POA Network, an open Ethereum sidechain with Proof of Authority (PoA) today announced it has launched the first-ever blockchain where the native asset of the chain is USD based.
xDai Chain, an Ethereum compatible sidechain with Dai as the native currency of the network, combines POA Network’s interoperability knowledge and technology with MakerDAO’s Dai, the permissionless, crypto-collateralized USD-stablecoin. With the support of all features of the Ethereum network, xDai Chain can include mobile and hardware wallets, blockchain explorers like BlockScout, and smart contracts.
Partnership
POA Network is responsible for leveraging their interoperability protocol and successfully applying it to the DAI stablecoin to help create and launch xDai Chain network. There are endless possibilities for how MakerDAO and developers can leverage xDai Chain to deploy their DApps and projects.
The vision for xDai Chain and the XDAI coin is to create a blockchain network that takes all of the benefits of Ethereum-based blockchains and removes the concerning USD-volatility component. xDai Chain will also be able to leverage all of the open-source tools that have been built for the Ethereum ecosystem including all of POA Network’s tools and infrastructure.
“With xDai Chain, POA created a full toolkit for DApp developers looking to improve the end-user experience by allowing people to transact with high scalability and pay gas fees in a single token. xDai Chain creates an awesome opportunity for developers to launch DApps with Dai as the medium of exchange.”
Why would developers deploy to xDai Chain?
xDai Chain offers a variety of use cases to blockchain developers. Currently, one of the biggest concerns for developers is the inability to have a USD fixed value for payments related to their DApp. Users of the DApp are forced to pay fluctuating payments in ETH or a specific ERC-20 token that varies in value often resulting in a poor DApp user experience. xDai Chain solves this issue by allowing developers to fix their payments in XDAI. xDai Chain will have fast transaction time, low gas costs, easy scalability, and much more.
POA Network’s expertise with sidechains to Ethereum and interoperability between networks created the Token Bridge between POA Network and Ethereum which was launched into production in May 2018 and has been operational since then, with over 33 million POA transformed.
POA recently built a new type of the Token Bridge (“ERC20 <-> Native”) where locked ERC20 tokens on Ethereum network will mint native tokens on a new empty (“hard spoon”) sidechain launched with no emission or premine.
“xDai Chain provides an exciting and new platform for the community and DApp developers. The premise of a stablecoin based blockchain opens up endless possibilities for developers and applications. Using the different tools POA Network has created, users can bridge their Dai to the new xDai Chain and start using a single token for their transactions while making use of the benefits of a PoA based sidechain”
On xDai Chain, the native coin will be referred to as XDAI, resulting in transaction fees being fixed in Dai, or USD effectively. This new blockchain will leverage POA Network’s technology allowing it to be fast, scalable, and cost-efficient. A five-second block generation time will result in transaction speeds of 60 tx/s. With gas costs as low as 1 Gwei per transaction, 500 transactions on the xDai chain will cost less than 1 cent.
Developers can now have known gas costs fixed in USD terms. This gives all xDai Chain users and developers more certainty around the USD cost of using an Ethereum-based blockchain.
Overview
xDai Chain is an Ethereum-based blockchain that uses USD-stable XDAI (a representation of DAI token) as the native coin of the network. xDai Chain will be fast and cost-efficient, using Proof-of-Authority consensus model and having 5 second block times.
What is XDAI
XDAI is the USD-stablecoin that is a representation of DAI but lives on xDai Chain, instead of Ethereum mainnet. XDAI is the native coin on xDai Chain and is used as the currency and for transaction fees on the network.
Connecting to xDai Chain
– JSON RPC Endpoint, to connect to xDai Chain from Metamask
– BlockScout, a blockchain explorer for xDai Chain https://blockscout.com/poa/dai
– TokenBridge to convert Dai from Ethereum Mainnet to xDai on xDai Chain https://dai-bridge.poa.network
– Netstats, an overview of xDai Chain nodes http://dai-netstat.poa.network
Tools xDai Chain utilizes
xDai Chain uses various POA Network tools including the Token Bridge.
xDai Chain and the Token Bridge are both protected by the same technology using the POA consensus (security audit) with POA Network being in production since December 2017 and Token Bridge being in production since May 2018.