On Wednesday (January 26), Charles Hoskinson, Co-Founder and CEO of IO Global (aka “IOG”, formerly known as “IOHK”), the company responsible for building Cardano ($ADA), said that he was “really looking forward” to an upcoming DEX from Slovakian FinTech startup Vacuumlabs.
History of Vaccumlabs’ Previous Apps for Cardano
Vacuumlabs is “a software development company that builds modern full stack fintech solutions for startups, scale-ups and incumbent banks.” It first got involved with Cardano in 2018 when its developers started work on Adalite, which has become the world’s popular web-based Cardano wallet:
“In 2018, Vacuumlabs developers started an internal project to build the first Cardano light wallet. What was supposed to be a ‘weekend project’took weeks, but AdaLite was born. Since then, AdaLite has cemented itself as the leading web-based Cardano wallet, and along with it settled Vacuumlabs as a key development partner in the Cardano ecosystem.“
According to Vacuumlabs, here is how this project caught the attention of EMURGO, the commercial arm of Cardano, which then led to them working on the Yoroi wallet:
“When Nicolas Arqueros, CTO at EMURGO, a founding entity of the Cardano protocol, first came across Vacuumlabs’ AdaLite, he was curious. He was surprised to find such a lightweight in-browser wallet solution for Cardano’s Ada cryptocurrency. There was no public documentation for Cardano.“
The EMURGO CTO says:
“When I started to explore the open-sourced solution, Vacuumlabs caught my attention. They figured out how to make everything work. I realized that the people behind it are really good. I really believe in ‘show, and don’t tell’. A lot of people will tell you—no problem. We’ll study, we’ll learn, we’ll understand. But when you meet someone who’s actually been through the trenches, saw all the difficult parts, and took pains to really understand out of genuine curiosity—that makes a lot of difference.“
Arqueros “brought AdaLite to the attention of a number of stakeholders within the Cardano ecosystem.” Since “the demand for an Ada wallet was growing within the community,” EMURGO “decided to engage Vacuumlabs to create an Ada wallet for iOS and Android.” EMURGO and Vacuumlabs “worked hand-in-hand to deliver the flagship Yoroi app, named after the Japanese Samurai armor, to the market.” An in only three months, the Yoroi app was completed:
“It turned out to be a lightweight, privacy-oriented wallet with low bandwidth requirements. The app connects to trusted servers that access a full copy of the blockchain. The app itself has no need to download the entire blockchain, saving on resources and enhancing speed. The technology allows users to send or receive Ada within minutes or seconds. Since its launch, Yoroi has become a cornerstone of EMURGO’s portfolio.”
Vacuumlabs also partnered with EMURGO to “integrate Cardano into Trezor and Ledger hardware wallets.”
WingRiders: A New Cardano-Powered by Vacuumlabs
This is what Hoskinson tweeted about WingRiders yesterday:
Given the pedigree of its developers, perhaps it is not surprising to see them proudly call WingRiders “The DEX on Cardano.”
WingRiders lets its users “swap”, “earn” (by providing liquidity), and “fly” (presumably to the moon with the help of native token $WR).
Here is some information about this upcoming DEX (from version 1 of its Lightpaper):
“WingRiders is an Automated Market Maker (AMM) decentralized exchange (DEX) built on top of the Cardano using the eUTxO model on the main chain. The project is powered by VacuumLabs, one of the most widely respected developers in the Cardano space.
“WingRiders’ objective is to be an infrastructure element for the whole Cardano ecosystem, with simple integration into any wallet or Dapp. Accessible via many platforms, supporting connectors and Hardware wallets such as Ledger or Trezor. The platform will be fully decentralized and trustless supporting swaps between Cardano native tokens. Plans exceed the AMM, L1 and Cardano itself.“
Vaccumlabs aims to launch WingRiders on the Cardano mainnet in Q1 2022:
DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
