Torsten Stuber, CTO of SatoshiPay and Pendulum, discusses building Pendulum as a standalone blockchain with smart contracts and Spacewalk, a decentralized bridge connecting Stellar to Polkadot parachains. The bridge uses collateralization to ensure security and launches on Kusama in Q3 2024.
In this Tech Talks episode, Torsten Stuber explains SatoshiPay's evolution from Bitcoin micropayments to Stellar-based solutions and the creation of Pendulum, an independent blockchain built on Substrate. Pendulum aims to bring smart contract capabilities and automated market makers to the Stellar ecosystem. The discussion covers smart contract execution layers, comparing EVM versus WebAssembly, with both speakers favoring WASM for future scalability. Spacewalk, Pendulum's decentralized bridge to Polkadot, uses collateralization incentives adapted from interBTC to prevent malicious behavior. The bridge adapts Bitcoin's chain relay concept to Stellar's consensus algorithm and plans mainnet launch on Kusama in Q3 2024, followed by Polkadot mainnet deployment.
