A smart contract platform aimed at the decentralized finance market seeks to make it easy to transfer decentralized applications from clogged, expensive Ethereum to Polkadot.
The open-source project’s goal is to create easy-to-use blockchain infrastructure that will improve the interoperability of cross-chain assets, attracting developers of DeFi projects.
Clover Finance wants to build a one-stop infrastructure platform that will make it simpler and less expensive for developers of DeFi projects to migrate their DApps onto Polkadot, a potential Ethereum killer that achieves scalability by running many blockchains in parallel, each with its own design and each serving a specific purpose for a particular app.
One main reason for this is that most of DeFi’s liquidity is currently limited to Ethereum — on which most decentralized finance projects are built — which has become clogged by the scale of DeFi’s transactions. That, in turn, has made those projects expensive, as gas fees on transactions have skyrocketed due to demand.
Clover’s designers are not just focused on making an environment in which it is easy for developers to design and port DApps, however. Building a strong, simple end-user experience is also a key goal. Among other things, Clover offers a gasless environment in which Ethereum’s gas fees are automatically deducted and paid in whatever cryptocurrency the transaction is using. That means users won’t have to mess around with Ether (ETH) during transactions — lowering the barrier to entry for the non-tech savvy.
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Clover’s cross-chain explorer offers seamless indexing across Ethereum, Polkadot, Binance Smart Chain and Bitcoin, letting users search blocks, transactions and accounts in a single tool. Its Dynamic Fee Schedule provides frequent network users with lower gas fees over time. And Clover’s “always-on” multichain wallet lets users view and transact with all of their assets — including layer-two assets — across blockchains.
Under the hood
To make all of this happen, Clover is built on Polkadot’s Substrate, allowing it to create a one-stop compatible Ethereum Virtual Machine framework. Once Substrate EVM is formally launched, it will be easy for developers to migrate DeFi projects built on Solidity smart contracts from Ethereum to Clover using familiar tools like Truffle and Remix.
That will also help it attract existing and reliable infrastructure from Ethereum that developers can take advantage of, such as Chainlink oracles and indexing protocol The Graph. Clover’s gas fee redistribution incentivizes developers by automatically sharing transaction fees with them.
Clover takes advantage of Polkadot’s ability to have its own parachains interoperate with other blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin via bridges. One of Clover’s biggest advantages is its trustless two-way peg bridge for assets on Ethereum and Clover, allowing it to transfer assets from the base chain to a secondary blockchain and back.
It is also working on using that technology to build a bridge between Turing-complete Ethereum and non-Turing complete blockchains including Bitcoin — with the upcoming upgrades of Bitcoin Core, Clover’s goal is to bring the Bitcoin bridge alive — giving it access to an enormous pool of assets.
Backing a player
Clover has raised funds in several private rounds recently, including $3 million in February from Polychain Capital, Bithumb Global, Hypersphere Ventures and Divergence Ventures. Other backers include Alameda Research, OKEx Block Dream Fund, CMS, KR1, Bitcoin.com, Moonwhale Ventures and Kyros Ventures.
Among other things, that will allow it to compete — and, it believes, win — a parachain slot in the upcoming Polkadot/Kusama slot auction. That would let Clover launch directly as a parachain, bringing a high level of interoperability.
Clover also has a native token, CLV, that is cross-chain compatible thanks to that two-way peg bridge, which binds its EVM-based and Polkadot-based Clover address together. CLV can be used to pay gas fees, staked to validate the proof-of-stake protocol, locked for governance issues, and used to deploy smart contracts and DApps on Clover, among other things.
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