Many people are afraid of using bridges due to the recent hacks on these cross-chain products.
This raises the question: WHY? Why are these cross-chain solutions so vulnerable? Is there no way out?
Let's talk about @hyperbridge, the ultimate solution to cross-chain vulnerabilities.
Traditional cross-chain solutions have recently depended heavily on centralized multisig committees or trusted intermediaries to validate and approve transactions. This reliance has created single points of failure, leading to over $2 billion in lost crypto assets due to security breaches.
Why is this happening? These methods are vulnerable to hacks and, more significantly, lack scalability for communication between multiple blockchains. Additionally, they incur high on-chain verification costs due to computationally intensive proof checks.
That's not all. Let's delve further into the issues that arise when blockchains do not share the same security model, such as parachains within Polkadot versus external chains like Solana and Near. When this occurs, interoperability becomes:
- Extremely complex
- More expensive
- Prone to trust issues
These challenges limit the potential for seamless DeFi, asset transfers, and application development across ecosystems. This has been a significant issue.
However, the good news is that @hyperbridge offers a solution to these challenges, leveraging Polkadot's verifiable computation layer and other tools. What is Hyperbridge? How does it solve the problem? Let's explore.
You may have heard of blockchain coprocessors. If not, let me explain.
Imagine a large corporation (the Primary Blockchain) that wants to audit the financial records of all its subsidiary companies (the Cross Chains). It's a challenging task, right? To simplify, the corporation hires a Specialized Audit Firm (the Blockchain Coprocessor), which possesses a large team and high security to handle the job. Now, the main corporation only needs to verify a simple signature on the document, saving immense time and money, while allowing the subsidiaries to interact with one another efficiently.
In simple terms, a blockchain coprocessor is a specialized, high security, and high performance secondary blockchain used to handle the heavy lifting of computation and verification for other blockchains.
Having understood that, what then is @hyperbridge?
Hyperbridge is a crypto economic coprocessor and cross-chain interoperability protocol designed to facilitate secure and verifiable communication between blockchains.
It leverages Polkadot as a consensus layer, achieving high crypto-economic security equivalent to about $2.75 billion. This level of security ensures Hyperbridge is resistant to governance attacks that could compromise the protocol if it had to bootstrap its own validator set.
It is the first protocol of its kind to utilize cryptographic proofs, enabling a decentralized and permissionless network of relayers. This allows anyone to transmit cross-chain messages and earn fees without needing to stake or be whitelisted.
Additionally, it benefits from cost-effective consensus proofs through BEEFY, which attests to the validity of all parachain state transitions secured by the network. It employs the Interoperable State Machine Protocol (ISMP), an in-house cross-chain messaging framework, to provide an HTTP-like API for sending and receiving data across chains, ensuring trustless and efficient interactions.
Powered by the $BRIDGE token, Hyperbridge emphasizes full node security and detects Byzantine behaviors, making it a robust solution for multichain environments.
Generally, Hyperbridge addresses cross-chain solutions through:
1. A coprocessor model that offloads intensive verifications off-chain, securely reporting results
on-chain with cryptographic proofs. This ensures execution correctness without compromising security or scalability.
2. Aggregating finalized states from all connected chains into a single verifiable proof, allowing any blockchain to efficiently receive cross-chain messages.
3. Leveraging Polkadot's verifiable computation layer and tools like BEEFY for consensus proofs, PLONK (with UltraPLONK enhancements) for transaction legitimacy, and the Barretenberg backend for fast cryptography. Hyperbridge provides "Full Node Security" and prevents malicious behavior.
4. A permissionless relayer network that incentivizes participants with user-paid fees, eliminating centralization and enabling trustless, decentralized operations akin to single-chain transactions.
Key features that make Hyperbridge unique:
- Permissionless Relayers: Perform transactions and earn fees without barriers.
- Cryptographic Security: Combines cryptoeconomics with zk-proofs for verifiable, trustless interoperability, securing assets against all vulnerabilities.
- Scalability: Aggregates proofs from multiple chains into one, reducing costs and enabling hyper-scalable cross-chain communication.
- Developer Tools: Offers SDKs for Solidity and WASM, plus ISMP for easy integration of cross-chain logic, supporting applications like intents, LRTs, and on/off-ramps.
- Byzantine Fault Detection: Utilizes Polkadot's cores to distribute validation workloads, ensuring robust protection across connected chains.
- BRIDGE Token Integration: Powers the protocol's economics, enabling secure and incentivized operations.
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