Interchain communication largely relies on risky bridges between Layer-1 networks. These bridges, however, have created problems for developers as they must now choose between ecosystems and deal with fragmented liquidity. This has led to a lot of friction between different chains, resulting in confusion for many users.
So, to simplify the cross-chain experience for developers and users, Hyperlane is developing an interoperability platform to enable true communication between chains.
Hyperlane is a blockchain protocol that allows the development of decentralized applications across chains. It is not a blockchain, but rather a developer solution that offers interchain messaging API and SDK tools to make building interchain apps much easier.
This article will summarize everything you need to know about Hyperlane, its features, and how it works.
What Is Hyperlane?
Hyperlane is an interchain communication protocol and application development platform that provides developers with the infrastructure to build better interchain applications. The Hyperlane platform provides developers with a messaging application programming interface (API) and software development kit (SDK) to easily build apps that can be accessed from any blockchain.
Hyperlane was designed to support interchain applications. This allows developers to quickly and easily develop distributed applications that communicate securely across many blockchains.
Unlike other blockchains, Hyperlane continues to update the platform with the recently launched Interchain Accounts and the upcoming Sovereign Consensus features to give developers several options to configure interchain communication.
Hyperlane Features
Hyperlane is an interoperability platform that provides users with several features, such as Sovereign Consensus, Verifiable Fraud Proofs and Permissionless Slashing, and Hyperlane API and SDK. The Hyperlane blockchain is designed to enable developers to send secure messages between chains with varying architectures, from rollups, appchains, or monolithic chains.
Hyperlane brings interchain interoperability to the application level instead of the user level. With this approach, users can now just focus on using your app instead of worrying about bridging and tracking a million different networks.
Hyperlane’s core features include:
Sovereign Consensus
Hyperlane's blockchain technology is designed to facilitate secure, private digital transactions using its proprietary Sovereign Consensus. This consensus lets developers configure their own security model utilizing Interchain Security Modules (ISMs). ISMs make it easy for developers to mix and match their approaches to economic security, optimistic security, proof of authority, and any other security model they'd like to enable. This ability to filter the types of messages that any application can receive is what makes Hyperlane truly unique.
The Sovereign Consensus protocol establishes top-end interchain communications performance while enabling highly customized and cutting-edge security measures. Hyperlane currently provides the following ISMs for smart contracts:
- Multi-Sig Configuration: A simple t-of-n security model. A proof-of-stake adapter contract is used to vary the membership to reflect the Hyperlane validators that provide the most economic security.
- Optimistic Security: Optimistic ISMs embed a fraud window during which 1-of-n parties can halt the system to ensure security.
- Dynamic: ISMs that vary their configuration over time in accordance with the content of messages or the state of an application.
Verifiable Fraud Proofs and Permissionless Slashing
Hyperlane offers a secure way of securing messages across blockchains with Verifiable Fraud Proofs and Permissionless Slashing. This technology is designed to reduce the risk of fraud and other potential threats by using a validator set to secure messages from each blockchain.
Users can provide economic security by staking tokens and delegating to one or more Hyperlane validators. A validator is responsible for monitoring the Outbox contract on their chain and continuously signing the Merkle root of the messages being transmitted.
Verifiable Fraud Proofs further strengthen the network security since the solution penalizes bad actors and slash validators if they behave dishonestly or filter messages. So the protocol ensures that there is an economic cost for malicious actions.
Hyperlane API and SDK
The Hyperlane Messaging API makes it easier for applications to send interchain messages and query information from multiple chains via Hyperlane mailboxes. These mailboxes can be configured on any smart-contract chain and allow applications to send and receive interchain messages. The Hyperlane message lifecycle looks as follows:
- On the origin chain, an application sends a message to the mailbox on the destination chain via an Outbox contract. A user can send an interchain message by indicating the destination chain's Inbox domain, the recipient's address, and the message content.
- Validators for the origin chain sign the message off.
- A relayer sends the message to the intended receiver by submitting a Merkle proof of the message against the signed proof by the validators. “Watchtowers” observe the Outbox to check for malicious validator activity such as censorship or fraudulent messages.
- The Inbox contract of the destination chain verifies the Merkle proof (ISM) before the recipient chain receives the message in their mailbox.
By harnessing the Hyperlane API and SDK tools, developers can build dApps across chains quickly and easily. The Hyperlane team is already providing default templates that speed up developer integration, as well as starter dApp examples for various use cases.
Validators and Evertake Within the Hyperlane Ecosystem
Hyperlane security relies on a delegated proof-of-stake protocol. Thus, validators are core to the underlying Hyperlane architecture, providing ecosystem security, reliability, and scalability. Hyperlane validators don’t sign individual messages. Instead, they continuously sign the Merkle root of the Outbox contract, with all messages bundled together. This makes Hyperlane censorship-resistant, since validators cannot censor specific messages.
By harnessing validators’ combined strength, Hyperlane can ensure messages relayed between chains are secure and valid. In addition, applications are allowed to specify their own validator set. This enables developers to design their own validator set with application-specific security guarantees. As a result, if a dApp concludes that a specific chain’s security is insufficient, it can choose not to integrate that chain.
Hyperlane launched its alpha a few weeks ago, and a number of large dApps, including Flow and Toucan, have already piloted the network. But it is yet to announce a token.
Everstake is a trusted decentralized staking provider catering to over 70 blockchains, including Solana, Cosmos, NEAR, ETH 2.0, Polygon, and Chainlink. We will offer Hyperlane staking services to our users by operating nodes on the Hyperlane network when it goes live.
Note: Hyperlane is still in the early stages, so validator set details, such as the number of validators, staked capital, voting power, etc., are unavailable.
Wrap-Up
The potential offered by the Hyperlane blockchain is immense; developers can leverage its architecture to build the next generation of interchain apps.
With its strong focus on security and interoperability across different blockchains, Hyperlane offers dApps the flexibility to set up application-specific validators and thus provide better experiences to end users.
Everstake is a validator for over 70 blockchains and has a dedicated team of community, DevOps, and R&D specialists. You get your blockchain community representative with Everstake.
Feel free to contact our Hyperlane Blockchain Manager on Twitter.
