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The EOS Network Foundation has described v0.6.0 as a “game-changer” on account of it offering “a rejuvenated DeFi experience, robust technical upgrades, and trustless USDT bridging”.
The EOS EVM, the virtual machine that allows Solidity dapps to run on EOS, has just had its biggest upgrade yet. v0.6.0 has been deployed on mainnet, and it brings the EOS EVM closer to providing the sort of DeFi experience its developers always envisioned. There’s a lot to unpack in the release notes for v0.6.0, but trustless bridging is a flagship improvement.
The Joy of Six
In addition to the usual raft of technical improvements to the underlying codebase, v0.6.0 has a number of new features, starting with trustless bridging. This enables USDT to be bridged over to the EOS EVM without incurring any custodial risk. The ability to move stablecoin value onto EOS will make it significantly easier for users to tap into decentralized finance applications, which are starting to flourish on the EVM-compatible chain.
As EOS Network Foundation, the chain’s chief developer, explained in a recent blog post:
“Given USDT’s significance in DeFi, this development is poised to amplify the Total Value Locked (TVL) along with liquidity on both native EOS and the EOS EVM. Although this new feature is currently limited to the USDT and EOS, future upgrades envision incorporating more EOS Native tokens.”
The other new feature that comes bundled with v0.6.0 is cross-virtual machine communication. This enables smart contracts on EOS EVM to call those on EOS Native, allowing Solidity developers to tap into the existing EOS ecosystem and to extend its capabilities to the EVM chain. For example, a smart contract on the EVM chain can be triggered based on an event on the Native chain such as a user having a certain EOS token balance.
A Game-Changer for DeFi on EOS
The EOS Network Foundation has described v0.6.0 as a “game-changer” on account of it offering “a rejuvenated DeFi experience, robust technical upgrades, and trustless USDT bridging”. Aside from the ability to bridge USDT, the average user might not appreciate most of the improvements at this point in time. Nevertheless, developers building on the EOS EVM should, and it’s their efforts that will be instrumental in bringing more users over to the EOS ecosystem.
The idea behind the EOS EVM in the first place was to open EOS up to Ethereum developers and users, allowing them to harness the EOS Network’s high throughput and low latency while deploying smart contracts written for the EVM. With a low-fee environment and superior scalability, EOS has a lot to offer, particularly for devs tired of Ethereum’s erratic network costs.
The challenge for the EOS community is reaching the critical mass that will see DeFi start to flourish. The ability to bridge USDT over to the EVM chain will be pivotal in bringing this vision closer to reality. If the initiative proves a success, the stage is set for other ERC20 tokens to be made available for bridging in the same manner.