Bridges go anywhere for blockchain communications

Everyone knows that the blockchain bridge is broken. They are widely recognized as one of the major risks of trading in Defi, exemplified by the exploits of Qubit, Ronin and Wormhole, which stole hundreds of millions of dollars of investors.

They suffer from multiple points of failure, but they are still widely used, making ock-lol for those who claim that blockchain trading is somehow “safe” than traditional finance.

Nevertheless, blockchain bridges have become an important part of the Defi and Web3 ecosystem as they have transformed into a misshmash of independent networks. Bitcoin (BTC) has a great value and security, Ethereum (ETH) is home to Dapps’ biggest choice, and Solana (SoL) is praised for its super-fast transactions. For this reason, you need to be able to move assets from one chain to another. Defi users who limit themselves to a single network will miss out on major opportunities. Therefore, interoperability is considered essential, even if it is extremely dangerous.

But what makes the blockchain bridge so vulnerable? In most cases, that is because they consist of multiple components, including balloters, oracles, and custodians, expose users to numerous attack vectors. These risks have been shown many times in the form of smart contract hacking and validator acquisitions. Furthermore, even if the bridge itself is safe, hackers can steal user funds through tricks such as Border Gateway Protocol Hijacking and exploiting the underlying network. With so many moving parts, it seems unlikely that the bridge will be safe.

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So how can I improve this?

We need to move away from this idea that a bridge is somehow the best solution, and instead we need to see the interoperability of the blockchain as to what it really is. Essentially it’s about blockchain communication, or having these networks talk to each other, and there’s no hardcoded rule that you need to use bridges.

More promising systems include chain signatures developed by Hot Labs and nearby protocols (near) teams as ways to sign transactions across multiple blockchains. They utilize distributed multi-party computing networks or MPCs protected by staking to promote highly resilient cross-network communications.

Within an MPC network, multiple nodes work together to perform complex calculations, while maintaining complete privacy than the computational output. In chain signatures, these MPCs are combined with unique accounts with other blockchains because they have the ability to control an unlimited number of subaccounts that can act in the same way as smart contracts. Therefore, these subaccounts can be used to manage programmable MPC calls, request individual nodes in these networks, and sign transactions on third-party blockchains.

Because each MPC node functions independently from the others and maintains full privacy, the chain signature distributes trust to multiple actors, making it impossible for any of them to access the complete transaction data. When a nearby account requests an MPC network to sign a transaction on another blockchain, it uses a key that each MPC node shares and generates a cryptographic signature for that transaction without revealing details.

The only thing left is to protect this encryption key. This can be done using what is called a “trusted execution environment.” These are the secure areas within the computer processor that protect your code and data from unauthorized access. Do this by separating it from the main operating system and other processes and ensuring “confidential” transaction processing. You can use TEE to protect the master key for chain signature transactions. When a nearby account requests the MPC network to sign a transaction, the data from that request enters the TEE and spouts a digital signature that verifies the transaction. However, encryption keys never leave this secure and secure environment. As a result, this private key is never exposed, eliminating the possibility of unauthorized access.

Chain Bridge changes the game

You can see the meaning of chain signatures and how they significantly alleviate cross-chain transactions. The level of abstraction they have achieved makes the actual blockchain network more or less irrelevant to the end user in many DAPPs. For example, the Satoshi protocol is a Bitcoin L2 rollup network that relies on chain signatures to promote native BTC smart contracts to facilitate automated lending with repayment, interest generation, and reward distribution. For users, they don’t even realize that they are constantly sending and receiving funds from the second network.

The broader Defi industry, such as Rhea Finance, Cross-Chain Hight Farming, and Crypto Trading Protocol, has more examples, such as crypto trading protocols built on top of chain abstraction stacks.

In addition to Defi, gas fee payments can also be dramatically simplified by chain signatures. Hot Gas Refuel allows users to pay gas fees using both nearby tether (USDT) tokens in the BNB chain, eliminating the hassle of obtaining BNB tokens.

You can also implement chain signatures to simplify cross-chain staking. AllStake has developed a mesh reconstruction protocol that can be reopened across all blockchains by separating consensus and execution. Buying NFTs or inappropriate tokens is also dramatically simplified with chain signatures. Multichine Chain Compensation NFT Marketplace Mint has already demonstrated this by allowing you to purchase and hold ton-based NFTs and gifts near your wallet. They are all on the same chain abstraction engine.

It is clear that chain signatures can become the underlying infrastructure that abstracts the entire network of end users, including developers, and that they can become the fundamental infrastructure that will lead to a seamless multi-chine future where all DAPPs are “chain compensated” by default. They completely eliminate the need for intimate knowledge about wrapped assets, trusted relayers, and blockchain capabilities, providing developers with a unified API to build DAPPs that can interact with any network. This is the simplest solution to block interoperability.

It’s time to move over the bridge

The Web3 industry remains stuck with blockchain bridges as the ultimate enabler of cross-chain interoperability, but has yet to etch many important flaws in these architectures.

These days there is a lot of focus on so-called “non-trust” bridges that eliminate custody risk factors by solidifying trust in code rather than humans. This means that users do not need to trust third-party systems, but does not resolve the risk of exploiting the underlying code. The industry should awaken to the fact that even the most robust and heavily audited implementations are flawed, so long as they rely on code to secure transactions, there is always some risk.

So the chain signature represents more than just a technical upgrade. These are fundamental changes in the way Web3 thinks about interoperability. We have already reached the limits of what the bridge can do safely. Chain Signature passes this idea and fundamentally rethinks cross-chain access as a secure remote execution rather than asset transfer. And this change in mindset will allow us to unlock a future where identity and intentions move across the chain, as opposed to the underlying assets.

With chain signatures, you no longer have to trust people or code. Instead, trust can be distributed to multiple nodes, protected with TEE-based key management, and single point of failure can be replaced with a whole iron collarbone framework. And there’s no way that happens.

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