MOVR/KSM swap unveiled: Substrate to EVM Cross Chain without a Centralized Exchange is here! Part 1

Bridges have been one of the biggest limitations to finally ditching the CEX for a fully decentralized experience. While true that, even if a good DEX with good liquidity is available, the bridge itself is often centralized and you are taking risks arguably similar to using a centralized exchange. (This is my disclaimer for the semi-misleading title)

That said, while fully decentralized bridges are being worked on (Such as Thorchain), we've been in need of at least partially decentralized bridges, like, yesterday.

Layer 0s such as Polkadot, Kusama, and Cosmos have been built from the ground up with security and interoperability in mind, and as such, their ecosystems are quickly becoming the most robust and decentralized.

While Cosmos certainly has a lot of volume and attention thus far, the Substrate ecosystem has recently launched their parachains, and you can be assured that the development is moving quickly (see my year end summary of Gavin Wood's update here.)

Just yesterday, Moonriver announced a bridge to move funds between KSM and MOVR. Multiple other bridges have popped up that prior to that which you may not be aware of, and while still not perfect, enough progress has made majority cross chain trading possible now, and the rest is not too far behind.

Why is this important? Because now that we have even a single bridge between substrate and EVM...well, the world is our oyster. We can move without friction between all the rest of crypto and take advantage of the full ecosystem without centralized middlemen.

I have a tendency to explore all AMMs and DEXs that I can find, risking my own funds haphazardly to do so, because I like to be on the cutting edge. As such, I've become a snob, of a sorts, for DEXs and AMMs.

Right now, there are several vying AMMs and DEXs on Moonriver and Moonbeam, the most prominent which are Solarflare, Solarbeam, Freeriver, and Zenlink, StellaSwap, amongst others that I've almost certainly missed. And while none of them are exchanges that I would consider high volume, just yet, they are quickly becoming the go-to places for trading on Substrate.

Today I want to focus on Zenlink and Solarbeam. Why? Because ZenLink launched the sought after KSM/MOVR pair first (as far as I'm aware), and Solarbeam is the only one with a bridge to a cheap Layer 2 (as opposed as only going to ETH) that I know of thus far (Binance smart chain, and while not ideal, it lets you get to other Layer 2s, from there--more later).

Other projects on Substrate promise wBTC, compatibility with any EVM chain, but as of yet there aren't any bridges yet to them, yet. Almost all of them require returning to the origin chain before moving to a different, cheap chain. There have been a few that allow layer 2 to other layer 2, and EVM to EVM, but this is the first time we have a way to interact with EVM from Substrate, and thus, to the wider cryptosphere.

You can bridge your KSM to Moonriver through the Moonriver App as described here.

ZenLink is lesser known, but by connecting your polkadot.js wallet, and your Moonriver or Moonbeam wallet, you can trade freely between several major assets and wrapped assets (that have available bridges).

Wrapped assets include WBTC, ETH, BNB, KSM, USDC/USDT/DAI/KUSD, KAR, BNC, CELR, GLMR, MOVR, and their own native token ZLK.

Liquidity is a little fragile atm with 85M TVL, but by being a liquidity provider, you can earn substancial yield, and the reason I'm focusing on ZenLink is that these pairs are the "important ones".

Why?

Because from these wrapped assets, you can move onto and off the rest of the most popular ecosystems using a number of bridges.

I'm going to assume that as new as it is, more liquidity is coming to ZenLink, but for now, if you can't find the liquidity, check out Solarbeam and Solarflare and Stellaswap.

For instance, you can trade KSM for ETH, and move ETH to its native chain and trade any ERC20 token.

"Meh", you say. ETH gas fees make that pointless. "I might as well use a CEX".

Well, what about KSM to MOVR, and then (due to low liquidity on ZenLink), MOVR to BNB on Solarbeam (still not great liquidity yet), and bridge to Binance Smart Chain, and move to Polygon, Avax, Fantom, Terra, Arbitrum from there?

I'm thrilled to announce that now it's possible.

This one gateway is enough to get you to pretty much any chain, if you know where to look, for reasonable costs, without a central exchange. There are bridges galor on EVM supported chains, and you can find most everything you need once you get to even one EVM chain.

Sure, we need more gateways, especially from MOVR/GLMR directly to other EVMs without touching the ETH network, but as soon as they are there, we can avoid Binance smart chain and liquidity will be able to flow not only out, but into the substrate ecosystem without friction.

**If you want to get started with ZenLink, you can use my referral code if you want to support this write up. Just click this link: https://dex.zenlink.pro/#/swap?invitationCode=91B68E Use this ref code: 91B68E, and you will have to click "confirm" here as in this image. **

I have some feedback for Zenlink, btw:

• I LOVE the price display of all assets against other major trading pairs so I can see if there's an arbitrage opportunity, or if I'm overpaying because of a certain intermediary.

• I dislike the massive list of tokens that aren't organized in a way that I know where or what wrapped token I'm trading against. "Mad" is apparently wrapped forms that Solarbeam can trade against, but not StellaSwap because StellaSwap uses the Anyswap wrapped standard, and Celr's bridge tokens also exists and aren't interoperable.

• I understand that it's a challenge to support them all, and to make the user experience seamless, and it might take some coordination between the bridges, and exchanges, but some visual cues and guidance would've helped my hunt for the right bridge, or a separate swapper/wrapper for all the different stablecoin types would increase your volume quite a lot, like an export-to-token-standard function.

• Similarly, vETH and other bifrost crowdloan tokens probably should have a descriptive cue so that users know what they are purchasing (not native assets) because they look awful similar to other wrapped assets.

• Automatically showing only what tokens you support based on the chain you're on (MOVR vs GLMR) would be nice, instead of constantly querying me to switch which chain my metamask is connected to. This will be less an issue once MOVR/GLMR bridge is open, I understand.

Bridges to know that interact with Moonriver/Moonbeam:

Multichain (used to be anyswap)

Relay

Celr

And I've heard through little birds that many more are coming.

KSM Donations can be sent to: D8WrK1jsFy9zpFwFZStaDTmX32pMZVdwXTm5rt9LsRKBQrz