Vaulta Emerges from Its Past with a Renewed Focus on Practical Finance and Compliance-First Blockchain Infrastructure

The network recently partnered with digital asset platform VirgoCX to launch VirgoPay, a cross-border remittance app leveraging stablecoins to slash fees and speed up transactions.

Emerging from its past as EOS, Vaulta is making a fresh start with a focus on practical finance and compliance-first blockchain infrastructure. The network, which recently partnered with digital asset platform VirgoCX to launch cross-border remittance app VirgoPay, aims to deliver nearly instant payments across jurisdictions.

Its goal is to launch services in four major markets—U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Hong Kong—by the end of 2023, with several more in 2024.

We spoke with Yves La Rose, Founder and CEO of Vaulta about how its architecture, governance upgrades, and financial tooling set it apart from past iterations, and from today’s competitors.

Two main early objections to EOS were indeed:

Originally the EOS constitution sought to forbid social pressure vote buying, however on-chain enforcement proved to be unworkable. Paying a share of their income to their stakers became accepted over time as normal for validators.

Ironically, EOS was mostly hampered by too much decentralization in decision-making, so halting development. Huge projects were shelved without a “central coordinator” or a uniting basis.

What then sets Vaulta unique?

The EOS Network Foundation (ENF) was founded in 2021 by the ecosystem to act as a growth plan and uniting agent. This “centralizing force for good” now distributes community resources toward technical developments, marketing, and infrastructure, closing the gaps that formerly hampered EOS’s progress.

Spring Hard Fork and New Consensus:

With the rebranding to Vaulta, the community also embraced a next-generation consensus model that further decentralizes the core algorithms. This change answers earlier governance issues by:

This helps distribute validation roles among a larger spectrum of participants to help reduce the likelihood that a small clique will have too much influence.

While the foundation and community can suggest code changes, token-holder votes ultimately decide on the matter.

Although most proof-of-stake networks follow a practice where validators reward their stakers, the combination of the ENF (now Vaulta Foundation), more advanced on-chain technologies, and an active token-holder community helps to better balance the necessary coordination with distributed decision-making.

Although Vaulta itself does not build VirgoPay, it does depend on Vaulta as the default settlement layer. That said, any platform leveraging centralized stablecoins runs the same macro-risks—depegging or address freezes. Among the main mitigating techniques are:

This gives flexibility; should one stablecoin have problems, application developers—like VirgoPay—can swiftly change to substitutes.

Apps can use automated triggers if a stablecoin’s peg deviates beyond reasonable thresholds—halting inflows or swapping users to safer assets—because transactions and prices are transparent on-chain.

Should users lose faith in a specific issuer, they can decide to hold other digital assets on Vaulta or even hold several stablecoins.

No blockchain can ultimately completely remove the counterparty risk associated with outside stablecoin issuers. But Vaulta’s open architecture, several stablecoin choices, and strong toolkit for on-chain monitoring help payment solutions like VirgoPay to handle and reduce possible fallout.

Vaulta offers native as well as bridged stablecoin capability:

This step ensures that Tether Limited deploys USDT in line with other major blockchains and the network is treated accordingly.

Using a bridging solution across exSat, our Bitcoin Transport Layer, USDC via exSat unlocks cross-chain liquidity from Bitcoin and other chains on Vaulta. This approach guarantees robust security policies and expands Vaulta’s stablecoin options.

How are audited and secured these bridges?

Leading third-party blockchain security firms review and audit the smart contracts and bridging systems.

Lockable and mintable in real-time, these tokens and the used collateral can be tracked by the community to constantly verify that everything fits. Should a security flaw come to light, our on-chain governance allows for the bridging contracts to be replaced or changed without halting the entire network.

This combination of careful audits, open proof-of-reserves, and a governance structure that can react rapidly to vulnerabilities aims to minimize cross-chain risk in Vaulta’s bridging architecture.

Now, Vaulta itself is a permissionless, global network; compliance becomes a matter of local on-ramps and applications deployed on top. For instance, VirgoPay must abide by KYC, AML, and national licensing guidelines.

Virgo is already registered as an MSB in Canada. For fulfilling legal criteria (like transaction reporting or user onboarding) they mix with local financial institutions or payment providers in the 6 jurisdictions: U.S., Hong Kong, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Australia.

Usually starting in smaller pilot projects, these jurisdictional-specific rollouts help to ensure local compliance. Should authorities tighten rules, the relevant front-end—like VirgoPay—can either change or suspend particular services in that jurisdiction. On a global scale