Interview with Celer: What kind of cross-chain bridge do users need

A multi-chain and multi-layer pattern is taking shape.

In the past year, we have witnessed the rise of new-generation public chains and side chains such as BSC and Polygon. As the opening of the Arbitrum and Optimism mainnets is approaching, the ecological construction of Layer 2 has also accelerated. The emergence of these emerging ecosystems has alleviated the low performance and high cost of Ethereum to a certain extent, allowing more developers and users to deploy or experience on-chain applications at a lower cost.

However, the division of ecology also means the fragmentation of liquidity. The more prosperous the development of emerging ecology, the stronger the demand for cross-ecological transfer of assets.As a bridge for capital flow between different ecologies, the value of cross-chain bridges has gradually emerged.

In the cryptocurrency world, there are many characters with a keen sense of value. Among them are star capital who stand on the sunny side and shine brightly, as well as hackers who hide in the dark and wait for an opportunity. In July, Chainswap, Anyswap and other two cross-chain bridges suffered financial losses due to hacker attacks, especially Chainswap, which affected more than 20 projects. The successive security incidents not only sounded the alarm for project parties and users, but also made more people begin to systematically examine the development of this emerging track.

On July 23, Celer Network officially released the v1.0 version of its cross-chain bridge product cBridge, since it was launched for a week, more than 600 users have executed thousands of cross-chain transactions through cBridge, with a total transaction volume of more than 2 million US dollars, which has saved more than 80,000 US dollars in handling fees compared with the native bridge.

As an established Layer2 expansion project, Celer Network recently launched its latest expansion solution Layer2.Finance, which enjoys a relatively good reputation in the industry. At a time when the attention of the cross-chain bridge track is soaring, we also have certain doubts about the development status and trends of the track. In order to find answers, Odaily interviewed Dong Mo, co-founder and CEO of Celer Network.secondary title

"If you want to crack the security problem, you need to jump out of the existing logic"

The conversation begins with the top security concerns. The service content of the cross-chain bridge is destined to be a capital-intensive business. Therefore, compared with some other chain applications, the security requirements of this business are often stricter, and a small mistake may often lead to into a catastrophe.

When talking about cBridge is to ensure the security of the system and avoid the previous accidents of Chainswap and Anyswap, Dong Mo said: "Our approach is to simplify the problem as much as possible and make the contract layer thinner.”

At present, most of the mainstream cross-chain bridge products adopt the "Liquidity Swap" model - the initiator of the cross-chain transaction needs to lock a certain amount of liquidity in the cross-chain contract of the initial chain, and the target chain After being notified by the oracle machine, the cross-chain contract will release the corresponding liquidity on the target chain (generally minting and issuing derivative tokens that can be redeemed for assets on the original chain at 1:1).

Celer Network's approach is to jump out of the logic of liquidity swap. After extracting the core conditional payment function in the state channel, it optimizes and slims down and makes cBridge. When performing cross-chain operations, users do not need to send any funds to the contract. Instead, they need to send a transfer with a hash lock to the address of the node (explained below) through the contract, and specify to the user on the target chain The subject of address release liquidity will no longer be the contract itself, but instead, the node address with the same hash lock can be sent to the user.

It might sound complicated at first, but let me explain it in simpler words,The approach of cBridge is actually to reduce the burden on the contract layer. In this mode, the cross-chain contract itself will no longer need to carry any funds on the initial chain, nor will it need to deal with the release of liquidity on the target chain, which is effective The risk of fund loss from contract attacks is reduced.

However, the reduction of contract layer tasks will also bring some new problems. Under the current mainstream cross-chain bridge solution, the cross-chain contract itself can directly release liquidity on the target chain. This step requires almost no waiting time and is executed as a whole. Higher efficiency; under the cBridge solution, the contract no longer has the authority to release liquidity, which requires a brand new role to advance liquidity on the target to respond to users' cross-chain needs in a timely manner.

This new role is the "node" mentioned earlier.To sum up, the so-called cBridge node is the role of helping users advance liquidity on the target chain. In order to complete this task, the node needs to lock a certain amount of liquidity on each chain that may become the user's target in advance. Of course, the nodes will not be busy in vain. Users also need to pay a certain fee to the nodes while enjoying cross-chain services.

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"An ideal cross-chain bridge needs to have three elements"

With the successive rise of emerging ecology, there are not a few cross-chain bridge projects currently on the market. The specific business processes of these projects are different, and the integrated ecology and currency are also different. For ordinary users, how to choose The most suitable cross-chain bridge has become a difficult problem.

In Dong Mo's view, an ideal cross-chain bridge needs to have three elements - safe, easy to use, and cheap. As the most core element, security has been explained in the previous part. Next, we will talk about the two major elements of "ease of use" and "cheap".

