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On Tuesday, February 14th, ZetaChain addressed 1,600+ hackers at Stanford University’s TreeHacks hackathon in a workshop on interoperability and Omnichain Smart Contracts. The session set the stage going into the weekend where dozens of projects competed for ZetaChain’s prize challenges: “Best Real-World Crypto Hack” and “The API Prize”. Submissions ranged from the first omnichain Gnosis Safe to CEX-free gas acquisition tools and ChatGPT powered crypto user experiences. Without further ado, let’s review the winning ZetaChain omnichain dApps!

Proactive Refresh: The Omnichain Gnosis Safe

The prize for “Best Real-World Crypto Hack” went to team Proactive Refresh. This team recognized an inherent vulnerability in current threshold signatures, which is that signature shares are stagnant. This drawback is responsible for major exploits such as the $650M Ronin Bridge hack where a 5-of-7 multisig was compromised and $100M Harmony Bridge exploit, which was secured by a 2-of-5 multisig.

The Proactive Refresh team solved this by implementing a new cryptographic primitive that allows a threshold signature to proactively refresh its underlying keys every 30 seconds (think of it like a Google Authenticator for threshold signatures). In the case of the Ronin Bridge, an adversary would need to compromise all 5 keys in the span of 30 seconds — a huge security improvement compared to conventional static sets of keys.

To demonstrate how powerful this new primitive is, the team built and deployed a Gnosis Safe fork that accepts messages from any blockchain using this novel signature verification scheme. Given the vault app is built on ZetaChain, it effectively enables asset management across all chains, from any chains, securely.

To learn more, check out Proactive Refresh’s full submission and listen to their live pitch here.

Vapor Protocol: Acquiring Gas without a Centralized Party

The prize for “The API Prize” went to team Vapor Protocol. This team understood how painful it is for crypto users to acquire gas in order to use new blockchains. In the current state, you need to interact with a centralized exchange, which involves KYC, delays, and of course, trusting a custodial actor.

The Vapor Protocol team solved this by developing a dApp that leverages ZetaChain’s cross-chain messaging to send gas to any chain as long as you have some tokens on one chain. What’s very exciting is that the team plans to incorporate fiat onramps through integrations such as Stripe or Ramp Network. This will allow users with no existing tokens in DeFi to easily acquire gas on any chain.

To learn more, check out Vapor Protocol’s full submission and tune into the pitch video here.

BlockTalk: ChatGPT Powered Crypto User Experiences

While team BlockTalk did not bring home a prize this year, we must honorably mention their project. AI natural language processing and generative art is all over the tech news headlines these days, and it’s no different in the world of NFTs and broader web3.

Team BlockTalk developed the first ChatGPT interface to support omnichain functionality. In its first iteration, the app supports crypto swap transactions where a user can input simple commands like “Swap X to Y” regardless of chain, and then the app translates it into calldata, which Blocktalk automatically executes.

We argue Blocktalk’s application of AI is one of the more unique approaches in achieving account and blockchain abstraction, a very hot trend in crypto right now. While AI powered crypto user experiences is quite a futuristic concept, we think this project shows great potential in simplifying how users learn about and interact with crypto.

Check out Blocktalk’s full submission to learn more and try it out today.

Start Building

Developers building the next generation of omnichain dApps should visit our ZetaDocs for help getting started. Also, jump into the Development Zone in Discord to collaborate with other ZetaChain contributors on your project development.

About ZetaChain

ZetaChain is the world’s first and only decentralized L1 blockchain with built-in cross-chain interoperability, connecting all blockchains, even non-smart contract chains like Bitcoin and Dogecoin. With ZetaChain’s complete Omnichain toolkit, developers can build true omnichain dApps from a single point of logic, and users can access all of their assets, data, and liquidity in a single place, securely.

Follow ZetaChain on Twitter @zetablockchain and join the conversation on Discord and Telegram. Reach out to [email protected] if you’re building on top of ZetaChain.

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