wonderful content for you in future.