Since the advent of Bitcoin in 2009 and the explosion of innovation that followed, the web3 industry has faced many challenges. In addition to dealing with regulators, improving UX, and weeding out bad actors, blockchain engineers continue to tackle two major hurdles: scalability and interoperability.
While many Layer 2s are working to scale Layer 1s like Bitcoin and Ethereum by improving throughput and reducing transaction costs, protocols like Union making both possible: interoperability at scale.
The need for blockchain interoperability
Whatever your opinion on the WEF, it’s 2020 white paper on blockchain interoperability hit the nail on the head when it stated, “Organizations do not want to end up on a blockchain platform that could limit their options for external collaboration in the future.”
To expand on this point, imagine you have a Gmail account, send a message to a Yahoo account, and can’t exchange communications. The Internet was able to develop as quickly as before because it took interoperability into account from the beginning, and blockchains must do the same.
A notable player in the interoperability space is Cosmos, whose flagship Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol has enabled a large number of sovereign chains to connect, transact, exchange tokens, and perform other actions without endangering sovereignty. Map of zones is displayed 91 zones now connected through IBC and has transacted more than $2.1 billion in over 8.7 million transactions in the last 30 days.
IBC isn’t limited to Cosmos chains either. The reliable interoperability protocol has expanded its scope to include EVM-compatible chains such as Ethereum, Polygon and Avalanche. However, most bridging solutions to date are offered by centralized providers, meaning users must trust the bridging protocol.
Built and supported by Composable Finance, Consensys, Tokensoft and Polygon Labs, Union provides a permissionless bridging protocol that reliably connects modular blockchains and rollups without relying on trusted third parties, oracles, multi-signatures or MPC, using advanced zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography.
Union has already connected several ecosystems together and recently announced a partnership with L2 developer Polygon Labs that will leverage Polygon’s AggLayer “to facilitate message passing and asset transfers between the Polygon ecosystem and IBC-compatible chains “, bridging two of the largest blockchain ecosystems: Polygon and Kosmos.
Unauthorized bridging of Polygon, Cosmos and beyond
Union founder and former CTO at Composable Finance Charles Kubat told Crypto: “It’s not just a Cosmos to Polygon bridge, but anything that’s IBC compatible, including Scroll, and soon Arbitrum, Berrachain, Movement Labs, M2… They can build and connect to the Agglayer using of Union”, using the liquidity of one of the largest blockchain Layer 1s, Ethereum, without permission.
“Right now it’s very interesting because we have large L1 ecosystems that really only have permitted centralized bridges or something in between. You need to go to the bridge provider to get support for a small ecosystem. What Union does is if you build a new Cosmos chain or a new package that has IBC enabled, you don’t have to go to a centralized provider to get support. You just open the connection to Ethereum and you’re done… So we’re going quite quickly from a world with only 200 to 300 ecosystems to a world with thousands and thousands.”
This kind of seamless interoperability is not possible with centralized solutions because the “queue” is too long. Any chain that wants to connect must request permission for the bridging protocol.
Union allows chains to open a permissionless channel with Ethereum, enabling a seamlessly interconnected future… of potentially millions of chains. Karel gives the example of dYdX, one of the largest decentralized exchanges that started as a smart contract on Ethereum and moved ecosystems to a sovereign Cosmos app chain.
“We all got into crypto for sovereignty,” he says. “Every successful smart contract is considering moving to its own L2 or app chain.” This means that the total addressable market for Union is potentially enormous. “There is no one who wants to build a blockchain. It is every existing app on Ethereum and Solana that could benefit from this move.”
Union’s IBC-Polygon Bridge should be completed by the end of this year and you can stay up to date with the latest developments by following: Union on X.