Noble’s mission is to bring native assets to the growing ecosystem of Cosmos application-specific blockchains (“Appchains”). Appchains are blockchains that dedicate their blockspace to running one or more applications without having to conform to the rules of a monolithic base layer chain like Ethereum or Solana. 

Appchains offer developers sovereignty over their architecture and give teams the freedom to build useful applications without focusing on obstacles to scalability, such as rising gas costs and network congestion. 

Celestia is a modular blockchain network built with the Cosmos SDK that supercharges the appchain model, empowering developers with the scale and ease of rollups, without compromising customizability and sovereignty. Via data availability sampling, Celestia’s throughput scales with demand as more users join the network and run light nodes, providing developers with an abundance of choice on what to build, and how to build it. 

In service of this vision, and as a result of Celestia’s close connection to the Cosmos ecosystem, we are excited to share our plans to service the Celestia ecosystem by bringing USDC and native asset issuance to rollup developers – thereby providing direct access to native stablecoins, and other crypto-assets, out-of-the-box.

Bootstrapping Stablecoin Liquidity for Sovereign Rollups 

To date, the default path for rollup developers involves settling on Ethereum, deploying native bridges and posting data to Ethereum’s highly censorship resistant, but expensive, blockspace. 

Developers surrender sovereignty and choice in exchange for access to the deepest on-chain liquidity, particularly of stablecoins. In fact, USDC continues to be the most bridged asset from Ethereum by a large margin, comprising 33% of all Ethereum bridge TVL, followed closely in volume by USDT. Bridging stablecoins from Ethereum Mainnet to a new rollup can entail significant, volatile gas costs for users, making mainstream consumer payments and many other types of smaller transactions unworkable.

Sovereign rollups on Celestia usher in a new paradigm. Celestia makes spinning up a new blockchain nearly as easy as deploying a smart contract. Unlike existing Cosmos appchains, developers can launch a blockchain without needing to issue their own token or bootstrap security on their own, bringing down the time to deploy a new, fully-provisioned blockchain from days to minutes.

However, many sovereign rollups still need direct access to stablecoins, requiring them to either accept the expensive tradeoffs of bridging assets directly from Ethereum or use various wrapped stablecoin options provided by third-party bridges, fragmenting liquidity across the Interchain.

With Noble, sovereign rollup developers gain direct access to native stablecoins, allowing the use of USDC and other stablecoins out-of-the-box for gas and on-chain transactions. In minutes, developers will be able to spin up a new application on a dedicated blockchain, mint USDC on Noble, connect their blockchain via IBC or Hyperlane, and initiate cheap and fast stablecoin transactions.

Unlocking a New Wave of Crypto-Native Applications

In addition to on-ramping new liquidity for appchains and rollups, Noble provides developers a “Stripe-like experience” for integrating USDC into crypto-native applications across a number of verticals:

• Gaming and NFTs

  • Deploy your on-chain game as its own sovereign rollup 

  • Use Noble USDC to on-ramp new users and bootstrap liquidity while enabling players to make in-game purchases, such as NFTs, using USDC 

• DeFi

  • Inject liquidity into DeFi applications such as money markets, stableswaps, stablecoin trading pairs, and benefit from on-chain USDC-settlement  

• Consumer payment applications 

  • Build cost-efficient peer-to-peer consumer payments applications with the UX of Web 2.0, leveraging the dedicated scale afforded by rollups

• Developer UX  

  • Rollup developers can integrate USDC as a gas token, allowing users to make payments, buy NFTs, and more – entirely with USDC

Mint, Route, Swap: The Simplicity of Noble Assets

Overall, issuing a token like native USDC on Noble is a straightforward exercise. We've implemented a custom Token Factory module to mimic the functionality of a smart contract on Ethereum in which asset issuers and their institutional partners can mint and burn assets with ease. Noble’s goal is to provide maximum flexibility for issuers on Cosmos.

Subsequently, appchains and rollups can now receive direct and affordable access to deep, on-chain liquidity. Users no longer need to pay hefty gas fees to Ethereum just to integrate USDC. 

Noble also uses the recently introduced Packet Forward Middleware, which solves the path unwinding problem in the IBC ecosystem and facilitates a “one-click” experience for users transferring assets between blockchains. This positions Noble as not only an issuing chain, but also a router for tokens throughout the Interchain – ultimately improving the user experience for appchains, rollups and asset issuers alike. 

For more information on Noble, check out our recent content: Introducing Noble and Announcing USDC on Noble. And if you’re interested in connecting with us, get in touch at hello@nobleassets.xyz.