Cross-Chain Monthly: July 2023

Welcome to the Cross-Chain Monthly, Wormhole’s monthly update on all news, events, and developments in the Wormhole & Cross-Chain ecosystem. In this edition we'll cover:

1. Wormhole Gateway: Wormhole enters the Cosmos and plans to launch an appchain
2. Updates for builders: Automatic Relayers are live, the first Wormhole Fellows are here, Encode Hacker House recap
3. Powered by Wormhole: tBTC redemptions are live, Pike and Synonym  announce cross-chain primitives powered by Wormhole

Let's get into it!

✨ Introducing Wormhole Gateway

On July 21st, at Osmocon, the Wormhole Foundation announced the launch of Wormhole Gateway -  an application-specific blockchain, powered by the Cosmos SDK.

Gateway’s purpose is to help broaden access (and bring liquidity) to the Cosmos ecosystem while also improving Wormhole’s security and sovereignty. Gateway will enable all of Wormhole’s 23+ connected blockchains across 6 runtimes to be connected to Cosmos via one simple IBC integration. This will enable users to bridge funds to any Cosmos appchain with zero additional bridging fees.

• Read the full announcement (blog post)
• A proposal on the @osmosiszone forum has been submitted to add Wormhole as a canonical bridge service provider (BSP) for Osmosis. (tweet, forum)

📡 Introducing Automatic Relayers

With the introduction of Wormhole’s Automatic Relayers, developers are now able to send cross-chain messages without needing to develop or manage any off-chain components on their own.

• Read the full announcement (blog post)
• Deploy a fully-working cross-chain dapp using a single solidity contract by cloning this repo (github)

💍 Welcoming the first Wormhole Fellows

It’s time to welcome Cohort 1 of the Wormhole Fellowship! Over 180 applications from more than 20 countries applied, and of these, 10 candidates have earned the honor of being named in our initial cohort.

• Meet them! (tweet)
• Want to be part of the next Cohort? Apply here: (application form)

🤝 Powered By Wormhole

• tBTC redemptions are now live: Bitcoin holders can now permissionlessly transfer and use BTC within the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem (tweet)
• The Wormhole Foundation has engaged @strangelovelabs to expand Wormhole's presence in @cosmos and advancing the reach of the interchain ecosystem at large! (tweet)
• Okutrade builds with Wormhole (tweet)
• MovEX builds with Wormhole (tweet)
• Synonym Finance builds with Wormhole (tweet)
• Pike Finance builds with Wormhole (tweet)
• Aftermath.fi builds with Wormhole (tweet)
• Nexa announces the Chain-Agnostic Token (CAT) standard, powered by Wormhole (tweet)
• Twitter Space with Nexa and Altcoinsherpa to talk about the future of cross-chain (tweet)
• Moonbeam Routed Liquidity using Wormhole (tweet)

👨‍💻 Wormhole Hackathon at Encode Hacker House

The Wormhole Hackathon at the @encodeclub Hacker House was an absolute blast! Over four days of hacking, we saw speakers from 17+ protocols, had 13 project submissions and awarded over $100k in bounties. (tweet)

💻 Tech Developments

• Wormhole Connect's v0.0.7 is here: This release integrates @Aptos_Network, allowing any Aptos dev to seamlessly add bridging directly into their dapp in as few as 3 lines of code. (tweet)
• We're building in the open. Always. Below, you can find July's Github stats. (GitHub)

⏭️ What’s next?

Subscribe to the Wormhole Newsletter and be among the first to learn about new announcements!

Coming up in August: BASE chain launch and Wormhole Gateway mainnet launch.

👋 Join the Wormhole Community

If you have questions, need support, or simply want to connect, join the Wormhole community and keep up-to-date with our upcoming announcements. We’re always happy to hear your feedback.

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