Explore Moonbeam By Swapping With LI.FI
LI.FI Interoperability Expands to Moonbeam
Moonbeam is an EVM-compatible parachain built on Polkadot that went live on December 17th, 2021. The chain is the brainchild of Derek Yoo, the founder and CEO of PureStake. Currently, Moonbeam is a 40+ member strong team and has substantial financial and developer backing from PureStake and the Moonbeam Foundation.
Interestingly, Moonbeam is one of three sibling networks, including Moonriver and Moonrock. Moonriver (which LI.FI supports) is a nearly identical product built on Kusama, the sister network of Polkadot. Moonbeam and Moonriver then share a testnet called Moonrock.
Glimmer (GLMR) is the native token of the Moonbeam network. The token is used to pay for transaction fees and gas on the network and for facilitating on-chain governance mechanisms. It is also used to incentivize nodes to run the network.
Moonbeam prides itself on being a smart contract platform enabling developers to easily fork Ethereum-based innovation to Polkadot without rewriting code or redeploying infrastructure. This means Moonbeam benefits from the developer-friendly ecosystem of Ethereum while also benefiting from the security and interoperability native to Polkadot. In essence, Moonbeam is like a portal for Ethereum applications to live on Polkadot.
Moonbeam uses a decentralized, delegated proof-of-stake network to secure its network. The smart contract platform is built using Substrate, the primary blockchain SDK utilized by developers for parachains, like Moonbeam, to develop on Polkadot. Smart contracts on Moonbeam can be implemented in Solidity, Vyper, or any other language that is EVM compatible. Furthermore, with Moonbeam’s Web3 RPC API’s implementation, infrastructure tools like Truffle, Remix, and MetaMask can be used without modification in Moonbeam.
Exploring Moonbeam’s Ecosystem
So, now that we know a bit about Moonbeam, let’s dive into the most popular dApps in the ecosystem!
As of Q2 2022, Moonbeam is a top 50 chain by total value locked, with $166 million in tokens spread across 20 native dApps.
Moonbeam Ecosystem
DEXs
The three largest dApps on Moonbeam by users and volume are decentralized exchanges — aka platforms that facilitate the swap of crypto tokens native to Moonbeam.
Beamswap, according to data from DappRadar, is the most popular dApp on Moonbeam. With over 7,000 monthly users and $97 million in monthly volume, Beamswap is more than double the size of the second-largest DEX, Solarflare. Since its launch in Q4 2021, the dApp has added quite a slew of features that have expanded the scope of the project beyond being just a DEX. Beamswap also offers a yield farm to help users earn high APYs, a launchpad for IDOs and public sales of Moonbeam projects, and a new lending product that works similarly to Aave.
Solarflare is the second-largest DEX on Moonbeam. Solarflare is a more standardized DEX, offering users the ability to swap, provide liquidity, farm, and stake. Solarflare is new to Moonbeam, as it initially launched on Moonriver as Solarbeam.
StellaSwap is the third-largest DEX by users and volume. However, the protocol holds the most value locked into the platform by a wide margin and accounts for over 35% of the total value locked into Moonbeam at ~$62 million. StellaSwap allows users to swap, provide liquidity, earn yield via vaults, and farm.
Gaming + NFTs
With Moonbeam being such a young chain, gaming and NFT infrastructure have yet to be fully fleshed out. That being said, there are a few exciting projects that must be highlighted.
Moonscape is the first gaming platform to announce its launch on Moonbeam and is currently the biggest gaming platform on Moonbeam. Moonscape is a resource management strategy game that combines a futuristic world-building experience with DeFi features, such as staking options. Furthermore, every city users create can be turned into NFTs that can be traded and sold among players. The TL;DR, as described on their website, is this: “Explore a futuristic moon, enhance your town with DeFi features and receive rewards for your time spent in-game.”
On the NFT side, Moonbeam is home to about 20 NFT collections. GLMR Apes is the largest such collection and holds the self-proclaimed title of the “first Moonbeam DAO.” The 1,001-piece collection was the first NFT drop to sell out on Moonbeam. Moonbeam users who missed out on the drop can purchase a GLMR Ape on Tofu NFT, a cross-chain NFT marketplace that facilitates the majority of Moonbeam NFT volume.
Other dApps
In addition to the entrenched DEX community and burgeoning NFT ecosystem, Moonbeam has quite a few other interesting dApps, including:
Polkamarkets — available on Moonbeam and Moonriver, Polkamarkets is a predictions market that allows users to take positions on the outcomes of real-world events. The dApp allows users to purchase “yes” or “no” options on events like whether Emmanuel Macron will win the French presidential election, whether BTC will be above $57,000 on May 1st, etc.
Zenlink — a substrate-based DEX that connects all DEX dApps on Polkadot in an effort to aggregate liquidity and provide low slippage for users.
Moonbeam Domains — also available on Moonbeam and Moonriver, Moonbeam Domains is a service where users can buy Moonbeam-based domain names to replace their wallet addresses in transactions. Therefore, instead of asking a friend to send a transaction to “0x30dE69aCCCb59E6c6cc3b2748a5f6f9A27217CF2,” a user (let’s say the user was named Bob and had purchased the domain name Bob on Moonbeam) could tell their friend to send a transaction to “Bob.moon” — which is a major UX upgrade.
1Beam — 1Beam is a DEX based on the structure of an automated market maker, much like Solarbeam, Beamswap, and StellaSwap. However, unlike the DEXs covered in the above section, 1Beam specializes in supporting stablecoin swaps with low slippage and fees. 1Beam is available on Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Cronos.
How Can Users Explore Moonbeam?
This is where LI.FI comes in. LI.FI is a cross-chain bridge and DEX aggregation facilitating any-2-any swaps — which is now available as SDK. Users can swap any token from the plethora of chains we support to any token available on Moonbeam. LI.FI will route the transaction through a multitude of DEXs and bridges to find the most efficient, cost-effective route from chain to chain, and, with one click, a user can approve the transaction.
To learn more about Moonbeam, check out:
The future is multi-chain, and we strive for more interoperability. We aim to build a multi-chain ecosystem by maintaining good relationships with all the stakeholders. We’re grateful to have Moonbeam in the LI.FI family!
We’ve partnered up with the brightest minds and aim to build the best abstraction and aggregation solution available on the market. If you’re a blockchain network, bridge builder, or dApp developer, come talk to us and let’s work together!
FAQ: Explore Moonbeam By Swapping With LI.FI
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Disclaimer: This article is only meant for informational purposes. The projects mentioned in the article are our partners, but we encourage you to do your due diligence before using or buying tokens of any protocol mentioned. This is not financial advice.