With the gradual stabilization of the multi-chain structure, users' demand for cross-chain interoperability has reached a new level. In response to changes in market demand, more and more projects have begun to go beyond pure asset cross-chain and move towards higher dimensions. Cross-chain field exploration of messages, including Celer Network, the protagonist of this article.

April 26,Celer Network, a multi-chain interoperability protocol, officially announced that it has launched the "Celer Inter-chain Message Framework" (Celer Inter-chain Message, Celer IM) on the mainnet, took its first step in the field of message cross-chain.

Using Celer IM SDK, developers can build native cross-chain DApps that share liquidity and status between multiple chains, and users can enjoy the liquidity and applications of multiple blockchain ecosystems with one click without manually switching blockchains .

cBridge: A high-scoring answer sheet at the asset cross-chain level

When it comes to Celer Network's layout in the cross-chain field, readers who are familiar with multi-chain operations may think of the asset cross-chain bridge cBridge. In August and December last year, when the two most critical major version upgrades of cBridge, we also wrote two targeted analysis articles.

Odaily Note: See detailsandandimage description。

Note: This picture is the cBridge integration picture released by Celer at the end of April. The actual situation is subject to Celer's official Twitter release at the end of each month.

As of the publication, cBridge has integrated 30+ blockchains such as Arbitrum, Optimism, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Fantom, and supports hundreds of tokens such as USDT, USDC, and ETH.

Most importantly, on the cross-chain bridge, a track with frequent safety accidents,cBridge has never encountered any security incidents since its launch. The reason is that in addition to auxiliary means such as multiple audits and bug bounties, perhaps cBridge should be praised for its product tonality of "safety first, steady and steady development", regardless of the theoretically safer "self-managed liquidity" of its version 1.0 Not to mention the scheme, even if the "co-management liquidity" scheme was later expanded in version 2.0, the contract custody scheme was not adopted, but SGN, which is as secure as the PoS chain, was used as the custodian of the "co-management funds".

The perfect security performance has finally won cBridge a good reputation. As of the publication, cBridge TVL is now 500 million U.S. dollars (it was once affected by the market crash to a certain extent, and it exceeded 750 million U.S. dollars at the highest point), and the total value of bridging transactions exceeded 8 billion Dollar.

Throughout the development of cBridge, although it was not the earliest time to go online, and the amount of liquidity is not the largest, but with a good balance in safety, speed, and experience, cBridge quickly established itself as the first echelon of the cross-chain bridge track It has become a trustworthy infrastructure component in the multi-chain ecosystem.

Celer IM: The first step at the message cross-chain level

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

The so-called message cross-chain refers to the cross-blockchain message transmission and related contract calls, such as the safe and reliable transfer of messages on the A chain to the B chain and the expected effect on the B chain. As early as last August, when cBridge 1.0 was officially launched, Dong Mo, co-founder and CEO of Celer Network, told us: “Celer Network has been exploring message cross-chain solutions. The current asset bridging is only the first step. In the future, Celer will also develop towards the state bridging of cross-chain and cross-layer asynchronous function calls.”

Celer IM is the first step of Celer Network on this road. Specifically,Celer IM can be understood as an open, plug-and-play message cross-chain component. Any new or existing Dapp only needs to pass a simpleplugin contractThe integration with Celer IM can be completed, thus transforming into a "native cross-chain Dapp" without adjusting the deployed code.

What is a "native cross-chain Dapp" does not seem to be very easy to understand at first glance. Combined with the official information of Celer Network, we will define it as a Dapp that can realize services across blockchains.

With the successive rise of new ecosystems such as major public chains, side chains, and Layer2, represented by major DeFi such as Uniswap and Aave, multi-chain deployment has become a common choice for Dapps. However, in Celer Network's view, these Dapps that have been deployed on multiple ecosystems are still fundamentally different from "native cross-chain Dapps", and can only be called "multi-chain Dapps".

The reason for this is that although these Dapps have been deployed in multiple ecosystems, they are essentially simply copying the same code on different blockchains. The liquidity, application logic and status of different chains are completely different. Isolated, unable to implement cross-blockchain services.

Taking Uniswap as an example, in addition to the Ethereum mainnet, this DeFi leader has been deployed on multiple blockchains such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon. However, the liquidity on each chain is actually not interoperable. The depth performance of trading pairs is also different. When a user trades on Uniswap on a certain chain, he can only trade for the existing tokens on the chain. If he wants to exchange a token that has not yet established a liquidity pool on the chain For assets, another cross-chain bridge must be found, and the asset can be exchanged after being bridged to another bridge.

In contrast to "native cross-chain Dapp", assuming that a new DEX integrates Celer IM's services, it will be possible to build a unified liquidity pool across blockchains, and the liquidity of the same transaction pair on different blockchains will be gathered in the same pool. In this way, users will be able to exchange assets on multiple chains through a simple transaction, and no longer need to worry about liquidity fragmentation. All chains can obtain consistent and best transaction depth.

