Blockchains are gaining momentum and Web3 has ambitions for mass adoption with a record 34 thousand new developers having contributed to the space in 2021. The status quo is, however, that blockchains don’t currently talk to each other and it’s quite difficult to build crosschain apps or to transfer funds or data between chains in a safe way.
That’s where Connext steps in: our network enables a fast, trust-minimized communication between blockchains. Unlike other bridging projects in the space, Connext does not utilize third parties that introduce security assumptions. This means users can bridge their funds and developers can build cross-chain applications in a way that retains the security properties of underlying chains.
Recent major bridge hacks, such as the $650m Ronin hack, show how very important safe communication between blockchains is.
Blockchains were created as an innovative system to keep assets and data secure, transparent and hard to hack. The major blockchains, including Ethereum, Avalanche or Polygon, are succeeding in this vision, as manipulating them would require a huge financial and technical effort.
However, as crypto and blockchains become more mainstream and popular, they face a structural issue: they’re disconnected from each other and don’t know what happens outside of their ecosystem. This means that, just like in the early days of the Internet where various protocols were incompatible, disconnected, and using the Web was tedious, blockchains today cannot talk to each other: they aren’t connected. This results in a situation where tokens, dapps and NFTs exist in different ecosystems that are siloed and completely disconnected from each other. If web3 is to reach mass adoption, this situation cannot last. At Connext, our mission is to create safe, trustless ways that allow blockchains to share information between each other. This brings benefits to users who are able to transfer crypto between chains and, of course, for devs, who are able to build applications working across chains.