April has been especially productive for the new team at Hydranet. A number of significant milestones have been reached.
Most importantly, the testnet build of our MCLW DEX (“Lazarus”) has entered public beta and is now live for anyone to try for themselves 

Additionally, we have recruited several talented individuals from within the community to join the new team, unveiled a new logo for HDX, launched a new website, got listed on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, and implemented a faucet bot in our Discord for users to easily retrieve testnet funds with, embraced GLP for our Treasury, and ended the month with an excellent live demo of the DEX and Q&A sponsored by one of our partners (WoAS) as well as several video tutorials on how to set-up, use and reset the MCLW DEX.

Reminder: The chainswap from XSN to HDX is still underway, and we strive to help as much of the community migrate to the new chain as we possibly can. The swap concludes on May 20. If you are still holding XSN, please follow our Guide and swap your coins as soon as possible. If you need further assistance with the swap process, please get in contact with our team on Discord.

Lazarus

The new build of the MCLW offers fully-functional off-chain atomic swaps between BTC on the Lightning Network and ETH/USDT/USDC in Connext Vector state channels. It also supports one coin deposit Lightning swaps for BTC and LTC. These swaps are completely non-custodial. Like all ETH state channel and Lightning-based transactions, they are ultimately secured by L1 transfers on the underlying blockchains participating in the swap.
Note: the Lazarus build of the MCLW only supports testnet chains. Specifically, tBTC, tLTC, rETH, tUSDT, and tUSDC. Do not deposit real funds to the testnet wallet!

Using testnet funds at this stage of development is critical for advancement: it makes the DEX much more accessible to a wide public audience, allowing them to try the DEX and some of its more experimental features for themselves without any of the risks involved in acquiring and using real assets. In much the same way, it allows our developers to extensively stress-test the swap mechanisms and backend robustness of the DEX without needing to use real assets.

Our goal in this stage of the MCLW’s development is to get as many newcomers to test it as possible, push the DEX to its utmost limits, and get as much feedback and debugging info from a wide rollout as we possibly can. To amplify this further, we are offering bug bounties to anyone who can find new or unorthodox ways to break the DEX. The more stress tests that the MCLW receives now, the sooner it will reach a stage where it is rigid, solid, and ready to orchestrate high-frequency trades using mainnet funds.


To begin trading on the DEX, you can retrieve testnet funds from any public tBTC, tLTC, or rETH-based faucet. Alternatively, you can try out our new testnet faucet bot in the Discord. By posting a wallet address, it automatically fetches testnet funds for you. Thank you to Phillip1992 and Fedeparma for the effort put into making such a convenient tool.

New Team

We are happy to welcome:
Muppet, a long-time member of the community, is our lead PR, outreach, and marketing specialist.
HydraLord McFinity, also a long-time member of the community, will work hand-in-hand with Muppet.
Argon, our UI-UX Designer Phys_io and Alperen, are both community veterans who have stepped up to the plate to act as moderators.


New Website

Our sleek new website, https://hydranet.ai/, is now live thanks to the efforts of our web dev Sadhill.


New Logo

After overwhelmingly positive feedback and a snapshot vote that received unanimous support, Hydranet has changed its logo to the one pictured here. Many thanks to the logo designer, Argon!

Coinmarketcap and Coingecko Listings

HDX now has live price tracking on Coinmarketcap and an active listing on Coingecko, with price tracking to follow along shortly.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/hydranet/

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/hydranet

Utilizing GLP as Treasury Collateral

GLP is a basket of blue-chip cryptos (BTC, ETH, LINK) and stablecoins (USDC, USDT, DAI) split 50/50. With this, we hope to gain a high yield in ETH that will directly support HDX’s Protocol Owned Liquidity and allow us to continue funding and expanding development.

DEX Live Demo Q&A

On April 30, we did a live showcase of the MCLW DEX and a Q&A hosted by one of our partners, Necksus from Wolves of Alt Street. Many HDX team members and developers were featured as features of the DEX were demoed live. A thorough technical explanation of the DEX and how it works was given. Immediately following the Q&A, the Lazarus build of the MCLW went live. Thank you to Necksus, s54, Phillip1992, muppet, and Victo for working together to deliver an excellent presentation, and thank you to all who participated in asking questions. Watch in case you missed it!


DEX Video Tutorials

To coincide with the April 30 testnet DEX launch, we created several tutorials on how to set up, use, and reset the DEX on Windows — including swap demos and how to use some of the current experimental features of the DEX, such as the SSUI. See our guides here:

Special thanks to our author Nighcourtfan for writing this article! To stay updated or ask any questions you have: Join us on Discord and follow us on

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