Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight – Swim

It is a sign of blockchain ecosystem maturity when dApps offering innovative multi-chain solutions go online. 

Take Swim, for example: by facilitating native stablecoin swaps backed by sophisticated, multi-asset liquidity pools, Swim addresses pressing needs across the crypto industry for direct cross-chain liquidity.

1. What is Swim?

Swim is a multi-chain Automated Market Maker (AMM) for native assets, designed to make bridging as easy as possible. 

Swim currently supports native stablecoin swaps across eight chains, including Fantom, Solana, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Polygon. 

Our solution reduces the barriers faced by users when performing cross-chain transactions and offers an easy-to-use, cost-efficient, native asset bridge. 

Unique features on Swim include a bridge status overview, which allows users to track the flow of their assets every step of the way, and a retry/resume function for paused transactions. 

With the upcoming implementation of Swim’s relayer, the Propeller, users will be able to swap native assets with a single click. 

2. How do you introduce Swim to a DeFi/crypto novice?

As the broader crypto ecosystem rapidly transitions towards a new, multichain paradigm, DeFi applications and liquidity are becoming increasingly scattered across siloed and separate networks. 

While it’s clear we are heading towards a multichain future, the infrastructure supporting cross-chain transactions has proven to be lacking. 

With Swim, our vision is to create a cross-chain bridge that allows users to swap native assets (i.e., the most commonly used form of their assets) across chains in the most efficient and user-friendly way possible. 

We believe users should be able to use any dApp, on any chain, with their existing funds, without worrying about the boilerplate tasks incurred from cross-chain asset management.

3. How did you come up with Swim, and what inspired you?

Our inspiration to build Swim came from our teams’ experience using DeFi applications and suffering while trying to find a quick and efficient way to move our assets across chains. 

Born out of necessity, Swim is built on a set of key pillars ‒  decentralization, security, and usability ‒ and an ethic that never compromises and constantly strives to innovate and improve. Our goal is to be the one-stop solution to all bridging needs in the multichain future.  

4. What is the utility of the $SWIM token?

First, we’d like to flag that the $SWIM token is not yet live. Once launched, $SWIM will act as our governance token, where token holders will directly vote on and enact modifications to our protocol. 

$SWIM token holders receive a portion of bridge fees extracted from the total volume traded on Swim.

5 How do Metapools work?

Metapools allow Swim to facilitate trading between new tokens and an existing pool ‒ allowing native tokens on new chains to be swapped seamlessly with any native stablecoin in our existing hexapool. 

For example, to swap Fantom stablecoins with stablecoins on our other supported chains, it’s first swapped with the hexapool LP token before being redeemed into the stablecoin from the hexapool or swapped with stablecoins in a metapool. 

The additional benefit is that existing LP token holders are not affected by the new metapool if they don’t add liquidity to it. Users can simply swap from a native asset on the source chain and receive their desired native asset on the destination chain. Swim handles all the cross-chain complexities to offer the most efficient paths with ample liquidity. 

6. What are the team members’ backgrounds?

Our team is comprised of traders, engineers, and business individuals with previous work experience at Alameda, FTX, Coinbase Ventures, Cosmos, Google, etc. 

Read more about our team on our blog. 

7. How did you learn about Fantom?

Fantom became an important part of the blossoming L1 scene in 2020 and 2021, with its EVM-compatible smart contract platform and pioneering efforts in the decentralized finance space, alongside the speed, reliability, and inexpensive features that Fantom offers. 

Furthermore, we are excited by the ways Fantom is bringing Web3 and digital ownership to the gaming industry, as well as the growth of NFT marketplaces and ownership driven solely by users in the space.

8. Why did you decide to integrate Fantom?

Our decision to integrate Fantom was driven by substantial community demand while also aligning with our focus on building for the future. 

On top of pioneering use cases in DeFi, NFT activity on Fantom is particularly interesting as it’s been a bottom-up movement with users and devs accelerating organic growth in the space and driving network effects.

PaintSwap, NFTKey, and Potluck Protocol, among others, are doing exciting things on Fantom. 

Swim wants to establish the foundation for future partnerships with leading protocols building on Fantom and help support their multichain efforts and initiatives in bringing more liquidity to the ecosystem.

9. How did the Fantom community receive Swim? 

Swim’s expansion to the Fantom ecosystem came with great enthusiasm from the Fantom community. With a large influx of new users and volume, Fantom represents one of Swim’s most sought-after destinations for native stablecoin swaps. 

Throughout Swim’s community initiatives and AMAs, various Fantom users have expressed their excitement about having access to stablecoin liquidity across a growing number of chains. 

Both Swim’s team & community is thrilled to be supporting the thriving DeFi ecosystem that’s taking advantage of all the great things that Fantom offers.  

10. What’s coming up for Swim? Free alpha!

The Swim team is working on many exciting initiatives ranging from expanding to new chains, integrating with leading protocols, enabling single-click swaps via our Propeller, and a native asset SDK to help facilitate further integrations and partnerships. 

11. How does a multichain ecosystem evolve from here?

While we may not in the future have hundreds of chains across the industry as today, for the chains that can scale and maintain network effects, creating interoperability will be of paramount importance – which is where protocols like Swim will make a major impact. 

In the future, chains will have specific use cases, ranging from royalties for artists to GameFi to things we probably can’t even imagine right now. Swim will be there to provide liquidity across chains.

We are heading towards a future where all the complexities of operating across chains are abstracted and handled on the backend to offer users seamless access to opportunities across various chains, which will enable us to onboard the next generation of users in DeFi.

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