Introducing Turtle: a frictionless, cross-chain token transfer solution

Built by Velocity Labs, powered by Snowbridge

We are extremely proud to announce the first DeFi product incubated and built by Velocity Labs. Turtle facilitates frictionless and cross-chain token transfers, with the smoothest UX in the Polkadot ecosystem.

Currently, token transfer user flows are very fragmented and require users to have an understanding of Polkadot’s architecture. Due to this, each parachain has its own version of a bridge UI to enable transfers in and out of them and cross-transfer flows become very path dependent. With Turtle, we’ve abstracted these complexities and present a unified UI where users can move their assets in, out, and within the Polkadot ecosystem.

Intuitive Design

We are aware that Polkadot’s heterogeneous and multi-sharded architecture adds complexity for the end user. To abstract away these complexities we’ve designed an intuitive app, with just the necessary amount of information for end users. Just specify your origin, token and destination, and Turtle will handle all the complexities in the background.

Modular Design

In the future, Turtle will evolve from an app towards providing widgets for every parachain. These easy-to-implement widgets will work on the most common front-end frameworks, allowing parachains to plug-n-play token transfer capabilities without the hassle. Parachains will be able to use the necessary parts of the underlying SDK and get started upon their launch.

Turtle and our SDK will stay fully up to date with all supported tokens and paths, as well as the latest versions of Snowbridge, XCM and any other supported bridges in the future.

Snowbridge’s new UI

On Turtle’s first iteration, we’re supporting ETH <> Polkadot bridging capabilities by leveraging Snowfork’s light client bridge. Snowbridge provides a trustless and resiiliant infrastructure to connect users from both ecosystems and allow liquidity to flow into any parachains safely and seamlessly. Turtle makes it easier and more intuitive to use Snowbridge.

Distribution is a key component of a successful Web3 ecosystem. L2s have the easiest distribution channels given that all are connected to Ethereum mainnet. Other alternative L1s have prioritized bridging to Ethereum. We believe having a trustless bridge to Ethereum is going to usher the next wave of liquidity and users into Polkadot. Turtle provides a smooth and easy to use entry point for these new inflows.

What Lies Ahead

Turtle is just getting started. We have a long road ahead of us: we want to build Turtle as a public good, to improve the Polkadot DeFi ecosystem.

This is what’s to come:

• Direct ETH <> Parachain support

• Parachain-to-parachain transfers

• Easy to implement widgets for all parachains

• Turtle SDK as a product

• Cross-chain swaps - find the best rates for your trades

• On-ramp capabilities: buy crypto with credit cards, Apple Pay, etc.

  
  

We’re inviting users, developers and other stakeholders to test Turtle - we are confident that this is the very first step towards an unleashed and flourishing cross-chain ecosystem that will propel Polkadot’s growth.