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Announcing The Gasp Testnet Launch

Peter Kris

• 4 min read
Announcing The Gasp Testnet Launch

Today we are excited to announce the launch of the Gasp testnet on Holesky Ethereum. This marks an important milestone toward the future of native cross-chain interoperability, as Gasp builds the connecting node across the ever-growing blockchain landscape, first in Ethereum and then the entire ecosystem.

Why Gasp

Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, the number of blockchains has grown from 1 to 1000s, yet there isn’t a consolidated way to move assets across them. This creates liquidity fragmentation, friction to move capital through chains easily and, ultimately, slows the adoption of blockchain technology.

While multiple bridging solutions have been developed over the years, they have proven to be slow, limited to selected networks, insecure (bridges have been hacked for billions of dollars), and generally do not solve the expanding cross-chain challenge.

Protected by Ethereum through EigenLayer

Gasp leverages Ethereum’s trust network to validate the correctness of cross-chain transactions through the power of EigenLayer’s restaking technology.

This design is essential in the architecture, as it allows Gasp to rely on a neutral verifier — the independent collective of Ethereum restakers — to prove state across different chains rather than Gasp’s own validators, ensuring maximal decentralization, transparency and reliability in the creation of cross-chain highways. 

Combining the power of Ethereum as source of trust and being built in the Ethereum infrastructure, Gasp makes Ethereum the settlement layer for all crypto cross-chain swaps.

Gas-free swaps

Gasp swaps are completely gas-free. Users only pay a 0.3% exchange commission per trade, which represents a significant opportunity to deploy previously impossible cross-chain trading strategies like scalping, high frequency trading, more efficient stablecoin arbitrage and low volume trading since the gas fees required to perform them under current’s cross-chain infrastructure make them economically unsuitable.

Gas-free swaps also massively enhance the user experience for regular users who want to trade cross-chain freely without worrying about fluctuating gas costs.

Lightning fast

Most bridges range from 5-25 minutes to complete a cross-chain transaction. Our tests in private net have shown sub 30 second cross-chain swaps! We are looking forward to seeing them in action in testnet as new networks are added. 

This will drastically improve the UX in cross-chain transactions and enable users to move across ecosystems without waiting for what can be hours for bridge transactions to settle.

MEV protected

All trades happening through Gasp are MEV-protected, since the protocol’s architecture minimizes the possibility for these strategies to take place. Neither user-created, authority-created, nor block builder MEV are possible in Gasp transactions. This creates a significant protection and incentive to place trades through the network, since it’s embedded in any DeFi application that leverages Gasp for cross-chain interoperability.

The GASP token

The Gasp network introduces an innovative token mechanism to ensure transaction security, spam prevention, and the guarantee of gas-free swaps.

To perform transactions through the Gasp network, users must hold certain amounts of Gasp tokens staked in their wallets. These tokens are not spent but rather act as a guarantee. The more tokens are staked, the more trades can be performed, regardless of trade size.

The GASP token is a direct representation of the network's throughput. The more volume is onchain, the more tokens are staked and placed in token sink. Therefore, a GASP token will be issued for the network to function, and users can experience its functionality through the testnet.

The GASP token will also serve as: 

  • A common denominator for longer tail assets where liquidity is more scarce through liquidity bootstrapping from the staking pools
  • Payment currency for liquidity providers 
  • Collateral for EigenLayer node operators
  • Reward currency for sequencers
  • Gas payment currency for non-swap transactions: governance votes, signatures, and other non-transactional onchain actions

We invite the community to interact with the testnet as exciting participation and earning opportunities will be offered for the first builders of the Gasp community. The road towards mainnet and token launch will be full of product updates, participation campaigns, and exciting partnerships to build the future of cross-chain interoperability together.

For our dear Mangatarians, we are extremely appreciative of your support through the years, and we want to show it. The GASP token will replace the MGA token, and MGX holders (excluding early backers and developers) will be rewarded in GASP tokens at TGE for a total of 3% of GASP’s supply. 

More details on this will be announced in the coming weeks!

Roadmap

The first milestone in the Gasp roadmap is to solve the cross-rollup liquidity fragmentation challenge in the Ethereum ecosystem. As the protocol develops, Gasp will expand to natively integrate an increasing number of blockchains and fully realize its vision.

The launch of Gasp will roll out in various phases, heading towards the mainnet deployment in the coming months. The current testnet demonstrates the primary purpose of the Gasp blockchain: to serve as a settlement layer across different chains.

The next steps toward mainnet launch include connecting Gasp to L2 testnets such as Arbitrum and Optimism, developing stablecoin pools to create liquidity, undergoing audits to ensure the protocol's utmost security, launching the GASP token to enable the token safeguard mechanism, and, ultimately, deployment to mainnet Ethereum.

How to participate

In its current form, testnet users can:

  • Experience the Gasp network’s connection to Ethereum by sending GASP and GETH tokens natively from Holesky to the Gasp rollup
  • Perform any regular onchain actions on Gasp including transfers, swaps, deposit into liquidity pools and send assets back to Holesky mainnet
  • Obtain testnet Gasp tokens from the faucet to experience the native token’s functionality
  • You can also onboard as an Eigen Layer AVS operator on our testnet, running your own finalizer of the Gasp rollup using this guide

More protocol developments and participation options will be deployed and unveiled in the coming weeks! 

To participate:

  1. Visit holesky.gasp.xyz to check out the testnet
  2. Join our Discord and provide feedback in the #testnet-feedback channel
  3. Visit our Galxe campaign to join the community and earn rewards before April 25th
  4. Follow Gasp on X (Twitter) to stay up to date with the road to mainnet launch and opportunities to participate
  5. Read through the documentation

We are thrilled to be taking the first big step towards the Gasp network's mainnet launch. We invite the community to stay tuned for further updates and opportunities to participate in the growth of the future of cross-chain interoperability!

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