TL;DR: Spanning Labs is building the future of Web3 interoperability.

Background

Spanning Labs believes in the multichain future. In order to scale to meet the needs of an expanding Web3 user base, multiple blockchains will be needed to power applications and handle the increase in requests. Teams should be able to choose the right chain for their project without worrying about limiting access to potential users. Conversely, users should be able to create and maintain a single Web3 identity, without multiple wallets and personally bridging assets. 

Spanning Labs’ multichain infrastructure is the pathway to this future.

Who is Spanning Labs?

Drew Beller and Prateek Shah, the two co-founders of Spanning Labs, are no strangers to complex distributed systems. When they analyzed the most consequential and most complex problems in the space, the lack of cross-chain communication stood out. They recognized the technical similarities between their expertise in robotics system design and blockchain. The methodologies they designed and built for safety-critical software at Amazon’s self-driving car division have given them a unique perspective on solving the multichain problems in the industry today. They set out to build a solution, and a team to change how the industry thinks about spanning the current ecosystem — introducing the Spanning Network.

How does the Spanning Network work?

The Spanning Network is built on the concept that users can remain on a single network, while fully owning and managing assets that live on alternate networks.

Base Contracts: The Network supports ‘Spanning’ versions of popular base contracts, such as ERC20, ERC 721, ERC 1155, Ownable + Access Control, and more. With as little as a single word change, teams can update their contracts to a Spanning base class, making their project multichain. With that update alone, teams can also take advantage of common ERC contract extension types to gain even more functionality, like mintable, burnable, pausable, upgradeable, etc.

Custom Functionality: The Spanning Network also supports developers adding custom functions on top of existing base class functionalities. With minor changes, developers can update their functions to support both local and multichain users.

How Our Multichain Model Works: When updating contracts to utilize the Spanning Network, two major changes are occurring. First, the ownership fields in your contract change from storing the legacy address to a multichain capable spanning address. Second, it allows developers to define an address for a local Spanning Delegate contract, the endpoint for the Spanning Network.

Transactions: The Spanning Network also supports a native token ($SPAN) that will be used as part of our transaction model.

The network is expanding every day. Soon the team will be opening access to the Spanning Network testnet. In the meantime, if you have questions or feedback, please reach out to the #developers channel in the Spanning Labs discord.

What are the benefits of this approach?

• Exceptional Security: Unlike other bridging solutions today that hold large pools of assets vulnerable to attacks, Spanning Labs never custodies assets or maintains these pools.
• Access to a Larger Audience: Teams can choose the best chain for their application without limiting access to their potential user base. Users can interact with applications via their local chain, without maintaining multiple wallets or bridging assets.
• Unchanging Asset Functionality: Assets never lose their functionality or utility for both users and development teams. Users always access the benefits provided by their owned asset and projects maintain control over the utility of their assets.

What are some use cases?

• Frictionless multichain payment transfers
• Proof of multichain ownership and multichain airdrops
• Gas fee optimization
• Multichain DAO voting and governance
• And more!

What’s next?

Public demo app built on the Spanning Network & more detailed developer docs coming soon.

Join us!

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Interested in partnering with Spanning Labs in the future to make your team or project multichain? Fill out our partnership form here.