Introducing our Latest Karura Metapool

Swim Protocol

Jul 13, 2022 • 3 min read

Karura joins Swim’s growing list of supported chains enabling native stablecoin swaps across the eight ecosystems, with Acala coming soon!

We’re happy to announce our integration with Karura to provide liquidity for $USDT to proliferate DeFi activities. With the introduction of the new Karura $USDT metapool, Swimmers can swap native stablecoins across Karura, Solana, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, Fantom and Aurora!

Once Acala is ready to launch on Wormhole and $aUSD is fungible across Karura and Acala, we will also be simultaneously adding support for $aUSD across both Karura and Acala.

Quick intro on Polkadot, Acala, Kusama and Karura ecosystem

Polkadot is a multichain network, what we would call a Layer 0 (Solana is a Layer 1), and its relay chain is built with Substrate, a modular blockchain framework. This means any blockchains created using Substrate is Polkadot compatible, including the parachains.

The relay chain is responsible for the network’s security, consensus and interoperability between parachains.

Parachains are modular, often application-specific blockchains that connect to Polkadot, with interactions and transactions happening independently and concurrently.

Kusama is an independent network to Polkadot, but they share several fundamental key features (i.e. it is also a relay chain). This is because Kusama takes a lot of early versions of code from Polkadot, has faster upgrades due to shorter referendums for on chain governance: proposals, upgrades, etc, allowing it to evolve faster.

Essentially Kusama can be viewed as a ‘canary network’, where it sits between a testnet and Polkadot, allowing full deployment into a community run, experimental blockchain used in the real world with real value, before deploying into Polkadot. As Polkadot upgrades frequently come to Kusama first, maintaining projects on both chains means teams can test how they perform post upgrade.

Currently no bridge exists between Kusama and Polkadot, but Wormhole will soon serve as a bridge between the two relay chains via Acala and Karura. The Polkadot team will also soon release a Substrate-native trustless bridge to connect the two multi-chain ecosystems, but exact timing for this is not known.

Karura is a parachain on Kusama and the canary network for Acala - the primary DeFi and liquidity parachain of the Polkadot ecosystem. Karura provides liquid staking for Kusama’s native token KSM, a multi-collaterized stablecoin aUSD, and an AMM DEX that provides efficient liquidations for aUSD and several trading liquidity pools. Karura and Acala have recently launched ‘Phase 1’ of their ‘EVM+’, providing a place for Ethereum-compatible DApps to launch with the ability to tap into customizations made at the Substrate level of the parachains.

What Karura is to Kusama, Acala is to Polkadot. Both networks provide the ability to mint the aUSD stablecoin, and similar to Kusama’s relationship to Polkadot, Karura provides a real-time environment for all Acala product releases, upgrades, and experiments before the code is pushed live on Acala.

How to obtain gas and $USDT

Please go to the gitbook here to learn how to obtain $KAR, $KSM and $USDT on Karura!

Happy Swimming!

About Swim

Swim is a multi-chain AMM for native assets, designed to make bridging as easy as possible. Our protocol eliminates the need for wrapped assets by allowing users to swap from a native asset on one chain to a native asset on any other supported chain. Swim’s solution reduces the barriers faced by users when performing cross-chain transactions, enabling true interoperability between various blockchain networks.

About Karura & Acala

Acala is a decentralized finance network powering the aUSD ecosystem. The core product, Acala USD, is a decentralized, multi-collateral, crypto-backed stablecoin serving as the native stablecoin of the Polkadot ecosystem. Acala’s Ethereum-compatible blockchain has built-in DeFi protocols for application developers to leverage, including a trustless staking derivative (liquid DOT — LDOT), a decentralized exchange, and the EVM+, a hybrid EVM offering fully Ethereum-compatible development environment plus full compatibility with Substrate. Karura is Acala’s sister parachain built to serve the Kusama ecosystem and shares the same codebase as Acala.