In an effort to promote greater cross-chain communication, Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) has become generally available.Developers can utilize CCIP for arbitrary smart contract messaging across several blockchain networks and cross-chain token transfers permissionlessly thanks to this protocol.To further improve interoperability, developers will have the ability to initiate and transmit function calls to smart contracts that are deployed on different blockchains.Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, claims that CCIP’s mainnet general availability will accelerate and simplify development and strengthen cross-chain connection.
In an announcement shared, Nazarov wrote, “CCIP is now starting to become the standard for both capital markets blockchain transactions across banks, as well as the way that secure Web3 cross-chain value and data is moved across public chains.”
Users can facilitate transactions between several blockchain networks with the aid of cross-chain bridges.They stand for some of the biggest weak spots in the cryptocurrency industry.One of the most urgent issues facing the industry is cross-chain interoperability, which Chainlink is one of the biggest companies working on. Without interoperability solutions, separate blockchain networks would not be able to communicate with one another.
With the goal of promoting more safe cross-chain cryptocurrency transfers with an intuitive user experience, Chainlink introduced Transporter, a cross-chain messaging tool for bridging tokens, at the beginning of April.According to a Chainlink representative, CCIP is “the only cross-chain protocol that achieves level-5 security” and is the foundation of Chainlink’s Transporter.With plans to incorporate additional networks, CCIP is accessible on nine blockchains: Ethereum, Kroma, Optimism, Polygon, WEMIX, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, BNB Chain, and Kroma.
CCIP aims to help financial institutions unlock the $500 trillion opportunity in tokenized assets, by offering better liquidity access for cross-chain assets, a Chainlink spokesperson said in a statement:
“CCIP is part of a larger Chainlink platform that enables financial institutions to fully unlock tokenized assets by helping them overcome their data, cross-chain, compliance, and synchronization needs.
Cross-chain bridges are among the most vulnerable parts of the crypto protocols used today because of their intricate technical design.Over $5.85 billion worth of cryptocurrencies has been taken from DeFi (decentralized finance) systems since 2016.DefiLlama data shows that 2.83 billion, or more than 48%, of the overall value lost to attacks is attributable to cross-chain bridges.
Cross-chain infrastructure has previously drawn criticism from Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum.Buterin expressed his worries about the rise in frequency of 51% attacks on cross-chain bridges in the future in a Reddit post dated January 2022.
“The more usage of cross-chain bridges and apps there is, the worse the problem becomes. No one will 51% attack Ethereum just to steal 100 Solana-WETH… But if there are 10 million ETH or SOL in the bridge, then the motivation to make an attack becomes much higher, and large pools may well coordinate to make the attack happen.”