rhino.fi Deploys on zkSync Era Mainnet Ahead of Full Public Launch

Following our announcement in October last year, rhino.fi has now launched on the zkSync Era mainnet – Era is the first EVM compatible zk-rollup on Ethereum. 

What exactly has been launched?

As our first step we have launched a super-fast bridge between zkSync Era and rhino.fi (StarkEx). 

The rhino.fi <> Era bridge will allow you to quickly & cheaply transfer USDC, USDT and ETH with a click of a button, as well as being completely gas free to transfer from rhino.fi to zkSync Era. 

zkSync Era explorers will be able to utilize the same frictionless bridging experience between Era, Arbitrum, Polygon, BNB Chain and rhino.fi that has processed over 30,000 transfers since first launching between rhino.fi and Polygon in 2022. 

When can I use the bridge?

Currently the zkSync Era is on-boarding projects (Fair onboarding Alpha) ahead of the full public launch of the network. 

The rhino.fi bridge smart contracts have been deployed on the Era mainnet using a whitelist for partners that enables us to test that everything is working correctly. 

The bridge smart contract can be seen here.

Keep a look out for the public launch date on the zkSync social channels.

Why is zkSync Era exciting?

You can read more about why we are excited about zkSync Era in our previous blog post.

We think that zk-based rollups are the end-game for Ethereum. Rollups offer the potential for a dazzling amount of customizability and ultra-high throughput, without compromising on the core values of Ethereum security and decentralization. 

As one of the first teams to launch a zk-rollup in 2020 (StarkEx by Starkware), we have always believed in a rollup-centric roadmap for Ethereum and want to make sure that we are supporting the ecosystem in any way that we can.

zkSync Era in particular excites us for a number of reasons:

• Community is baked into its core, and a huge ecosystem of top projects have announced they will build on Era. 
• Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility means that, for the first time ever, it is now incredibly simple for projects to launch on Era with minimal (if any) code changes. Any project can benefit from the power of zk-rollups to help scale to more users.
• Lastly, account abstraction. This is something that will become more important in the future as crypto scales. Account abstraction allows (amongst other things) Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to function like EOAs, whilst behaving like a smart contract. For example, wallets can now have additional functionality such as private key recovery, but whilst still behaving like an EOA. Previously this was not possible, as EOAs on Ethereum can only initiate transfers, and cannot have any more advanced logic built into them. 

What is next for rhino.fi on zkSync Era?

Shortly after the zkSync Era full public launch, we plan to launch rhino.fi frictionless one-click swapping for Era tokens, and integrate yield opportunities from across the new ecosystem.

How can you get involved?

If you would like to be notified the moment that the rhino.fi <> Era bridge goes live, have suggestions for Era projects who we should partner with, or are helping support the launch of a new token on the Era network then we would love to hear from you. 

Join our friendly discord server to speak directly with the team and other community members.

What is rhino.fi?

rhino.fi is on a mission to create the world’s best DeFi Aggregator. You can access the best opportunities across DeFi from one platform, with total self-custody. Swap the latest tokens across different chains, access yield-earning opportunities without having to use complex bridging or multiple wallets, and you can access deep aggregated order book liquidity, all whilst staying in control of your assets, without paying gas, and with casual privacy.