Decentralized Finance (DEFI) protocol Ethena and tokenization company Securitize said they will use a portion of Arbitrum’s technology and data availability network Celestia for Ethereum compatible blockchains with a focus on real assets, with the aim of launching MainNet in the second quarter of this year.
The Converge chain will get fast block times, allowing users to pay gas fees via Ethena USDE and USDTB, and create security and Guardrails via the Converge Validator Network.
“The idea is to go to Testnet soon in the coming weeks, because we’ve already been working on this for a while,” Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize, said in an exclusive interview with Coindesk. “Then, the mainnet: the goal is to do that before Q2 is over.”
The exact timing of the public rollout also depends on third-party integrations such as Anchorage for custody support, Fireblock for key management, and other Defi apps the project has partnered with, Domingo added.
Connect RWA and defi
Announced last month, Converge aims to connect the rapidly growing tokenized real-world assets (RWA) sector with Defi space, and is based on existing ecosystems centered around ethena and security and its assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ecena soon became a defi powerhouse, leading the trend in harvested stubcoins with a $5 billion “synthetic dollar” token USDE. Meanwhile, it will securitize nearly $4 billion of tokenized assets by traditional financial giants, including Apollo, Hamilton Lane and BlackRock’s blockchain-based money market fund token Buidl. The latter is also a key support asset for Ecena’s $1.4 billion USDTB Stablecoin.
“Converge’s ambitious vision for hundreds of billions of institutional capital on-chain requires users to provide high performance and high security assurances,” said Guy Young, founder of developer Ethena Labs.
According to a technology update shared with Coindesk, Converge Chain’s performance relies on arbitrum-driven blockchain custom sequencers to achieve its lofty goals. Sequencers are an important part of the blockchain infrastructure that compiles transactions from a Layer 2 network and posts them to a Layer 1 network.
A data availability layer like Celestia aims to reduce g2 sequencer download and storage costs.
The network uses Ethena USDE and USDTB as gas tokens to pay transaction costs across the network. Both tokens are designed at a fixed price up to $1, which makes it easy to explain the transaction costs, the team writes.
Converge supports both unauthorized and authorized applications side by side. Developers are free to deploy unauthorized Defi apps, but institutional publishers such as Securitize can create an authorized environment for compliant real-world asset products.
Additionally, the Converge Validator Network (CVN) is supposed to provide the basis for network security by essentially acting as the security board of the chain. CVNs can interfere in emergencies, such as when funds are at risk, run circuit breakers, pause user activity if there is a serious bug, and review important governance suggestions.
To participate in CVN, validators must bet Ena, the governance token of Esena. According to the team, CVN will be released shortly after Mainnet is launched.
“The technical breakthrough on this initiative will drive the outcome of asymmetric products for convergence and thus the growth of USDE, USDTB and other Ecena and security products,” Young said.
