Akamon Alpha Testnet Live 🌉

Transfer ADA to Polygon and MATIC to Cardano! 🚀

4 min readMay 17, 2022

Public Testnet Launch!

We tested the finalized mADA and mMATIC tokens and their integration in MELDapp on the Cardano public testnet and Polygon Mumbai for over two weeks. While there are still many improvements to be made, we have decided it is time to release the gateway to the public. A testnet deployment avoids most risks for the people involved while bringing valuable UX, infrastructure, operations, and community management experience and feedback.

Beta

Since the alpha (α) is centralized in nature we do not intend to release it to the mainnet. We have been designing a more distributed and decentralized beta (β) version in parallel. The main goal of an α testnet launch is to collect UX, infrastructure, operations, and community management experiences to have more focus space for decentralization later on.

User needs and how they interact with the gateway should stay the same regardless of its underlying architecture. One should not sacrifice UX to be a little bit more decentralized if that is quantifiable in the first place.

We are currently writing the β paper with actual technical discussions on the economics model, governance model, and contract designs leading towards decentralization. The paper will be released at the end of May. A β testnet launch with more gateway partners will follow suit in early June.

Now, let’s take a look at how to get some test tokens and perform some bridging with Akamon Alpha!

How to use Akamon — Alpha version

For the alpha version of Akamon, users are required to have test ADA and MATIC tokens, along with access to Polygon Mumbai and the Cardano public testnet through Metamask and Nami wallet. In this article, we’ll be going over some how-to’s for:

Getting Test ADA
Getting Test MATIC
Example — Bridging ADA to Polygon (mADA)
FAQ and How-to (user manual)

Try out Akamon for yourself! There may be a reward in store come mainnet launch 💸 😉

Akamon alpha testnet link — https://testnet.app.meld.com/akamon

Getting Test ADA

Head over to: https://testnets.cardano.org/en/testnets/cardano/tools/faucet/, make sure tAda is selected, and paste your receiving address in the space provided.
Click “Request funds” and after a short while you should receive 1000 tAda to your wallet that can be used on Akamon alpha testnet.

Getting Test MATIC

https://faucet.polygon.technology/ will only allow you 1 Test MATIC, which isn’t enough to operate with the testnet version of Akamon. Polygon has been able to provide us with ~6000 test MATIC tokens for internal use, as well as for our community! 🥳️🎉

If you are interested in testing out the gateway with test MATIC as well, then paste your Metamask* wallet id in the Typeform below and we will send you enough to perform some bridging! 🌉

Receive Test MATIC from MELD —
Metamask wallet id Typeform submission

Example — Bridging ADA to Polygon (mADA)

Select ADA
Choose the desired amount to transfer
Click Bridge
Sign transaction and pay fee in wallet
View bridge activity/status from within the MELDapp

mADA Contract Address
mMATIC Policy Id

Feedback Forum

We have a submission form created for feedback on the Akamon bridge. Including UX/UI bugs, issues, improvement ideas, and whatever else you may find!
Feedback submission link

FAQ and How-to (user manual)

Akamon FAQ

Detailed step-by-step user experience of an Akamon transfer

MELD — Be Your Own Bank

We think it’s essential for everyone to gain control of their financial lives and have equal access to financial instruments used by professionals, not just centralized institutions, governments, or the 1%. We want to provide financial freedom and control to the masses, including the unbanked.

We have a long-term goal to enable the $15 trillion that is currently locked out of the global economy, including 2 billion individuals worldwide that are either underbanked or have no access to banking services whatsoever, access to these tools. These are the people that are paying the highest fees, getting the worst customer service, and they are the ones that are having the most problems.

Our vision is to create an ecosystem that empowers individuals to regain financial control by providing them with the tools and services they need to manage their money on their terms. Whether that be creating a collateralized debt position (CDP) with cryptocurrency, earning an interest return for lending fiat to borrowers, or even participating in reward incentive programs, we strive to provide our users with the functions they need to manage their own financial lives.