OFR Insight Sharing Session #10 - Achieving Omnichain Interoperability

About OFR Insight Sharing

OFR Insight Sharing is a weekly program session presented by Old Fashion Research, joined by other crypto practitioners of multiple notable institutions and media presses. Every week, researchers of OFR Fund will share their research results in the crypto industry for the past week. Recaps take a look back at the sharing sessions and expose a larger audience to the most discussed topics recently.

This week, we are pleased to feature Brandon Truong, Head of Product @ ZetaChain, to share his introduction on ZetaChain - achieving omnichain interoperability.

The topics of this week’s OFR Insight Sharing include: 

  • Web3 interoperability challenge

  • Cross-chain communication trends & solution comparison matrix

  • How ZetaChain is enabling a new paradigm of dApp development & UX

Progression of multichain

  • New Layer 1s and Layer 2s (closed systems)

  • Centralized exchanges

  • Pairwise bridges with varying security models

  • Cross-chain bridge aggregators

  • Cross-chain messaging

Current multichain solutions are,

  • High-risk: Bridges often lock assets that are risked of exploits, and have varying trust models (often centralized, not trustless)

  • Fragmented: Separate products for every chain or asset pair, frustrating UX, siloed users and assets, and complexity beyond comprehension

  • Restrictive: With no standard for cross-chain, devs roll their own trust models/solutions or accept being bounded to certain chains/functionality

As of now, there are more than 100 public blockchains, 50+ bridge projects, more than 1000s of wrapped assets, and over $1 billion lost in bridge exploits.

**Many think that interoperability is simply cross-chain swaps and pairwise bridges, support for multiple chains, and all kinds of wrapped tokens.
**

But interoperability can be

  • Pay from & receive into any wallet/network/asset

  • No more wrapped tokens nor related bridge hacks

  • Chain-agnostic NFTs + Fungible Tokens (ERC20s, etc.)

  • Abstraction of network/chain to end-users

  • DeFi, Games, Marketplaces, and more operate across

  • Different chains seamlessly (not separately)

  • Omnichain portfolio management and accounting

  • And much, much more

Thus, Zetachain will empower the progression of multichain with 

  • Cross-chain messaging with native value transfer

  • Omnichain Smart Contracts

Zetachain is the only public, decentralized blockchain and smart contract platform built for omnichain interoperability.

Zetachain is a truly interoperable L1 with,

  • PoS, Tendermint Consensus

  • Chain and layer-agnostic

  • Single-step transactions

  • Unified liquidity, no wrapping

  • Omnichain Smart Contracts

    • Manage assets across layers and chains enabling even Bitcoin smart contracts
  • Cross-chain messaging

    • Existing smart contracts can send data and value across chains and layers with simple function call

Hyper-connected node architecture

  • Nodes observe and reach consensus connected chains’ transactions

  • Nodes built on battle-tested Cosmos SDK, Tendermint Consensus

  • UTXO-like cross-chain transactions enable safe, chain-agnostic message passing and value transfer

  • EVM-compatible smart contracts on ZetaVM can read from and write to external chains.

Externally Managed Assets

  • Secured with TSS, ZetaChain can sign and verify transactions on any connected chain

  • ZetaChain contracts can thus manage vaults/assets on multiple chains like a normal L1 contract can on a single chain

  • This brings omnichain smart contract logic to all chains, even non-smart-contract chains like Bitcoin, Dogecoin

  • Cold-wallet level security with hot-wallet level functionality, on every chain

Hardened security

  • Decentralized PoS network

  • Leaderless TSS keygen and keysign

  • Extensive defense against arbitrary and infinite minting via oracle checks

  • Funds at rest are never at risk

  • ZETA intermediary token minimizes attack surface and simplifies apps

Security example (AMM)

  • Continuous total supply checks to prevent infinite minting

  • Only ZETA being transferred at a point in time is ever at risk

A simpler, powerful dev experience

  • Simple, intuitive cross-chain messaging API

  • Docs, SDKs, tooling, and examples that minimize developer time-to-deploy

  • EVM-compatible omnichain smart contracts let existing developer skills translate 1:1

  • Adding cross-chain to an existing dApp is as simple as: send, receive, handle-revert

So, how does ZetaChain compare to Cosmos, Polkadot, THORChain, Bridges/Messaging?

A new era of interoperability

  • Cross-chain messaging enables 1-to-1 chain interactions for existing contracts, but more complex apps are complicated and/or impossible

  • Chain-agnostic, interoperable smart contracts let you manage native assets and data from a single space, enabling a higher level of interoperability

What are the opportunities ZetaChain can bring to you?

  • Omnichain DAOs: governance, asset management, clubs, that span all chains

  • Omnichain NFTs: art projects, memberships, marketplaces, proof of ownership that can span all chains

  • Omnichain DeFi: Curve, Aave, Compound, Yearn can be implemented on zEVM and taken cross-chain easily

  • Omnichain Identity: universal usernames/domains, decentralized multichain wallets, multichain portfolio management.

  • And much more.**
    **

If you want to build on ZetaChain, please contact brandon@zetachain.com to talk through ideas and opportunities.

Visit ZetaChain https://zetachain.com Twitter https://twitter.com/zetablockchain

Special thanks to Brandon for presenting the content. Neither OFR Insight Sharing provides financial advice, nor researchers represent the final statement of OFR Fund.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO Old Fashion Research

About Old Fashion Research

Old Fashion Research (OFR) is a multi-strategy blockchain investment fund founded in late 2021 by former executive and investment teams from the leading cryptocurrency exchange in the world.

OFR adopts a multi-strategy approach to capture the underlying value of Web3.0 and to build a full-cycle ecosystem to support new-generation crypto native entrepreneurs. OFR incubates promising startups, follows up with traditional venture capital investment and scaling support, and finally supports the projects if they wish to exit through a merger or acquisition.

Follow us Website | Twitter | Community | Mirror

**
**

Subscribe to Old Fashion Research
Receive the latest updates directly to your inbox.
Mint this entry as an NFT to add it to your collection.
Verification
This entry has been permanently stored onchain and signed by its creator.