Introducing Catalyst Mainnet; The Future of Cross-Chain is Here.

Catalyst was conceptualized by Alexander, Co-Founder at Cata Labs, three years ago. He envisioned an AMM that could asynchronously swap assets between pools on different chains.

Foreseeing a multi-chain future, he knew that building scalable, decentralized asynchronous applications was the only path forward.

Today, a new chapter of cross-chain begins – with the first pools live on Catalyst Mainnet.

It has become trivially easy to launch a new chain. The rise of modular blockchains has simplified the configuration and deployment of blockchains, enabling an explosion in the number of chains.

However, as an industry, we are still connecting chains the same way we did in 2020, taking 2-3 weeks to establish connections.

As new chains continue to launch, they remain siloed and fragmented, hindering trade between them.

This is where Catalyst comes in. As a modular liquidity engine, it’s optimized to be lightweight and scalable. Catalyst introduces a new cross-chain paradigm that automatically connects chains as they launch and efficiently shares liquidity between them—dissolving the barriers between chains to create a global liquidity layer.

Catalyst is also the fastest way to gain access to new chains and can be deployed up to 50 times faster than other cross-chain protocols. For users, it is the one-stop shop for accessing any asset on any chain.

In physics, a catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction. We believe that Catalyst is the missing piece needed to create a truly user friendly experience to traverse a future of thousands of chains.

The first step of the journey

Catalyst launches its early access mainnet with an ETH pool that connects Base, OP Mainnet, and Blast. This will be the first cross-chain AMM pool to connect three or more networks. Underneath the hood, Catalyst uses Wormhole’s cross-chain communication system to pass messages seamlessly.

Why start with Blast, Base, and OP Mainnet?

Two reasons. Two reasons. One, we believe in a future where liquidity is not fragmented across chains, and we’re starting off with unifying liquidity between OP Stack rollups. And two, we think there’s significant untapped potential in giving people more access to Blast from other L2s like OP Mainnet and Base. We'll be supporting more pools and chains in the coming weeks – which will always be rolled out on Catalyst Testnet ahead of mainnet deployment.

Catalyst will feature the Catalyst Solver Network during this early access launch, employing solvers to provide instant cross-chain liquidity for users. This means users will receive instant liquidity for their cross-chain swaps, instead of waiting several minutes for the participating chains to include and finalize their transactions.

All cats love eggs

Starting immediately, Catalyst will begin dropping eggs to Catalyst UI users on a weekly basis. Eggs are collected off-chain over the next eight weeks and will gain a special purpose later on. Future egg campaigns may also occur.

To prevent abuse and gaming of the egg drop mechanics, we won’t specify the exact formula for getting eggs, but here are some tips to maximize your chances:

• The more you swap, the more eggs you get.
• The size of liquidity supplied matters.
• The time you provide liquidity matters.
• Early Catalyst LPs get an egg boost.

Additionally, there is a loyalty score that tracks user activity over time. This score is updated weekly—it can decrease, increase, or remain the same. Users who stay active throughout the entire season will accrue a higher loyalty score. While the loyalty score doesn't affect the number of eggs you receive, it does affect what emerges after the eggs are hatched.

Learn more about the eggs reward program in the Catalyst docs.

Cheers to the Galxe cats

Thank you to all individuals that completed Catalyst Missions on Galxe during the Catalyst testnets. As a reward for helping battle-test the protocol in its nascent stages, wallets that completed Galxe missions will receive a bonus during Season 1.

All Galxe users that completed at least 1 mission are eligible to a 5% bonus rebate on the Eggs they earn during season 1 on mainnet. The bonus is capped at 50,000 Eggs per user.

Example: Alice earned 1000 Eggs during season 1 and she qualified for the galxe 5% bonus. At the end of the season, she will earn 1000 + (1000 * 5%) = 1050 Eggs

The long road ahead

That’s just the start. Over time, we plan to support more assets and more chains. After a few batches of chain deployments are successfully running, exponential growth can begin with Permissionless Catalyst. Permissionless Catalyst removes the need for the Catalyst core contributors to manage deployments.

The vision for Catalyst is to be a permissionless liquidity layer for all chains. With permissionless deployments, any new chain can automatically have Catalyst contracts deployed with it—as easy as a click of a button. Thus, this new chain is connected with all the other Catalyst deployments on all other chains–such as any rollup built on top of Espresso. This phase also includes the introduction of on-chain mechanisms to bootstrap liquidity (details soonTM). 

The end goal is to create an interconnected ecosystem where users can effortlessly access assets and applications across multiple chains, and developers can easily launch new blockchains and connect them to existing networks and their respective users.

Catalyst aims to dissolve the barriers between chains, giving people the freedom to roam effortlessly throughout crypto and Web3. Catalyst is the future of cross-chain.

Try Catalyst today: https://app.catalyst.exchange/

About Cata Labs

Cata Labs is a software development company that contributes to open-source technology, including Catalyst Protocol. Cata Labs is backed by prominent investors such as Spartan Group, HashKey, Polygon and Circle.

Catalyst Protocol is an AMM purpose-built to connect all chains. Its mission is to empower individuals to acquire any asset on any chain. Using Catalyst, any chain can swap assets with major blockchains like Cosmos, Ethereum and its rollups. Catalyst Protocol is operated by Catalyst Foundation, based in the Cayman Islands. Find out more about the Catalyst Foundation at its Twitter.