In this article, we will explain what inter-blockchain bridges are and what their use is. We will also cover their types, how they work, and take a quick look at some examples.
What Are Blockchain Bridges?
A bridge between blockchains allows the transfer of tokens or other data from the ecosystem of a particular blockchain to another. Interestingly, each chain can have different protocols, governance rules, and functionalities.
In addition to the fact that these bridges allow the transfer of tokens, they can also facilitate the communication of smart contracts between blockchains. Moreover, this technology also makes it possible to get off-chain information, such as the price of an asset from multiple exchanges.
This concept is the basis of oracle protocols.
Types of Inter-Blockchain Bridges
There are two types of inter-blockchain bridges:
In the first category, we have the centralized bridges, which rely on the existence of an authority or central system to operate. This means that users must put their trust in a “mediator” to use a given service or application.
On the other hand, we have the so-called trustless bridges. That is, those that are not based on a central authority but on a set of mathematical algorithms processed by multiple computers, or nodes, to reach a consensus on making a decision, such as taking off-chain data.
Trustless bridges have a decentralized and transparent nature, so they are very popular in the DeFi space.
How Do Inter-Blockchain Bridges Work?
To make everything as simple as possible, let’s take an example. Let’s say we want to send information between Polkadot’s main blockchain, which is Relay Chain, as it is also called, and the Bitcoin blockchain.
In the case of the Polka ecosystem, there are the so-called collator nodes. They are meant to gather information in a block, for example, the Bitcoin price, from its blockchain, and send it to the main chain.
What is very important is that once this action has taken place, another different set of nodes must validate the information obtained from the collator nodes so that they can start collecting the next set of information.
The concept is applied similarly in other projects as well.
Polkadot is a very good example of this, as the ecosystem uses such bridges both between blockchains on its network, called parachains, and between internal and external chains, such as Ethereum.
Conclusion
The main idea of these systems is that a bridge relies on several different validator nodes to reach a consensus on the accuracy of the distributed information.
These bridges are extremely useful for achieving the main purpose of the crypto sector, namely, complete decentralization.
Other examples of ecosystems that use these bridges are ICON, Cosmos, Aion, and Wanchain.