Today, the Nibiru blockchain, nicknamed “SuperApp” by its founders who boast experience at top tech and financial companies like Google, IBM, and JPMorgan, was launched on mainnet to compete with Ethereum.
Nibiru aims to solve the well-known scalability issues of the Ethereum network through the use of a unified Super Chain capable of processing a large number of transactions per second.
In 2022 the project had obtained VC funding for 8.5 million dollars and an initial valuation of 100 million dollars: now a new chapter opens in the history of blockchain.
All the details below.
Former Google and JPMorgan veterans launch the blockchain “SuperAPP” Nibiru and challenge Ethereum’s performance
Today some former employees of Google, JPMorgan, IBM, and Tendermint Vets have launched the layer-1 Nibiru: this is a “SuperApp” infrastructure that aims to compete with Ethereum by addressing scalability limits scalability.
After a long phase of testnet where the chain underwent a stress-test phase with over 137 million transactions, 4 million active wallet addresses, 80,000 fully synchronized nodes, and 30,000 deployed smart contracts, Nibiru officially enters mainnet.
As mentioned, the chain in question paves the way towards mainstream adoption of cryptographic exchange practices thanks to a unified “Superchain” capable of supporting high throughput and optimistic parallel execution.
In detail, Nibiru is capable of supporting up to 40,000 transactions per second, with instant finality and block times of 1.4 seconds.
The set validators, although described by the L1 development team as “decentralized”, actually consists of just 150 active geolocated subjects; this characteristic explains the high performance of the layer which compensates for poor decentralization compared to Ethereum.
To give an idea, Ethereum boasts a total of 979,531 validators while Solana (much less decentralized and more scalable than the former) has around 3,400 validators.
However, it must be recognized that the performance presented by Nibiru on paper is unprecedented: the chain offers an improvement of 1,300 times and a progress of 4 times compared to the standard performance of chains that use the CometBFT consensus algorithm tested in battle (previously known as Tendermint Core).
Such technical performance is made possible thanks to optimistic parallel execution that allows processing multiple independent transactions simultaneously, unlike what happens in EVM networks.
All this falls fully within the vision of the co-founders of the Unique Divine project, Kevin Yang, Jonathan Gimeno and Jonathan Chang, respectively former veterans of the giants Google, Tendermint, IBM and JPMorgan, who believe in the concept of a blockchain universally accessible to everyone and easy to use.
Mainnet launch of Nibiru and listing of the NIBI token: the next Ethereum Killer has arrived
In addition to the founders of Nibiru, who bring essential know-how thanks to their experiences at Google, JPMorgan, Tendermint, and IBM, it is important to emphasize that several technicians from MIT, Waterloo, Ava Labs, Protocol Labs, Columbia University, and Siemens have also contributed to the creation of the “SuperApp” chain.
Furthermore, the launch on mainnet, in addition to being preceded by a long testing phase, was anticipated by a seed round funding of 8.5 million dollars in September 2022 led by VC who believed in the challenge of scaling Ethereum such as Tribe Capital, Republic Capital, Original Capital and NGC Ventures. All this allowed to obtain a company valuation of 100 million dollars.
Just now, the Nibiru team was able to gather additional funds for operational support from Coinlist, Kraken Ventures, ArkStream, NGC Ventures, and Master Ventures, bringing home another 12 million dollars.
It goes without saying that the launch of Nibiru represents a milestone for the development of the ecosystem of cryptographic apps on blockchain, potentially able to solve Ethereum’s scalability issue once and for all.
As highlighted by the CEO of the Unique Divine project in a press release:
“We recognize the barriers that have held back potential users: from complex onboarding to opaque decision-making processes and a lack of convenience, scalability, and transparency. Nibiru is designed to dismantle these obstacles and offer an intuitive and direct entry point to Web3 for both users and developers. […] The team is excited to support and sincerely collaborate with the growing community of creators and builders of Nibiru.”
Nibiru officially entered mainnet this morning at 8:00 UTC, simultaneously launching the NIBI crypto, the utility token of the chain, with a dedicated listing on Bybit, Kucoin, Gate, and MEXC.
In the first 3 hours of trading, the token reached a price of 0.74 dollars per unit, and recorded volumes of 45 million dollars.
A chain destined to grow and expand its suite of apps
The challenge of Nibiru is not exclusively focused on scalability issues and achieving improved performance compared to Ethereum, but it is also based on other different ambitions, such as the creation of a successful app landscape.
The goal is to create a simple path for the end user, who, similarly to the “SuperApps” of web2, can enjoy a seamless experience suitable for decentralized crypto asset trading.
As a first-level chain, Nibiru stands out from the complexity of various Ethereum layer-2 rollups and presents a strong interoperability component, capable of offering a continuous flow of data and facilitating the connection of liquidity on ten different blockchains through three distinct bridges.
Specifically, the fields in which former Google, IBM, and JPMorgan employees intend to become relevant with their own chain are the NFT, RWA, and DEFI sectors.
Integrated tools available to developers such as Web3 Software Development Kit (SDK), Nibi-Indexer, Nibi-Oracle, and various flexible execution environments in both Wasm VM and EVM, allow for a wide range of participatory possibilities without particular incompatibility with external environments.
Furthermore, Web3 SDKs are available in various modern programming languages such as TypeScript, Golang, Python, and Rust, bypassing any linguistic hurdles on the code development side.
To offer a remarkable experience in the field RWA, the Nibiru oracle allows validation operators to actively participate in the consensus vote to integrate off-chain data on the blockchain natively with high fidelity, without having to rely on external providers such as Chainlink, Api3, Pyth etc.
Nibiru already plans to soon include interesting apps in the world of decentralized finance such as Nibi-Perps, CodedEstate, Nibi-Swap, respectively a perpetual futures product in AMM style, a cryptographic real estate protocol, and a DEX for on-chain exchanges.
Furthermore, Nibiru uses a stablecoin, NUSD, which pairs with the native token NIBI to facilitate seamless fiat on-ramp and ensure liquidity and stability to the ecosystem.
From day one, Nibiru users will have access to a wide range of features on Nibiru Chain, such as staking NIBI to secure the network participating in Nibiru’s governance.
With such a well-established ecosystem, full of resources and interesting apps, it can only predict a bright future for Nibiru and everything orbiting around this innovative next-generation layer-1.