Humanode crosschain bridge, new USDC and Uniswap HMND pair on Base

Important announcement for USDC holders on Humanode EVM, WeHMND holders on chains other than Humanode, BioStakers, and liquidity providers. If you’re staking on LP tokens on BioStaker, remember the date: 18th November.

We are about to launch Humanode's own crosschain bridge, built on Hyperlane, and with it a new USDC on the Humanode chain that replaces the ChainPort version. The first route connects Humanode to Base, and the main WeHMND/USDC pool moves to Uniswap there. 

Our engineers are testing Humanode crosschain bridge now, and we will open the tests to the community before mainnet, which we are aiming for in about a month.

If you have LP tokens in BioStaker today, we will stop rewards in the current program on November 18. Claim your rewards, unstake, withdraw your liquidity from Impossible Finance, and bridge your USDC out through ChainPort. We recommend Base as the destination. The full steps are in "What you need to do" further down.

The question we get more than any other is where to buy HMND. For the last few years, the answer has been a chain of steps: bridge USDC through ChainPort, land on Humanode EVM, swap on Impossible Finance, wrap into eHMND if you want to stake. ChainPort and Impossible Finance got BioDeFi on Humanode started, and we are grateful to both teams for it. The path is long: four steps across tools you have to learn before you can buy anything. If you are about to put money into a token, you want to buy it where you already keep your funds, through infrastructure you can inspect.

The plan

1. Now. We will stop BioStaker rewards on the Impossible Finance pools on November 18, ahead of the scheduled end of the rewards period, and current liquidity providers will unwind their positions.
2. Next. Public testing of Humanode crosschain bridge, then its mainnet launch with Base as the first route, the new USDC on Humanode, the HMND/USDC pool on Uniswap, and BioStaking rewards for that pool.
3. Later. We open Humanode crosschain bridge to more chains, move part of the liquidity rewards to exchanges on the Humanode chain as they launch, and widen its validator set from the launch group to the people who govern the network.

Humanode crosschain bridge is coming

We are deploying our own token bridge between Humanode and Base, built on Hyperlane. It is separate from the existing internal bridge between HMND and eHMND, which keeps working as before. Hyperlane lets anyone deploy a bridge between any two chains without asking a foundation or a committee for permission.

A set of bridge validators signs off on every transfer between the chains, and we are choosing them the way the rest of Humanode works: each one is a human node, a person verified through biometrics. At launch, the set is a small group of selected human nodes run by engineers who have been with Humanode for years and have been building blockchain infrastructure since 2017. The exact validator set and the rest of the configuration will come in a separate article on how we built Humanode crosschain bridge.

We build the Humanode crosschain bridge on Hyperlane's contracts, which Trail of Bits and ChainLight have audited, and we deploy and operate it ourselves. A new bridge with a small validator set will hold USDC, so it goes through internal testing and then open community testing before it carries your funds.

Once Humanode crosschain bridge has a track record on mainnet, we plan to hand it to the people who already govern the network, first to governors or the higher governance tiers, so the same verified humans who hold the chain also hold its bridge. We will add validators as bridge fees grow enough to pay for them, so fees cover the cost of the set at every size.

Relaying is open from the start, so anyone can run a relayer and carry messages between the chains without our involvement. The end state is a bridge that depends on no single team to keep it running, ours included.

Bridge fees are paid out in this order:

1. Bridge validators, who run the most expensive infrastructure in the setup.
2. Humanode validators, in periods when network fees fall short of their costs.
3. The DAO, which receives whatever remains.

Our holders carry the risk each time HMND moves between chains. So we run Humanode crosschain bridge ourselves, take responsibility for it, and publish its configuration.

A new USDC on Humanode

With Humanode crosschain bridge, we bring a new USDC to the Humanode chain, and it replaces the ChainPort USDC you have used there until now. ChainPort issued the old token when you bridged from Ethereum, and its backing sat with ChainPort. The new USDC comes from Base through Humanode crosschain bridge. USDC locked on Base backs it one-to-one, and the same bridge validators secure it. You can check the backing on Base at any time. We will announce its name and ticker before launch so you can tell the two apart. The new pools use only the new USDC, so you need to move your ChainPort USDC off Humanode during the migration.

