*https://medium.com/1kxnetwork/blockchain-bridges-5db6afac44f8*
Dmitriy Berenzon, September 2021
After years of research & development, we are finally in a multi-chain market structure. There are over 100 active public blockchains, many of which have their own unique applications, users, geographies, security models, and design trade-offs. Despite what individual communities believe, the reality is that the universe tends towards entropy, and the number of these networks will likely continue to increase into the future.
This type of market structure necessitates the need for interoperability between these distinct networks. Many developers have realized this, and the last year has seen an explosion in blockchain bridges that attempt to unify an increasingly fragmented landscape. As of this writing, there are over 40 different bridge projects.
As of September 8, 2021; Illustrative / Not fully comprehensive
In this piece, I will:
As individual ecosystems grow, they develop their own unique strengths, such as greater security, faster throughput, cheaper transactions, better privacy, specific resource provisioning (e.g. storage, compute, bandwidth), and regional developer & user communities. Bridges are important because they enable users to access new platforms, protocols to interoperate with each other, and developers to collaborate on building new products. More specifically, they enable:
Bridges enable existing cryptoassets to travel to new places and do new things. For example: