What is Ethereum Virtual Machine?
If you are in the business of developing smart contracts or dApps, you have undoubtedly heard of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The technology has been described as a global supercomputer and has changed the way people interact with the blockchain.
EVM allows the user to create smart contracts, which are essential to allowing Ethereum networks to cut out the middleman involved in deals, essentially making the process decentralized, by being more open, transparent and interoperable.
In essence, EVM is a hosting site where smart contracts and dApps live and interact with one another. If you are working with multiple smart contracts that interact with one another, the EVM is able to monitor those contracts and how they influence or interact with another.
In this way, the Ethereum Virtual Machine has contributed greatly to the growth of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) over the past year.
Why Are Bridges Important?
One of the most important aspects of the way Ethereum Virtual Machine works for DeFi has been the ability to bridge between two different blockchains. In essence, this allows for different blockchains to interact with one another, ensuring that they don’t exist within isolation.
This means more cross chain interoperability, which is inevitable for the future of DeFi. It increases the viability of certain blockchains, and allows chains from Ethereum and the Binance Smart Chain to interact with one another, for example.
Increasing cross-chain interoperability is vitally important for DeFi to develop. As a working example, imagine if you were not able to use your American credit card to make purchases outside of the United States, or alternatively, imagine that the transaction fee for your bank is prohibitively high for you when making a purchase outside of the US and you want to go with a competitor that has a better rate.
For emerging DeFi projects, based on protocols like BSC and HECO, ensuring that they can viably be used across chains is increasingly important.
Non-EVM Bridges
While Ethereum Virtual Machine has been home to bridges providing cross-chain interoperability, DeFi users have begun to balk at the gas fees that Ethereum requires. New solutions are cropping up, with new services being built that can operate on EVM, such as Binance Smart Chain, but at APYSwap, we have a vision of building bridges that support non-EVM-based blockchains.
Seeing the gaps left in the bridge infrastructure, APYSwap is not only bringing DeFi services from multiple chains that are based on EVM together, such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and HECO, but also expanding to include non-EVM chains, with the prominent example of our Solana bridge.
On the one hand, we are improving interoperability across chains, but also providing superfast services. Additionally, while implementing these chains, we approached bridging from a modular design perspective, which allows APYSwap to add new blockchains quickly and reliably. So, while the APYS token can be swapped across Ethereum, Solana, Binance Smart Chain and Huobi Eco Chain, that list will continue to grow, providing more and more cross-chain interoperability.
