Flare Network, an innovative Layer 1 blockchain that aims to connect all blockchain networks today announced it had received the Algorand Foundation SupaGrant to develop a Bitcoin bridge.

Flare Network Receives Algorand Foundation SupaGrant

In an announcement made today, the Algorand Foundation said the Flare Network had been awarded an Algorand Foundation SupaGrant to develop a Bitcoin bridge to foster the growth of a robust, diverse, and thriving Algorand ecosystem.

It should be recalled that security continues to be a major menace in the blockchain ecosystem as billions of dollars worth of digital assets have been stolen from blockchain bridges in recent months. A major reason for such large-scale theft is that blockchain bridges are often more centralized than the blockchains they connect.

Accordingly, the significance of a liquid cross-chain future cannot be overstated and as a result new and more secure blockchain approaches are being developed.

One such example is the bridge being developed by Flare and Algorand. The Bitcoin-focused bridge will facilitate secure trustless interoperability between ALGO and BTC. In addition, it will support non-smart contract tokens such as DOGE, LTC, XRP, and XLM.

The Bridge Will Use Flare’s Innovative Approach

It’s worthy of note that the new Bitcoin bridge will be developed using Flare’s innovative decentralized interoperability protocols – the Flare Time Series Oracle (FTSO) and the State Connector.

For the uninitiated, the FTSO offers rapidly updating decentralized price data to the Flare network. In the same vein, the State Connector allows the state of any open system, both on and off-chain, to be trustlessly proven to smart contracts on Flare.

The aforementioned composable technologies allow Flare to deliver secure universal interoperability between any two chains. This means that the bridge can potentially be upgraded to also support interoperability between ALGO and any other smart contract Layer-1.

Commenting on the development, Sean Rowan, CTO and Co-founder of Flare, said:

“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.”

Similar sentiments were echoed by Daniel Oon, Head of DeFi, Algorand Foundation, noted:

“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.”