Union's public mainnet is officially live. The initial set of mainnet validators are producing blocks on union-1, and U is now claimable as part of the U Drop for community contributors. The era of trustless, scalable, zk-based interop has begun.
This launch is the culmination of three years of work by the Union core team, core contributors, and everybody involved in Union. Thanks are owed to all the support from strategic investors, key partners, and the vibrant Union community. None of this happens without all of you.
Mainnet paves the way for the addition of more chains, more applications, and the onboarding of many more users to the Union network. Over $145M of value in BTC LSTs, BABY, and other assets has already been securely transferred across Union routes during the alpha mainnet, and that only scratches the surface of what the Union network is capable of. The future is inevitably multichain, and Union will connect that future in a unified crosschain ecosystem.
Union mainnet is also just the beginning. With years of roadmap already planned and more details—and many more chains—to be added, the work doesn't stop here. Union was created to solve the great unfinished challenge of blockchain interoperability, and the Union ecosystem will not rest until its mission is complete.
Alongside the Union mainnet launch is the debut of U, the Union token. U powers Union—as the gas token of the network, as the fee token in the Dynamic Fee Market, as security for the Union L1, and as part of Union governance. The genesis U Drop is claimable now for those who pre-claimed. This too is just the start, with another 8% in incentives to be distributed as part of future programs, plus the Ecosystem Fund, DAO Treasury, and Foundation allocations to be deployed to accelerate Union's growth. Follow @UnionFDN for updates.
The genesis staking vault has also been created, with those who elected to pre-stake already earning rewards. The vault will be open to everyone in the coming weeks, alongside the full launch of Escher’s eU liquid staked Union token. Unstaking will be enabled by Escher at the same time.
Union's latest ecosystem project, uname, is also set to begin registration for crosschain identities powered by Union, with U Drop participants that pre-staked up to the Maximum Benefits milestone receiving a free uname + priority access—follow @uname_domains for updates.
Thank you again to all who made this happen. Thank you to community moderators, testers, yappers, advisors, the Wandering Whale Sharks community, investors who believed in Union before anyone else, and the Union Army that has grown more over time.
Now that mainnet is live, it's back to work making the dream of secure, trustless, and hyper-efficient interoperability at scale a reality for all. Union is for everybody, Union is in it for the long-haul, and soon, Union will be everywhere.
This is just the start. Onward.
zkgm.