Emerging Layer 1 public chains are rising rapidly and may become potential competitors to dYdX

Recently, a new public chain called Nibiru Chain has attracted industry attention. This public chain completed its airdrop activity in just one month, with its community size rapidly expanding by more than three times, and the number of Twitter followers surpassing 500,000. As an emerging public chain that has secured over $20 million in funding, Nibiru Chain focuses on enhancing the security and speed of DeFi applications, and is expected to become a strong competitor to dYdX.

The Nibiru Chain is set to launch its mainnet this week. As a rapidly developing Layer 1 public chain, what technical features and competitive advantages does Nibiru Chain have? What security issues should be considered when developing projects in its ecosystem? Let's delve into these questions together.

Nibiru Chain Protocol Analysis

Nibiru Chain's core business focuses on the DeFi trading sector. Its main components include the following four aspects:

1. Nibi-Perps: This is an on-chain perpetual contract trading system that allows users to trade popular crypto assets such as BTC, ETH, and ATOM with up to 10x leverage. Stakers of $NIBI will enjoy governance rights and trading fee discounts on Nibi-Perps.

2. Nibi-Swap: This is Nibiru's automated market maker protocol, which plans to support two types of liquidity pools: stablecoin exchange pool and standard constant product pool.

3. $NUSD: This is an over-collateralized stablecoin within the Nibiru ecosystem. Initially, users can mint NUSD using $USDC and $NIBI, with the specific ratio determined by the collateralization ratio. For example, if the collateralization ratio is 80%, then minting 100 $NUSD requires providing 80 $USDC and $NIBI worth equivalent to 20 NUSD. In the future, Nibiru Chain plans to support more types of collateral assets. Currently, the operational model of $NUSD is similar to that of $FRAX in the Cosmos ecosystem.

4. Nibi-Oracles: This is Nibiru's native oracle solution that allows validators to participate in oracle consensus voting, achieving high-fidelity integration of off-chain data and providing low-latency feedback for external APIs and smart contracts.

In 2024, Nibiru Chain will focus on expanding its ecosystem. Key development plans include integration with major multi-chain DeFi projects, listing on well-known centralized exchanges, completing parallel optimistic execution, and achieving comprehensive EVM compatibility.

Secure Development Practices Guide

When developing applications on the Nibiru Chain, the development process and required programming languages are basically the same as other Cosmos-based public chains. The following security guidelines can help improve the contract security of the project:

Contract Development Security

1. Be prepared to respond to attacks Developers need to build upgradable smart contracts and establish comprehensive risk response plans to address potential attacks and vulnerabilities.

2. Pay attention to the standardization of address verification. In the Cosmos SDK, any valid address has two representations: all lowercase and all uppercase. When handling addresses in contracts, this feature must be taken into account to avoid security vulnerabilities caused by inconsistent address formats.

3. Pay attention to operations and overflow During the development process, it is important to be aware of risks such as integer overflow and division by zero. It is recommended to use CosmWasm's Uint256 and Uint512 types, and to use mathematical functions that do not overflow, such as full_mul().

4. Access Control Issues Access control is one of the key issues in program security. In Cosmwasm contracts, access to critical functions should be strictly controlled to prevent unauthorized operations.

5. Be careful of infinite loops Although CosmWasm contracts have a high gas limit set, improper use may still lead to gas exhaustion. Especially when handling data packet transmission between contracts, care should be taken to avoid potential infinite loop risks.

Project Security Practices

1. Smart Contract Audit Before deploying on the mainnet, it is crucial to conduct a comprehensive security audit of the smart contract. This helps identify potential security vulnerabilities and ensures that the code logic meets expectations.

2. Use a multi-signature wallet Project teams should consider using multi-signature wallets to manage project funds and smart contracts to reduce potential access control risks and the likelihood of internal malfeasance. Nibiru Chain has adopted the Nomos multi-signature solution, and project teams may consider using this tool for asset management.

Conclusion

As an emerging Layer 1 public chain, Nibiru Chain provides an innovative platform for DeFi, gaming, and physical assets. It aims to address the challenges of accessibility, security, and performance in Web3 applications, offering comprehensive and high-quality services to developers and users. With the continuous development of its ecosystem, Nibiru Chain is expected to play an important role in the blockchain space.