Flare Network receives SupaGrant from Algorand Foundation to develop Bitcoin bridge 

The Algorand Foundation has been making waves in recent months. Crypto enthusiasts have dubbed Algorand as an “Ethereum killer” as the foundation tackles the unique issue of ‘blockchain trilemma’ – the limitations with scalability, transaction speed, and security.

Now, as part of its efforts to help fulfill the global promise of blockchain technology by leveraging the Algorand protocol and open-source software, The Algorand Foundation announced a grant partnership with Flare, a new Layer-1 protocol promising to “connect everything” by delivering cross-chain interoperability with the security of multi-chain.

The Algorand Foundation Bridges SupaGrant was awarded to Flare to help develop a Bitcoin bridge, helping support the growth of a robust, diverse, and thriving Algorand ecosystem.

In recent months, billions of dollars have been stolen from blockchain bridges because they are often more centralized and less secure than the blockchains they serve. It is therefore of critical importance for the development of a liquid cross-chain future that new and more secure bridging approaches are developed.

The bridge being built by Flare for Algorand is one such example. It will enable secure trustless interoperability between ALGO and BTC, plus other non-smart contract tokens such as DOGE, LTC, XRP, and XLM.

This new bridging approach will be constructed using Flare’s decentralized interoperability protocols – the Flare Time Series Oracle (FTSO) and the State Connector. The FTSO provides rapidly updating decentralized price data to the Flare network. And the State Connector allows the state of any open system, both on- and off-chain, to be trustlessly proven to smart contracts on Flare. These composable technologies enable Flare to deliver secure universal interoperability between any two chains, so the bridge could potentially be upgraded to also support interoperability between ALGO and any other smart contract Layer-1.

“We have a huge amount of respect for the Algorand team, and are excited to be developing a secure and trustless bridge for the Algorand ecosystem. The simple fact is that existing approaches to bridging have time and again been proven unsatisfactory. Flare’s new approach is an entirely different way, built from the ground up rather than being based on existing bridging technology – and will bring a breakthrough in secure, decentralized interoperability between any and all chains.” – Sean Rowan, CTO & Co-founder of Flare

“We’re excited to partner with Flare and welcome them to the Algorand ecosystem. Our grant partnership with Flare will develop key DeFi infrastructure with a bridge to Bitcoin, opening up opportunities for further collaboration and innovation. We look forward to our partnership bringing value to our respective communities.” – Daniel Oon, Head of DeFi, Algorand Foundation.

MIT professor Silvio Micali, who is also a Turing award-winning computer scientist and cryptographer, created The Algorand blockchain as a robust payment-focused blockchain. The Algorand blockchain is uniquely capable of delivering on the promise of a borderless global economy.

It achieves transaction throughputs at the speed of traditional finance, but with immediate finality, near-zero transaction costs, and on a 24/7 basis. Its carbon-neutral platform and unique pure proof-of-stake consensus mechanism solves for the “blockchain trilemma” by achieving both security and scalability on a decentralized protocol, and without a second of downtime since it went live in 2019.

The Algorand Foundation is dedicated to helping fulfill the global promise of the Algorand blockchain by taking responsibility for its sound monetary supply economics, decentralized governance, and healthy and prosperous open-source ecosystem.

Flare Network is building a new Layer 1 designed to safely connect to all blockchains. Combining EVM compatibility with breakthrough decentralized interoperability protocols, the ‘Flare Time Series Oracle’ and ‘State Connector’, Flare’s technology delivers secure, trustless, universal interoperability with high throughput, low fees and an ultra-low carbon footprint. Flare is scaling Web3 for the next generation and “connecting everything”.