Why Uniswap on Base

Base has the stablecoin liquidity and the wallets you already have installed. Uniswap is the most popular AMM DEX and the largest by trading volume, and putting the main HMND/USDC pool there puts HMND in front of more traders and more liquidity providers than any venue we could run on Humanode today. Hundreds of wallets and aggregators route their swaps through Uniswap on Base, so with a pool there you can buy HMND inside them with no integration on our side.

We will create one official HMND/USDC pool with a low swap fee, announce its address ourselves, and point BioStaking rewards to it once it is live. You should be able to open the wallet you use every day, find the pool, and buy, with USDC on one side and HMND on the other. Transactions on Base cost a fraction of a cent to a few cents, so adding liquidity stays worth it even for a small position, which matters for a program built to reward many modest providers over a few large ones.

Hyperlane connects more than 150 chains, Solana included, and we can enable any of them on the same deployment, so HMND can reach any network where the community wants it.

BioStaking and where liquidity goes later

If you provide liquidity to the WeHMND/USDC pool on Uniswap, you earn BioStaking rewards on it, and the migration guide will walk you through staking your LP position. WeHMND is the wrapped ERC-20 form of HMND, the same token you hold in the Impossible Finance pools today. BioStaking keeps the rules we built it on: you earn rewards for providing liquidity only while you are biomapped, and the reward rate falls as a single provider's share of the pool grows. One person with a large bag cannot farm the pool the way they would on any other DEX, and a hundred people with modest positions each earn a higher rate than one holder with the same total.

Rewards for the new program will be at least at the level of the current one. We are leaning toward making HMND/USDC the single main pool and directing all rewards there, because one deep pool serves buyers better than several shallow ones. If the community wants pools against BTC or ETH and there is demand behind them, we can deploy those as liquidity grows, and we will discuss it with you first.

As new exchanges launch on the Humanode chain with good UX and bridging built in, we plan to direct part of the liquidity rewards to them, so HMND trades both where the wider market already is and on the chain it secures.

What you need to do

If you stake LP tokens in BioStaker, provide liquidity on Impossible Finance or in the Arbitrum pool, hold USDC on Humanode EVM, or hold ChainPort-bridged WeHMND on another chain, you will need to migrate. The move has two parts: leaving the old pools, which you can do today, and entering the new one, which starts when Humanode crosschain bridge opens.

Now

1. If you use BioStaker, claim your rewards and unstake your LP tokens. Rewards in the current program end on November 18, so after that date, staying in gains you nothing.
2. Go to Impossible Finance and withdraw your liquidity. This turns your LP tokens back into WeHMND and USDC, or WeHMND and WETH if you were in that pool.
3. Bridge your USDC out through ChainPort to the network of your choice. This applies to any USDC you hold on Humanode EVM, whether or not it was ever in a pool. We recommend Base, so your USDC is next to the new pool when it opens. If you withdrew WETH, bridge it to Base the same way.
4. Keep your WeHMND on Humanode. You bridge it to Base through Humanode crosschain bridge once that opens.
5. If you hold WeHMND bridged through ChainPort on another chain, Arbitrum, for example, bridge it back to the Humanode chain. If you provide liquidity in the HMND pool on Arbitrum, withdraw it first, then move the USDT side of your position into USDC on Base so it is ready for the new pool.

ChainPort and Impossible Finance are both working and neither has a closing date, so you can exit at your own pace. If that changes, we will tell you in advance.

When Humanode crosschain bridge opens

1. Bridge your WeHMND from Humanode to Base through Humanode crosschain bridge.
2. Add WeHMND and USDC to the official pool on Uniswap.
3. Stake your LP position to earn BioStaking rewards.

We are aiming to open Humanode crosschain bridge on mainnet in about a month, and we will publish its address, a full guide with contract addresses, and the validator list before it opens.

Verify every address against the official Humanode channels before you sign anything, and ignore anyone who DMs you offering to help with the move.