Create bridge_to_elrond.md

[DimaBryuhanov]

Grant Application Checklist

• The application template has been copied, renamed ( project_name.md) and updated.
• A BTC or Ethereum (DAI) address for the payment of the milestones is provided inside the application.
• I have read and acknowledged the Terms and Conditions.
• The software delivered for this grant will be released under an open-source license specified in the application.
• The total funding amount of the project is below USD $30k for initial grant applications and $100k for follow-up grants.
• The initial PR contains only one commit (squash if needed before submitting your PR).
• The grant will only be announced once the first milestone has been accepted.

[alxs]

Hey @DimaBryuhanov, just a note that we generally don't award multiple grants in parallel. Which one would you rather focus on first, this or the XP.network application?

[DimaBryuhanov]

Hi @alxs thank you for the fast response

We will wait with this application until we receive an answer for the XP.network application.

[alxs]

Closing due to #406 (comment)

[DimaBryuhanov]

Hello, @alxs. We would like to continue with the Parachain - Elrond bridge application. We have multiple changes in the application and the PoC of the project. Would you like us to proceed with this application or we better start a new one?

[alxs]

I'll reopen the application. Let me know when you'd like us to look into it.

[DimaBryuhanov]

Hi @alxs

We've updated the application for your review.

[alxs]

Thanks, I'll share with the rest of the team. Just a quick heads-up that the committee generally isn't very keen to fund more bridges.

I personally won't support the application due to the issues with your last application, in particular #406 (comment). Besides, I would have liked to see some past experience as also mentioned in that comment.

[DimaBryuhanov]

Hi @alxs,

1. RE: ...issues with your last application

We fully acknowledge and share your concerns about the previous grant application, where mistakes were made, one of which is that we forked Acala's code.
We clearly left it there, we preserved a full attribution to Acala and the Apache 2.0 license. Also that Acala was picked up solely as the starting point for our own Pallet, and now we are doing a new one from scratch.
This is an unfortunate oversight caused by human factors. Mea maxima culpa!

We took all this into account and now we are offering you a completely unique code created by our team for your consideration, except for the substrate node template, which is used to prove that the code can run in a parachain. In our PoC code repository you can find more than 3k unique lines of code.

As you can see, we have already started the development of the bridge together with the Elrond team. Having spent about 25 working days on the project development according to Milestone 0.

We will fully understand if you do not support our grant application, but we're asking you to give us a chance and to approach the consideration of the application with an open mind.

We really want to show you our motivation and help in developing the Polkadot ecosystem.

We have updated the project team structure. Since Verbal Kint has not been working on the Parachain - Elrond bridge, we're no longer mentioning him in the application for the grant.

2. RE: ... the committee generally isn't very keen to fund bridges.

We were inspired by the work on creating bridges between Polkadot and other ecosystems by NuLink, Nowfork, Bifrost, ChainSafe and others.

We believe that bridges to other blockchain ecosystems will add to Polkadot adoption and popularity, as it brings new liquidity and users. Having said that, we understand that the committee might have other priorities now and will appreciate full feedback so we could see what kind of alignment there is with our own development plans.

[alxs]

@DimaBryuhanov sorry for the late reply - I've taken a closer look at the application and I'm sorry to say that my decision is final. Nevertheless, the application will remain open until the end of next week and may still be accepted by other members of the committee.

Regarding funding priorities, please see the section on project ideas in our README. Our grants programs focus on supporting the development of open source software that benefits the entire ecosystem - i.e. not really the final product, but more importantly your code should be useful to others. This is not automatically the case with every bridge and applications are assessed on a case-by-case basis.

[Noc2]

Thanks for the application and all the effort you put into this, but at this stage we have already quite a few teams working on different bridges. Therefore, we decided to wait until these bridges are deployed, audited and tested until we potentially fund additional bridges that can partly reuse existing relayers and the technical designs. I therefore won’t support the application as well. Potentially Elrond would be more interested in funding this project.

[alxs]

I'm closing the application now as it hasn't managed to gather approval in the two weeks it's been in review. Feel free to have a look at the section on alternative funding sources in our README or, as David said, maybe try talking to the Elrond team.