July 2024: Optimizing Balanced Through New Development

In July, we made further progress on integrations and core systems. New enhancements for collateral liquidation on Balanced were also developed and the initial stages were planned to integrate an additional oracle to ICON. As we move into August, we are continuing our efforts on various integrations, improving relay stability, and preparing new features for Balanced:

🌐 Relay Optimization: We have continued to optimize our relays based on the mainnet performance of all the new chains we are connected to. In July, we implemented several fixes to enhance relay performance.

🛠️ Relay Development: We have initiated a discovery piece for the next set of features for the Relay. This includes exploring RPC redundancy and implementing additional security measures.

💧 Sui Integration Complete: The audits for Sui are nearing completion with final reviews underway post-fixes. Upon final approval, we will deploy Sui to the mainnet and conduct thorough testing to ensure functionality. Following this, we will proceed with Balanced and ICON network votes, aiming to launch our Network-Owned Liquidity (NOL) for Sui in August, pending network vote approval.

🟠 Stacks Integration Progress: We are finalizing the relay implementation for Stacks and will soon begin integration testing of all components.

🪐 Stellar Development and Testing: Development and testing on Stellar have concluded, internal audits have begun while running on testnet.

☀️ Solana Integration Challenges: Despite challenges, integration testing of Solana is nearing completion. We plan to move this to the testnet in August and begin our internal audits. External audits are scheduled to start towards the end of August.

These updates spotlight our dedicated efforts towards increasing interoperability and enhancing the overall efficiency within the ICON ecosystem through strategic development and integration across multiple blockchain platforms.

We remain committed to transparency and diligence as we move forward with these integrations and enhancements to the ICON ecosystem.

Now that progress can be made simultaneously across various integrations, we have updated the integrations milestone board to make it easier for the community to follow along. For more detailed information on the monthly progress of our IBC integrations, we invite you to explore our latest report here.

📅 July’s Accomplishments:

• Deployed Balanced contracts and ICON GMP to Polygon.

• Connected ICON to Polygon via Dual Relays.

• Completed internal audits and testing for the Stellar integration on testnet.

• Completed development for ICON GMP, Relays and Balanced contracts for Solana.

• Completed development on new collateral liquidation enhancements for Balanced.

• Completed discovery for a second oracle to support ICON, bringing Balanced more price feeds.

🎯 August’s Goals:

• Complete external audits for Sui Balanced and GMP contracts, fixing any issues raised.

• Deploy Balanced contracts and ICON GMP to Sui Mainnet.

• Complete work on Stacks Relay module.

• Commence integration testing for Stacks implementation.

• Complete integration testing of Solana Balanced and GMP contacts with the Relay.

• Deploy Balanced contracts and ICON GMP on Solana testnet and begin testing.

• Commence Solana contract’s internal and external audits.

• Continue work on stability and performance of the Relay.

• Continue work on more detailed documentation for balanced spoke contracts.

• Complete testing new collateral Liquidation enhancements for Balanced.

• Commence development on new oracle for ICON.

A Milestone board for ongoing integration efforts can be found here.