Since our last update, Bison Trails launched support for Osmosis, showcased exciting new customer partnerships, published step‐by‐step guides enabling ADA and OSMO holders to delegate their tokens to our enterprise‐grade validators, and more, including deep dives into the world of staking infrastructure.

Read on for this month’s news from the herd and blockchain ecosystem!

—Melissa Nelson

Company News

1. Power up your staking with Osmosis, now available on Bison Trails

Osmosis is a proof of stake blockchain with a decentralized exchange application enabling users to provide liquidity, swap, and in the future, natively stake tokens from blockchains across the Tendermint ecosystem.

Now you can run your own dedicated Osmosis validators through the Bison Trails Participate platform to actively secure the network. Clients can earn participatory rewards through self‐staked tokens and may also earn fees through tokens delegated to their validators.

If you’re interested in running an Osmosis validator, please contact our sales team. Want to participate without operating a validator? OSMO holders of any amount can delegate their assets to Bison Trails’ public validator to earn a share of participatory rewards using our step‐by‐step delegate guide.

2. Bison Trails provides secure infrastructure for Current to build hybrid financial applications on the Polkadot ecosystem

Bison Trails provides secure, reliable infrastructure and network expertise for Current to be an early, active participant in Polkadot, as well as Polkadot parachain networks Karura and Acala.

Through active participation on Polkadot and its partnership with Acala, Current will build products that blend the high‐yield potential of decentralized finance with traditional financial applications in the Polkadot ecosystem. They will be accessible to Current’s members through a seamless, unified experience directly in the app and support Current’s mission to enable more users to improve their financial lives.

Read about it in our announcement or on CoinDesk.

3. Delegate $ADA to the Bison Trails Cardano stake pool

This month Bison Trails launched a public Cardano stake pool, so ADA holders of any amount can delegate their assets to our enterprise‐grade public validator. Follow our step‐by‐step delegate guide to easily stake your ADA and earn rewards.

4. Who’s who in eth2: Luke Youngblood from Coinbase

In the fifth edition of our Who’s who in eth2 series, Elias Simos interviews Luke Youngblood, Senior Staff Software Engineer at Coinbase Cloud, on his expertise in staking infrastructure, the challenges facing eth2 validators, the balance between simplicity and complexity in infrastructure, and how Luke thinks around key considerations for Coinbase’s involvement in eth2.

Dive into this must‐read interview.

5. Colchis Capital to run Provenance validators on the Bison Trails Platform to drive innovation in real estate financing

Colchis Capital aims to use the Provenance blockchain, built to support the financial services industry, to bridge the crypto ecosystem with real estate investments. Bison Trails will provide the secure, reliable node infrastructure for Colchis Capital to unlock new use cases of blockchain technology for real estate investments.

Read about it in our announcement or on CoinTelegraph.

More from the Herd

• Coinbase Cloud introduced unified developer docs, a new and streamlined developer docs experience to help the next generation of developers use the APIs powering Coinbase. Developers can integrate with the APIs powering Coinbase from a single documentation site at coinbase.com/cloud.
• Protocol Specialist Elias Simos spoke on a panel at the Cronos Hackathon about what liquid staking is and what its future may look like. View the panel on YouTube to learn more.
• Protocol Specialist Viktor Bunin published a blog post, Code is Law and Cultural Code, on the intersection of blockchain code and community culture.
• Coinbase launched a Digital Asset Policy Proposal to help bring clarity to the space of the regulation of cryptocurrency and web 3.0 in the US. Read about it in Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s tweet thread.
• Viktor Bunin spoke on a panel at the Messari Mainnet 2021 conference on the merger of Keep and NuCypher and what the future of protocol M&As may look like based on this first community-driven protocol M&A event. Watch the recording here.
• Elias Simos’ data analysis on total value locked (TVL) in bridges from Ethereum was featured by CoinDesk Research. Learn more about TVL in Elias’ thread.
• Coinbase announced partnerships with the NBA, Facebook’s Novi, and UnitedMasters, along with launching the waitlist for Coinbase NFT, a peer‐to‐peer marketplace that will make minting, purchasing, showcasing, and discovering NFTs more accessible via user‐friendly interfaces.

Ecosystem Updates

• ProShares launched the first U.S. bitcoin‐linked ETF to provide investors an opportunity to gain exposure to bitcoin returns.
• NEAR announced the launch of a $800m grants fund, with a focus on ecosystem growth, DeFi development, and funding identified for ecosystem grants and startups.
• Helium has partnered with DISH for Helium 5G as the first major carrier in the telco industry to support the Helium Network.
• Osmosis announced a $21M sale of tokens in a funding round led by Paradigm, making Osmosis Paradigm’s first AMM investment outside of Ethereum.
• Mastercard announced that soon the banks and merchants on its payments network will be able to integrate crypto to their products, such as by enabling loyalty programs with crypto benefits.
• Polkadot governance Motion 118 has passed, targeting November 11th for the first round of Polkadot parachain auctions to begin.
• Terra enabled Inter‐Blockchain Communication (IBC), making Terra’s LUNA token and stablecoin USDTerra natively interoperable with the other IBC‐enabled blockchains of the Tendermint ecosystem.
• Livepeer acquired MistServer, a media server created by video developers, to support Livepeer’s mission of developing open video infrastructure.
• Binance Smart Chain reached a new all‐time high for daily active addresses with over 1.5m active addresses on the network on 10/14.

We’re hiring

Come work with us as we begin our next chapter as part of Coinbase. Visit our careers page to learn about open roles.

Like this update?

About Bison Trails

Pioneering Blockchain Infrastructure®

Bison Trails is a blockchain infrastructure platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company based in New York City. We built a platform for anyone who wants to participate in 25 new chains effortlessly.

We also make it easy for anyone building Web 3.0 applications to connect to blockchain data from 43 protocols with Query & Transact (QT). Our goal is for the entire blockchain ecosystem to flourish by providing robust infrastructure for the pioneers of tomorrow.

In January, 2021, we announced Bison Trails joined Coinbase to accelerate our mission to provide easy-to-use blockchain infrastructure, now as a standalone product line. The Bison Trails platform will continue to support our customers. With Coinbase’s backing, we will enhance our infrastructure platform and make it even easier to participate in decentralized networks and build applications that connect to blockchain data.

THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. PLEASE DO NOT CONSTRUE ANY SUCH INFORMATION OR OTHER MATERIAL CONTAINED IN THIS DOCUMENT AS LEGAL, TAX, INVESTMENT, FINANCIAL, OR OTHER ADVICE. THIS DOCUMENT AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION OR ENDORSEMENT OF ANY DIGITAL ASSET, PROTOCOL, NETWORK OR PROJECT. HOWEVER, BISON TRAILS (INCLUDING ITS AFFILIATES AND/OR EMPLOYEES) MAY HAVE, OR MAY IN THE FUTURE HAVE, A SIGNIFICANT FINANCIAL INTEREST IN, AND MAY RECEIVE COMPENSATION FOR SERVICES RELATED TO, ONE OR MORE OF THE DIGITAL ASSETS, PROTOCOLS, NETWORKS, ENTITIES, PROJECTS AND/OR VENTURES DISCUSSED HEREIN.

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