MAP Protocol - a decentralized cross-chain interoperability protocol

Grant Proposal for MAP Protocol - a decentralized cross-chain interoperability protocol

Project Overview

MAP Protocol is a decentralized cross-chain interoperability protocol backed by a dedicated blockchain (MAP Chain) that safeguards cross-chain assets and empowers DeFi and other applications to achieve their full potential. Headquartered in Singapore, MAP Protocol has operation bases in SouthKorea, Hong Kong, the US, and Canada and is expanding quickly to become a truly distributed team.

Started in 2019, MAP Protocol has been invited to be on the Technical Board of IEEE Computer Society Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Standards Committee, the most prominent technology organization globally, to develop relevant international standards. MAP Protocol also received investment from Softbank Singapore, one of the largest venture capital companies in the world.

Launching in April 2022, the MAP chain is a fully EVM compatible public chain implementing PoS consensus mechanism. The MAP chain is explicitly designed for DeFi, and other Dapps to integrate cross-chain functionality to achieve cross-chain interoperability. Our testnet Makalu was launched Q32021 and has accumulated more than 108K addresses and counting.

Team

Frank Wen - Chief Scientist
Phil Lau - Tech Lead
Moore Lee - Core Developer
Vincent Cheng - Ecosystem Lead
Michelle Law - Business Lead
Ivy Ng - Marketing Lead

Goal

Develop a cross-chain bridge between MAP Mainnet and Harmony.

  • Deployment of MAP’s light client on Harmony
  • Deployment of MAP cross-chain bridge’s contract on Harmony
  • Deployment of Harmony’s light client on MAP
  • Create pending cross-chain token contracts on Harmony
  • Upgrading the relayer to support cross-chain between MAP and Harmony
  • Submit light client messages

Estimate

Grant: $60k

Duration: 3 months

Cost Breakdown and Milestones

  1. Develop a cross-chain bridge between MAP Mainnet and Harmony (Total: 60K)
  • Deployment of MAP’s light client on Harmony (15K)
  • Deployment of MAP cross-chain bridge’s contract on Harmony(10K)
  • Deployment of Harmony’s light client on MAP (15K)
  • Create pending cross-chain token contracts on Harmony (10K)
  • Upgrading the relayer to support cross-chain between MAP and Harmony (5K)
  • Submit light client messages (5K)
  1. Operation charges and gas fee subsidization (Total: 10K)

The majority of the budget will be dedicated to developing our cross-chain bridge between Harmony and MAP mainnet. Once the setup is done, Harmony will be connected to all of the MAP’s supported networks: BSC, ETH, and Polygon. MAP will support most of the EVM and non-EVM chains in the near future.

Part of the grant will be used to compensate for the operation charges and gas fee generated when Harmony’s current and potential users transfer assets via the MAP cross-chain service. Our low-cost transaction fee will attract residents from other chains to utilize our cross-chain bridge service, attract users and drive capital into Harmony’s ecosystem.

Advantages

Compared to other cross-chain projects, MAP Protocol has two distinct advantages:

1. Truly decentralization

Almost all cross-chain solutions in the market are a kind of third-party custodial bridge that is governed by a MPC or multi-signature wallet. The idea of MPCcan be dated back to the 1970s, long before the blockchain era, and is considered one of the most secure ways of guaranteeing security over a fund pool, for example, in the banking industry. Yet it is a centralized system and has serious security problems. One prominent example is if the majority of the custodians(usually a group of people designated by the project team) seek to steal the assets, they simply can – as they have enough keys. Or should a portion of the key holders required in the transaction elect to collude and steal funds, it would be impossible to verify who of the pool was responsible for the attack. Because of the systematic risks embedded in MPC or multi-sig, billions of digital assets have been stolen from those bridges - look at the recent Ronin bridge $612mm hack and previously Poly Network $611mmhack.

On the contrary, MAP Protocol uses a fully decentralized MAP chain backed by consensus and immutability to safeguard the assets in transition. Our model completely revamps the security level and achieves true decentralization in cross-chain space. MAP Prptocol’s unique and reliable trustless mechanism is realized in the following design:

  1. 100+ random staked validators via BFT protocol secured the fully EVM compatible blockchain “MAP chain” and laid a solid foundation.

  2. Bulletproof smart contract “Assets Vault” manages massive cross-chain assets by automation

  3. The LightClient Protocol accomplishes Cross-chain verification

  4. 1000+ Relayers update LightClients with cryptographic proof following consensus

  5. Massive Relayers support unbiased on-chain randomness in the swarm model

2. Not just a bridge, but a cross-chain ecosystem

Unlike other bridges with limited interoperability, MAP Protocol aims to be a true interoperability protocol that enables cross-chain transfers of data, information, assets, and smart-contract instructions among independent chains. MAP ecosystem’s projects can be upgraded for a cross-chain version by integrating with MAP SDK.

Benefits to Harmony

  1. Projects on Harmony can utilize our bridge to reach out to users on both EVM and non-EVM chains which will bring in new users and capital into the ecosystem.
  2. Our interoperability structure promotes mono-chain projects to multi-chain projects.
  3. Incentives will be given to Harmony users who utilize the cross-chain service.

Audit Report

CertiK: http://research.coinone.co.kr.s3.amazonaws.com/contract%20audit/Certik_report_verification_MAP.pdf

External links

Website: https://www.maplabs.io/

Bridge: https://bridge.maplabs.io/#/home?sourceNetwork=BSC&destNetwork=ETH&ts=1649129288433

Github: MAP Protocol · GitHub

Doc: https://docs.maplabs.io/

Whitepaper: https://files.maplabs.io/pdf/mapprotocol_whitepaper_en.pdf

Twitter: https://twitter.com/marcopologlobal

Telegram: Telegram: Contact @MAPprotocol

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Thanks for your proposal, it has been assigned and the team will review and respond shortly :blue_heart:

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Thank you for submitting a proposal to Harmony’s $300M Ecosystem Fund. Allow me to be your representative on behalf of the Grants committee. We are in the process of reviewing your proposal.

I’m curious to understand the timing of having MAP Protocol bridged with Harmony. Is this the right time for the bridge, and if so what are the use cases where users would want to utilize the bridge? If you can shed some light on the Asset Vault as compared to vaults in other chains, that will be helpful as well.

If you have more details to add, please do so by replying to this thread. We would also love :blue_heart: to have the Harmony community participate to ask questions and provide feedbacks.

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Thank you Mattyontap and Jackstteroo! This is the perfect moment for the bridge as many projects are moving in a multi-chain direction. With a secured bridge, users from other chains can come and enjoy all of the fantastic dapps or look for new investment opportunities on Harmony. Project-wise, DeFi, and GameFi can instantly be connected to all of our supported chains and enjoy the multi-chain environment.

To drive users into Harmony and MAP mainnet, we can create a short-term farm on Hiveswap and provide high incentives for ONE holders. Users from other chains can also transfer their assets to Harmony and participate in staking and farming activities.

Each of our vaults is a unified liquidity pool and will be deployed to each supported chain as a smart contract. Developers can build native cross-chain dapps and access the cross-chain vault via smart contracts.

Please feel free to ask any questions and I will try my best to answer them.

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