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cBridge cross-chain process

Another major requirement for "ease of use" is that the cross-chain bridge needs to be able to meet the diversified needs of users as much as possible, and must be able to support more ecology and more currencies, and the cross-chain duration should not be too long.

Currently, users can use cBridge to perform high-speed, low-cost cross-chain or cross-layer transfers between Ethereum, Arbitrum, BSC, and Polygon. In the next period of time, cBridge will continue to expand the number of integrated ecology, Support more public chains or Layer 2 networks. At the same time, because cBridge simplifies the overall cross-chain logic, the technical complexity is low, and it is easier to transplant. In addition to the EVM compatible chain, the solution can also be extended to any public chain that supports hash locks in the future.

As for the currency issue, cBridge's solution is extremely flexible, and which currencies are supported is completely determined by the node. If there is a high cross-chain demand for an asset, the node can provide a cross-chain channel by itself, and only needs to lock the corresponding asset in the potential target chain.

Another feature of cBridge is that it can greatly shorten the overall time of cross-chain transactions. The official specific time is 5-10 minutes, but Dong Mo pointed out that 5-10 minutes is actually a relatively conservative estimate, considering that many users Due to cost considerations, it is generally not possible to choose a too high gas price when executing related transactions, and it takes a certain amount of time for the transaction confirmation of the initial chain. If the time required for transaction confirmation is ignored, the overall cross-chain time of cBridge can be further shortened.

Compared with the concept of "easy to use", "cheap" is obviously easier to imagine. The so-called "cheap" refers to the lower overall cost for users when performing cross-chain transactions. There are two major components of the cost here, one is the gas fee required for transaction confirmation, and the other is the handling fee paid to the cross-chain service provider .

As mentioned earlier, under the cBridge solution, users only need two simple steps to perform cross-chain operations. Although this sounds more complicated than Multichain. The contract layer is thinner, and the content of a single transaction is relatively simple, so the overall gas will not be too high. Dong Mo gave a simple example. When entering Arbitrum from Ethereum, the cBridge solution is about six times cheaper than the official bridge.

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"Cross-chain bridge is a very lucrative business"

In the world of cryptocurrencies, projects and tokens are always inseparable. Some project teams will choose to launch corresponding new tokens for new products when expanding their product lines. Although this is convenient for building a new consensus around new products, it often dilutes the existing value of "old tokens". Out of this concern, Odaily asked Dong Mo whether Celer Network would issue new coins for cBridge, and Dong Mo gave a negative answer.

Dong Mo pointed out that cBridge will continue to use CELR. Assuming that there will be a strong demand for liquidity in the future, cBridge does not rule out that it will start CELR liquidity mining incentives for nodes that provide liquidity. However, in the short term, there is not much need to start an incentive plan.Because for the nodes, the cross-chain bridge itself is a very profitable business, and the entire system can be completely self-sufficient.

With the increasing demand for cross-chains, the business of cross-chain bridges is also becoming increasingly busy. For users who need to cross-chain, especially small transaction users, cBridge's solution has obvious price advantages compared with the official bridges of major ecologies. With the growth of business volume, even if it is as low as 0.05%. Under the standard handling fee standard, nodes can still maintain a fairly high rate of return, which is even higher than the current single-currency mining income in DeFi.

Briefly explain how cBridge achieves such high returns. As mentioned above, the node has already paid a certain amount of liquidity on different target chains, so when the node responds to the user's fund cross-chain demand, it only needs to release the funds to the user's designated address on the target chain. In actual operation, the nodes do not need to cross the official cross-chain bridge frequently with each transaction, but can be integrated into a whole. After a certain difference in the liquidity on different target chains, the cross-chain will be unified and the target chain will be balanced. liquidity status among them.

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"Asset cross-chain is just the beginning"

For a long time, cross-chain has been one of the main tasks in the blockchain world. After a long period of discussion, research, and development, the proposition of "cross-chain" has gradually been divided into two levels: one is the relatively basic asset cross-chain, and the other is the more difficult and logically more complex information cross-chain chain.

With the emergence of cBridge and other cross-chain bridge solutions, the idea of ​​asset cross-chain construction at this stage is relatively mature, and can basically meet the current cross-chain application needs of users. However, with the continued development of blockchain technology in the future, applications With the continuous upgrading of functions, the needs of users are bound to continue to grow, gradually reaching new levels.

At the end of the conversation, Dong Mo told us:"Celer Network has been exploring information cross-chain solutions. The current asset bridge is only the first step. In the future, cBridge will develop towards the state bridge of cross-chain and cross-layer asynchronous function calls."

As an established development team in the industry, Celer Network has proven its development capabilities and execution efficiency with continuous product iterations in the past. cBridge's innovation in asset cross-chain logic has once again proved the team's innovative strength. Looking forward to the longer future, we have reason to expect that Celer Network can bring us new surprises in terms of information cross-chain propositions.