There is now a new way to move funds between the Cosmos eco-system and HIVE. Doing this is relatively straight forward, going via a CEX like Binance. Doing so without any CEX has been tricky, until recently.
Up until this new pathway has emerged, the only options really have involved using Thorchain to swap ATOM to something like Litecoin or Bitcoin, and then sending those funds on to Tribaldex. The alternative is to bridge ATOM over to Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain, and use Dex's there to swap in to SPS or use Cub for bHIVE, bHBD, etc. and then gamble on the bridges working.
Enter Nomic and nBTC.
Nomic is a Cosmos eco-system project that has been quietly building for years. It has had small airdrops of its token, $NOM, however it has not enabled any transfers of the token for well over a year since its launch. All you can do is stake, and compound. Who knows when $NOM might have some price discovery. It does have some utility, as any $BTC bridged through Nomic will collect a fee, and all fee income will be distributed to NOM stakers as nBTC. So you will earn sats by staking NOM. Anyway, the project has been testing and refining its Bitcoin bridge, and building out its stack. Interestingly, the Nomic blockchain is not a Cosmos chain, at all.
Nomic is built on Orga, a custom high-performance blockchain application framework. Orga is written in Rust, and engineered from the ground up for maximum performance and security.
This boosts Nomic's performance up to 100x higher than other Cosmos-based chains, and lets us execute quickly by building advanced features using 10x less code
Quote from Nomic's website
Regardless, the target market for Nomic's first product, bridged Bitcoin is most definitely the Cosmos eco-system. The $nBTC ticker is in use, and IBC enabled to travel all over the Cosmos painlessly. NBTC is live and available on Osmosis.
Testing Nomic
For this example, I have freed up $50 in Cosmos funds that I want to move to HIVE. Here are the steps to move these, using Nomic and the nBTC bridge, to get those funds available in the HIVE eco-system:
- Swap on Osmosis into nBTC - here I have the funds currently in $OSMO, and a simple swap to $nBTC is all that is required.
Go to Tribaldex or Hive Engine, and generate your deposit address for $BTC. Simply click the wallet, click deposit, and select Bitcoin - copy the address.
Go back to Osmosis, click the Assets tab and locate your nBTC. Click the withdraw button. Enter your Hive engine BTC address, and the amount (just click on the number and it will prefill the full amount if you want to move it all)
- Wait. From trying this a couple of days ago, it can take around an hour or so for the swap.BTC to appear in your Hive Engine wallet.
Obviously this is using the Bitcoin network, and waiting for confirmations, so it is slow compared to both cosmos transactions, and Hive. Fees are not large, but not nothing either - the swap obviously has small Dex fees, their is a miner fee on the withdrawal and then Hive engine deposit fee. But these don't really add up to a lot in my experience.
Thoughts.
I love this new bridge path to move funds (especially smallish amounts) from Cosmos to Hive. It is easy, real easy, and I have done this now three times with a smooth, though slow process. The UX is great, with all the bridging and stuff handled behind the scenes and the process really couldn't be simpler. The main thing is the wait. I find I am starting to get anxious that something has gone wrong, and that is when the TX finalizes and the swap.BTC appears. I would not use this process for significant amounts of money, as pools are still shallow, and it is just in early days for $nBTC.
For me, this is by far the easiest way to shift small amounts from the Cosmos to Hive. Thorchain is great, and I have used it. But I just found this much easier, and avoiding the CEX is always a good thing.
The other thing I am looking forward to is to seeing if the Nomic bridge gains adoption. $NOM has been airdropped previously to various Cosmos eco-system participants, but interestingly never enabled to be transferred. Patiently compounding staking rewards has literally been the only thing possible for NOM, with no price discovery and trading enabled. Eventually that will change, and NOM will be tradeable. Having staked NOM will generate the usual inflation rewards, but also real BTC yield from the fee revenue from the bridge.
Here you can see my wallet, with Staked NOM (waiting to find out what it is worth) and a balance of BTC. Stacking SATS for staking NOM. I must say that I am looking forward to watching this project develop, and see if it gains adoption. However, it is a bridge, and the bridge risks are insanely obvious. The "slow and steady" approach from the Nomic team is reassuring, they have not rushed anything to market, and have taken their time with security. But at the end of the day, it is a bridge.
Overall, I loved the easy UX and simplicity this has opened up for sending small amounts of money from the Cosmos to HIVE (or vice versa). Obviously it has more widespread uses than that one niche example, but you get the idea, and for us here on HIVE, where we can sometimes feel quite cut off from the rest of crypto due to the lack of outwards integration, it is most relevant.
Stay safe, tread careful and don't take anything here as advice - just sharing my experience.
Thanks for reading, have a great day,
JK.