The first Aave-friendly Ethereum to Matic bridge has opened for business, allowing users to port Aave’s interest-bearing aTokens back and forth between the DeFi protocol and the faster, cheaper layer-two network.
The smart contract for the bridge was developed by Nick Mudge, Lead Solidity Developer of Aavegotchi. It differs from previous Ethereum to layer-two bridges as it interacts with the Aave protocol to keep track of interest being paid on aTokens locked up on the Ethereum side of the bridge.
According to Mudge, the bridge’s smart contract converts user’s Aave aTokens — such as aUSDC, for example — to maTokens, which are then made available to the user on the Matic Network. When maTokens are converted back to aTokens, the user receives the original amount of tokens sent through the bridge plus interest accrued during the time they were locked in the bridge contract.
✄ AAVEGOTCHI BRIDGE IS OPEN 4 BUSINESS!
— Aavegotchi (@aavegotchi) January 21, 2021
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Mudge sees maTokens as potentially valuable to Matic-related liquidity providers, as it is now possible to earn not only transaction fees but interest when lending out maUSDC. This can currently be accomplished via Quickswap, the platform’s #1 DApp, which is a direct clone of Uniswap modified for Matic.
As Quickswap runs on Matic, its transaction fees are a tiny fraction of those currently being endured by Ethereum users, which makes Matic an enticing alternative for developers looking to lessen the cost of DeFi-related transactions.
If you think about it, buying maTokens in @QuickswapDEX on @maticnetwork makes a lot of sense. You don't lose on gas fees buying and making maTokens and you can supply your maTokens to liquidity pools in @QuickswapDEX and earn trading fees -- without losing any interest you make.
— Nick Mudge aavegotchi (@mudgen) January 20, 2021
Named after a dApp-based NFT staking game, the Aavegotchi Bridge was initially created for the sake of making it cheaper to perform actions within the game. When players of the game started complaining of Ethereum’s high gas fees, Mudge took the creative approach of building an interface between Aave and Matic so game-related transactions could be conducted faster and with significantly reduced fees.
“We wanted to launch Aavegotchi on Ethereum first and work on implementing some functionality on Matic Network later,” Mudge told Cointelegraph.
“But the day we were going to launch on Ethereum the gas fees went sky high and it would have wrecked our launch. So we delayed and decided to move the whole project to Matic Network.”
Mudge believes that smart contract developers will increasingly employ layer-two solutions like Matic for conducting business on Ethereum as the network remains jammed and prohibitively expensive.
“Because the gas fees are so low on Matic Network it opens the door for more composition/interaction between different smart contracts and protocols to create kinds of functionality and sophistication on the smart contract level that weren't possible before.”
Aave is currently the second biggest DeFi platform according to the total value locked within the platform.