Solana, the smart contract platform, has announced the upcoming release of a decentralized bridge named “Wormhole” for Ethereum ERC-20 tokens.
It has been reported that the bridge would allow users to transfer value between the different blockchains, turning ERC-20 tokens into Solana’s corresponding SPL standard.
However, the bridge is currently being audited by Kudelski, a major Swiss security firm.
1) Announcing: Wormhole – a secure, trustless bridge connecting Ethereum to Solana. 🚀https://t.co/FwGRRluAU5 — Solana (@solana) October 8, 2020
Anatoly Yakovenko, the CEO of Solana, said that release is expected for the end of October, as a beta of the bridge will be available to developers in an October 28 hackathon, with a full release expected soon after.
Wormhole uses a set of “guardians” picked from Solana’s existing validators on the proof-of-stake network. Also, the company explained that Wormhole is a Proof of Authority network borrowing trust and identities from the main chain.
It has been analyzed that guardians are responsible for reading data from both blockchains and verifying the correct operation of the bridge. When two-thirds of the validators sign for the correctness of a particular transaction, smart contracts on both sides mint and burn the corresponding token amounts to trigger the transfer.
Solana announced the upcoming launch of its own Ethereum liquidity bridge, adding another pathway to trade on FTX's Serum https://t.co/aQMvpzBEGt — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) October 8, 2020
Moreover, the system appears to work in a similar way to federated bridging seen on Bitcoin sidechains like Liquid or RSK, though the guardians do not seem to be direct custodians of the assets in the bridge.
The Wormhole nodes are able to decide on the new guardian set, which the company says is “established with an off-chain governance system.”
Yakovenko said:
“Wormhole is just step one.”
The team is working on a parallel implementation that would feature on-chain light clients, which could eliminate the need for any type of concrete validator.
Thus, he explained:
“These different bridges have tradeoffs between how fast they can be built, user speed, cost, and decentralization but you can combine them to have the best of both worlds.”
Source: Cointelegraph | Image: Forbes