Hyperlane is hard at work building out the interchain highway. We’re thrilled to share where we’ve been and where we’re going more regularly via our State of Hyperlane updates!

What we have been up to:

Message Explorer

• Developer Experience is our key focus area and the number 1 feature request has been a message explorer to track the dispatch and delivery of an interchain message. You can now easily and quiclyk check all the messages that have been dispatched and their status. We also help you debug with common gotchas when you may have incorrectly specified certain arguments. Check it out here.

Interchain Accounts

• Send a message via Interchain Account to any contract on a Hyperlane supported network. With our Interchain Accounts API, we simplify message-sending for ABI encoded function calls — no need for handle() on the recipient contract! Read more about ICA here and try our 5-minute quickstart here.

Interchain Query System

• Send a view call to any contract on a Hyperlane-supported network. Query state across chains — without having to deploy a new contract — using Hyperlane’s Interchain Query System. Read more about IQS here.

Unified Liquidity Interface (ULI)

• We know that asset transfer is a core use case alongside Hyperlane’s messaging capabilities. Hyperlane empowers developers by creating a single interface for interactions with value bridges.
• The first bridge that will be supported is the Circle USDC token bridge. USDC transfers represent the majority of value bring transported across chain boundaries. The Circle bridge (and thus the ULI) is available to burn and mint USDC between Goerli and Fuji. You can expect the ULI to be live whenever Circle goes to mainnet on Ethereum and Avalanche. We are exploring adding support for Wormhole’s Portal bridge in this next sprint. Check out the quickstart here.

Devcon and ETHSF and the Permathon

• We had a great time meeting and collaborating with Hackers at both Devcon in Bogota and ETHSF in San Francisco. It was amazing to see the quality of submissions get better, check out the bounty winners from ETHSF.
• If you can’t get enough hacking, we also announced our Permathon, an ongoing monthly project submission contest where you can win a 5k USDC bounty with the top submission!

What’s in the pipeline

Hyperlane V2 — December ‘22

We’ve got some exciting things ahead that represent significant enough change to the protocol that it’s time to update the version — V2 is coming soon! If you are a developer, consider skipping over v1 and build with v2 in mind (Find our minimal migration docs here) We are planning for a testnet 3 deployment by end of November and are hopeful we can get it to mainnet by the end of this year. Some of the things you can look forward to:

• Sovereign Consensus
• Our modular security model, which allows developers to customize message security using ISM (Interchain Security Modules). Choose from, or mix-and-match, the ISM that best suits your needs — economic security, optimistic security, proof of authority, and many more!
• Unified Mailbox Contract
• So long, Inbox and Outbox ! With the new, single Mailbox contract, Hyperlane developers will only need to specify a single address for message sending/receiving.
• Domain ID and Chain ID Equivalence
• We’re making it easier to reference chains without having to map to domain IDs. Look forward to identifier equivalence for all Hyperlane-supported chains.

Trade Route API — December ‘22

• Hyperlane was one of the few interoperability protocols to not have a “native” token-wrapping bridge. While we continue to believe in “native interchain” application experiences, we recognize that developers and asset issuers today are still yearning for having representations of single-chain assets on many other chains. We’re currently building the Trade Route API, a form of classic token wrapping bridge that takes advantage of Hyperlane’s unique strengths, namely Sovereign Consensus. That means that asset issuers will be able to actually permissionlessly issue, own and be sovereign over the wrapped versions outside the origin chain via ISMs. With this API you’ll be able to permissionlessly add your tokens to the Interchain Highway, and open up trade routes for your tokens between new chains!

Permissionless Deployment — 2H2023

• We think one of the best things about crypto is its permissionless nature, and you’ll soon be able to bring Hyperlane to the chains of your choosing. Gain access to best-in-class interoperability without having to wait for the core team to deploy on your chains of choice. Not only does this allow applications and long-tail chains to be connected to the wider interchain, but we are also working with teams to bring Hyperlane to non-EVM execution environments. Stay tuned for more details, if you are a team interested, please reach out.
• Expect to be able to open up Hyperlane’s to your chains of choice before this 2H2023 deadline, but by then, we will have the feature fully launched! If you are interested in deploying Hyperlane on new chains in the interim, let us know and we will help to make it happen. This form here is the first place to start.

ETHVietnam and ETHIndia, Moonbeam Illuminate

• We are closing out the year with some great events. Online, go participate in Moonbeam’s Illuminate Hack. In-person, catch us at ETHVietnam (November 25–27) and ETHIndia (November 30 — December 5) and various satellite events.

Got feedback? Need help?

The Hyperlane crew is always at your service — whether it’s talking through a new integration that leverages some of the exciting new features noted above, or troubleshooting, or helping you migrate from V1 to V2. Find us on Discord or Twitter!

Share our excitement for the interchain? Check out our job openings!