Dear Alexian,

Bridge, connecting USDC on Ethereum with xUSD on Stacks, will soon begin its public testnet.

Testnet Stats so far:

• 7.5K+ Sign ups
• 1.5K+ Testnet orders
• 2K+ Discourse members
• 14.4K Discord members

Bridge

The ALEX team has been building Bridge, a custodial bridge between USDC, an ERC-20 token and xUSD, a SIP-10 token. USDC is wrapped into xUSD with Tokensoft as tech partner, with a multi-signature smart contract on Ethereum.

USDC has a market cap of over $48 billion and Bridge facilitates onboarding the liquidity on Ethereum to Stacks through an intuitive user interface.

Bridge Testnet

We invite you to experience and test Bridge yourself.
In the coming weeks, the public Testnet for Bridge will begin.

If you have already joined the “Orderbook whitelist” before, you just need to wait.
The Testnet FAUCET will automatically distribute xUSD to your Testnet wallet.

If you haven’t yet joined the “Orderbook whitelist” please visit the http://orderbook.alexlab.co page and sign up for a whitelist with your email and Stacks address.

For more information on Bridge please see: What is ALEX Bridge?

Introducing Flashpay

Flashpay will enhance the user experience of Bridge. The process of wrapping/ unwrapping USDC to xUSD and vice versa takes time, and it’s a bore to have to wait.

Bridge uses its own reserve to issue the wrapped tokens to Stacks wallets, in advance of confirmation on anchor blocks. The Flashpay limit is 1,000 USDC per transaction and 100,000 USDC total network balance.

This means 100k is the maximum amount ALEX Lab Foundation will bear the risk for at any given time.

Large transactions over 100k USDC are also possible, users will just need to use the bridge at the normal speed.

Chiente at Mainnet and more…

For those who missed Chiente’s panel at Messari Mainnet in NYC this past week, clips are featured in this Tweet.

Her next big appearance will be at the LA Blockchain summit, Nov 1–3 at the LA Convention Center.

Bitcoin Unleashed Builder’s Edition

Stacks will be hosting the “Bitcoin Unleashed Builder’s Edition” virtual event on October 7th from 10:00AM EST to 2:30PM. The schedule has not yet been finalized but be sure to catch the panels ALEX will be joining! Follow our Twitter for updates.

Stay Calm and Keep Building

We thank everyone for your continuing support, especially as we collectively experience unprecedented times in modern finance.

This rollercoaster of a market is an opportunity for Bitcoin as a hedge against financial instability, as Chiente expresses in this Twitter thread

ALEX Bitcoin DeFi is playing the long game measured in years, not months. We are all early, and our most important work is in the journey ahead of us.

Thank you again to our fellow travelers.

Best,

ALEX Lab Foundation Team