Because the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009 and the explosion of innovation that adopted, the web3 trade has confronted many challenges. Past coping with regulators, enhancing UX, and hunting down dangerous actors, blockchain engineers proceed to sort out two main hurdles: scalability and interoperability.
Whereas many Layer 2s are working to scale Layer 1s like Bitcoin and Ethereum by enhancing throughput and lowering transaction charges, protocols like Union allow each—interoperability at scale.
The necessity for blockchain interoperability
No matter your opinion on the WEF, its 2020 whitepaper on blockchain interoperability hit the nail when it acknowledged, “Organisations don’t wish to discover themselves on a blockchain platform which will restrict their choices for exterior collaboration sooner or later.”
To elaborate additional on that time, think about having a Gmail account, sending a message to a Yahoo account, and being unable to alternate communications. The web was in a position to develop as rapidly because it did as a result of it factored in interoperability from the early days, and blockchains should do the identical.
A notable participant within the interoperability house is Cosmos, whose flagship Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol has enabled a number of sovereign chains to attach, transact, alternate, swap tokens, and carry out different actions with out compromising sovereignty. Map of Zones exhibits 91 zones now linked by way of IBC transacting greater than $2.1 billion over the past 30 days in additional than 8.7 million transactions.
IBC isn’t restricted to Cosmos chains, both. The trustless interoperability protocol has broadened its scope to incorporate EVM-compatible chains reminiscent of Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche. Nevertheless, most bridging options to this point have been supplied by centralized suppliers, that means customers should belief the bridging protocol.
Constructed and backed by Composable Finance, Consensys, Tokensoft, and Polygon Labs, Union supplies a permissionless bridging protocol that connects modular blockchains and rollups trustlessly, with out relying on trusted third events, oracles, multi-signatures, or MPC, utilizing superior zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography.
Already connecting a number of ecosystems, Union lately introduced a partnership with L2 developer Polygon Labs that may faucet into Polygon’s AggLayer “to facilitate message passing and asset transfers between the Polygon ecosystem and IBC-enabled chains,” bridging two of the biggest blockchain ecosystems: Polygon and Cosmos.
Permissionlessly bridging Polygon, Cosmos, and past
Union founder and prior CTO at Composable Finance Karel Kubat instructed CryptoSlate, “It’s not only a Cosmos to Polygon bridge however something that’s IBC-enabled, which incorporates Scroll, and shortly Arbitrum, Berrachain, Motion Labs, M2… They’ll construct and join into the Agglayer utilizing Union,” permissionlessly tapping into the liquidity of one of many largest blockchain Layer 1s, Ethereum.
“Proper now it’s very fascinating as a result of we’ve large L1 ecosystems that actually solely have permissioned centralized bridges or one thing in between. You might want to go to the bridge supplier to get help for a small ecosystem. What Union does, is in the event you’re constructing a brand new Cosmos chain or a brand new rollup that’s IBC enabled, you don’t must go to a centralized supplier to get help. You simply open the connection to Ethereum and also you’re accomplished… So we’re going fairly rapidly from a world with solely 200 to 300 ecosystems to a world with 1000’s and 1000’s.”
The sort of seamless interoperability isn’t potential with centralized options as a result of the “wait queue” is just too lengthy. Each chain wanting to attach must request the bridging protocol’s permission.
With Union, chains can permissionlessly open a channel with Ethereum, enabling a seamlessly interconnected future… of probably thousands and thousands of chains. Karel provides the instance of dYdX, one of many largest decentralized exchanges that started as a sensible contract on Ethereum and moved ecosystems to develop into a sovereign Cosmos app chain.
“All of us went into crypto for sovereignty,” he says. “Any profitable sensible contract is considering going to their very own L2 or app chain.” This implies the overall addressable marketplace for Union is doubtlessly huge. “It isn’t anybody that desires to construct a blockchain. It’s any current app on Ethereum and Solana that might profit from making this transfer.”
Union’s IBC to Polygon bridge needs to be accomplished by the top of this yr and you’ll sustain with the most recent developments by following Union on X.
