Vladimir Zhuravlev, a Gravity Tech and Waves Association developer, notes that for several years, the Odyssey hackathon (held in the Netherlands) had offered opportunities for software engineers to collaborate on various projects.

Zhuravlev revealed that this year, Odyssey was hosted online for the very time (due to COVID). The event's team tried to ensure that the hackathon would be a unique experience for all participants. They introduced a 3D online arena that connected all 105 teams, jedis and challenge hosts in one virtual space, Zhuravlev noted.

He added:
"The Waves Association was honored to participate in the event in several aspects. First, the Waves protocol was suggested as a building block with support from Waves Jedis: Rob van de Camp and Inal Kardanov. Second, the Waves platform was used for issuing awards to winning teams. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for digital art were created on Waves and sent to participants as a special prize."

The Waves team took part in the hackathon as one of the 105 competing squads, Zhuravlev  confirmed. He also mentioned that the challenge that the team attempted to solve was provided by the Dutch police: Inclusive Safety Communities that "coordinate citizens in emergency situations." (Note: for more details on this update, check here.)

Waves has also teamed up with UNION for asset protection.

UNION will be providing its collateral protection product to various lending protocols that use Waves' Neutrino USD (USDN) and smart contract protection to the inter-chain communication protocol Gravity.

John Liu, CPO of UNION, stated:
"Waves' complete decentralized finance (DeFi) solution with a broad market reach is the perfect platform for building UNION's complete DeFi protection. We look forward to advancing the industry together in 2021 with an inclusive, safe, and accessible portal."

Sten Laureyssens, Strategic Advisor for the Waves Association, remarked:

"The [steady] growth of USDN allowed us to identify demand for advanced risk management and asset protection products. UNION's mission to offer full-stack DeFi protection that decreases the barrier to entry for retail, while advanced enough for institutional investors, is accurately aligned with our approach. As we step into 2021, our integration through Gravity will be a vital-for-growth milestone to reduce multi-layered risks in our ecosystem."

UNION and Waves will work on liquidity provision programs such as the UNN/USDN liquidity pool on Uniswap, a UNN/USDN pair on Waves.Exchange, along with support for the UNN/USDN pair on UNION's Geyser liquidity pool.

Additionally, UNION will be used in Waves' products based on the lending model. For example, users of these products will be asked to choose over-collateralization protection (OC) for "a premium." As noted in the announcement, "in the case of a liquidation trigger, should the OC ratio fall below a specific threshold, the UNN protection product will be called to fill the portion of the OC protected while the borrower pays the remaining difference."

UNION will also be working closely with Waves on issuing a smart contract protection instrument for Gravity early next year. The product will aim to offer additional security to the technology, "ruling out human factors, such as node collusion." Gravity currently utilizes "mathematically proven multi-party computation (MPC) security for its assets held in decentralized custody." UNION will offer "an additional protection layer for users of Gravity's cross-chain system," the announcement confirmed.

Deposits via Gravity, USDN-related (decentralized applications) dApps or future Waves lending protocols will "initiate a prompt to add a specific protection product for a premium or forgo the protection before finalizing the deposit." UNION will "render an intuitive integration and UI for the product, simplifying the asset protection process for Waves users," the announcement noted.

UNION is a full-stack protection platform that aims to lower costs and risks in DeFi by offering a modular infrastructure for the development of advanced coverage products and risk management tools.

As noted in a blog post by Waves Protocol:
"UNION's platform enables the creation of asset protection products based on organic market demand, ranging from discretionary smart contract coverage to complex derivatives on credit default risks and coverage for impermanent loss of liquidity providers. UNION's platform is composable and decentralized, offering secondary markets for protection and an inclusive no-KYC ecosystem."