Similar examples are also reflected in more DeFi services such as lending markets, income aggregation, and synthetic assets. Taking lending as an example, a lending protocol that integrates Celer IM can allow users to provide mortgage assets on one chain and then lend assets on a completely different chain. This is the most important update of the leading lending protocol Aave in its v3 version. Leveraging Celer IM, any lending protocol can now easily obtain this "big trick" of Aave v3 through simple integration.

NFT is no exception. On April 28, Celer Network announced the launch of an NFT cross-chain solution based on Celer IM. Through this solution, NFT can seamlessly cross-chain across all blockchains supported by Celer. Developers can publish NFTs with true cross-chain mobility, and users can also use or sell their NFTs on multiple blockchains with one-click operations, and always have true ownership of their NFTs on all chains.

According to the official disclosure of Celer Network, with the official launch of Celer IM, 9 projects have integrated with the framework as early partners.The nine projects are ChainHop, SynFutures, Mystiko, Swing, FutureSwap, Ooki, Rubic, Solace and Aperture, among which the composable cross-chain liquidity protocol ChainHop, as the first project to integrate Celer IM, has officially launched the mainnet.

SGN: Let the value of cross-chain services flow back to CELR

In the previous article, we mentioned the utility performance of "native cross-chain Dapp", so how does Celer IM make this a reality? The official version when the testnet was launched beforenoticeIn , Celer Network once gave a very detailed logical disassembly of the technical implementation of Celer IM. In simple terms, it can be divided into three steps.

• First of all, when a user uses a Dapp integrated with Celer IM to perform cross-chain activities, it will not directly interact with the existing smart contract of the DApp on the initial chain, but will interact with a new "Plug-in "Contract interaction, which will contain the logic for interacting with DApps' existing smart contracts.

• Then, the "Plug-in" contract will send subsequent cross-chain requests, and Celer Network's core component "State Guardian Network" (SGN) will be responsible for delivering the request to the target chain.

• Finally, a new role "Executor" on the target chain will be responsible for accepting the request and executing the final cross-chain logic on the target chain. Executor can be understood as an open node on the target chain, anyone can become this role, and obtain related incentives by performing activities correctly.

Based on this set of cross-chain request initiation, delivery, and receiving frameworks,Celer IM has established a Layer0 cross-chain messaging system under the public chain, side chain, and Layer2. This solution is similar to LayerZero, which previously completed financing of US$135 million at a valuation of US$1 billion, but has its own unique features. In the technical implementation of LayerZero, the main body responsible for message relay is the oracle Machines and Endpoints deployed on different chains, while in Celer IM's solution are SGN and Executor, Celer IM can use this SGN chain to achieve more complex cross-chain messages.

In the overall design of Celer Network, SGN is a special PoS chain used to relay messages on different blockchains. It is no different from general PoS blockchains, and the security is owned by the network. The verification nodes are jointly responsible. Once the node does evil, it will not only be kicked out, but also suffer a huge penalty of pledged assets, so as to ensure that the upper layer protocol and application can handle the cross-chain transmission of messages in a more secure and credible manner. When executing a specific cross-chain request transfer, the verification node needs to first reach a consensus on "whether the message exists", and at the same time generate a weighted multi-sign certificate, and then store the certificate on the SGN chain, and wait for the Executor who subscribes to the message to share it Continue to the target chain.

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Celer's new vision: a multi-chain interoperability protocol

Over the past two years, Celer Network has been one of our high-profile projects. It is worth mentioning that in the early years, Celer Network positioned itself as a Layer 2 expansion project. Now, with the implementation and improvement of cross-chain related services, Celer Network has quietly changed its positioning, becoming a "multiple Chain Interoperability Protocol".

Although the launch of Celer IM has not been too long, we can already see some fresh experiences that are increasingly rare in the industry on the applications that integrate Celer IM, such as Chainhop, a native cross-chain DEX based on Celer IM. , users can freely call the liquidity of Sushiswap, PancakeSwap, SpookySwap, Curve, Uniswap and many other leading DeFi protocols on the six chains to achieve seamless cross-chain interaction.

With the further advancement of Celer IM in multi-chain expansion and protocol integration in the future, we can even imagine that one day users will no longer need to directly interact with many DeFi protocols on different chains, but can perform all types of transactions through a few outstanding front-ends. On-chain operations, all back-end cross-chain and interaction logic is handled by Celer IM and its native cross-chain protocol. At that time, the boundaries between chains will gradually become blurred, and ordinary users do not even need to perceive the underlying switching process at all.

Of course, all of this is just the most idealized imagination, but we do believe that in the future, the connection between chains will be closer, and users' demand for cross-chain interoperability will also continue to increase. New demands will bring new markets. Based on its past excellent performance in product delivery and polishing, we have reason to expect Celer Network to bring us more surprises in this new blue ocean.