31 October 2024
What is Expansion?
2+ years ago, Hyperlane was introduced to the world. And in the launch post we described the beginning of a new era of crypto, one with many many chains.
The first part of the vision is clearly here:
- Defillama lists over 300 chains in its database.
- OP stack, Arbitrum Orbit, Cosmos SDK and other rollup/chain stacks make it easier than ever to launch a chain.
- Celestia and other alternative data availability chains launched to give all the new rollups cheaper blockspace.
- Rollups-as-a-service providers like Caldera and Conduit launched to handle all the demand for new chains.
Expansion is here.
Defining Expansion
Expansion is many things:
Expansion is a movement.
Expansion is a command,
Expansion is a mantra.
Expansion is the proliferation of new crypto ecosystems.
And Expansion needs connecting.
Connecting Expansion
The same story has been told a million times at this point:
- It’s becoming easier and easier to launch new chains, so there’s a bunch of new blockchains.
- This causes lots of fragmentation on UX and liquidity.
- [insert bridge] connects it all!
It’s logical that something needs to connect the fragmentation. But a closer look at the interoperability design space reveals that not just any bridge can connect everything like they claim.
Traditional interoperability/bridge providers like LayerZero and Wormhole don’t solve this.
They’re bottlenecked by their restricted design, where only their core teams can lead an integration. To connect your chain they make you play the BD game, make you sign exclusivity agreements, and if your chain isn’t important enough to their team, they forget about you. Some even charge 6–7 figures for integrations! This linear, permissioned approach doesn’t scale in the era of Expansion.
Again, we envisioned this bottleneck 2+ years ago and designed Hyperlane accordingly.
In this era of infinite chains, the only way to scale is to scale exponentially. This requires a completely new, permissionless approach:
The Open Interoperability Framework
Hyperlane is the open interoperability framework. Practically, it empowers developers to connect anywhere onchain and build applications that can easily and securely communicate between multiple blockchains. But what do we mean by “open” and why is that so important?
Hyperlane is built with a completely open-source philosophy:
Anyone can use Hyperlane.
Anyone can operate Hyperlane.
Anyone can customize Hyperlane.
Anyone can contribute to Hyperlane.
Anyone can expand Hyperlane.
The Permissionless Edge
While other interoperability teams focus on locking in customers and making them depend on core teams, Hyperlane development has always been focused on making it easy for other teams to adopt and expand Hyperlane. Hyperlane is designed to make core contributors and BD obsolete long term.
Here’s some key elements of Hyperlane that make it special:
Permissionless Expansion
Purpose-built features such as Permissionless Deployments and Warp Routes enable anyone to easily connect their chain to the Hyperlane network and open token bridging out-of-the-box. Without needing permission or BD.
There are many cases of external teams expanding Hyperlane to new chains on their own because it’s just easier than playing the BD game. For example, Endurance, a gaming chain, was blown off by other interop providers before finding and self-deploying Hyperlane. Check out their story here.
- Perhaps the most prominent example is Superlane, an expansion effort initiated and incentivized by Velodrome to bring Hyperlane to every OP stack rollup and enable Superchain interoperability early. This initiative helps Velodrome cement their place as the go-to liquidity venue for the Superchain, and gives them a head start on building cross-rollup applications.
- Almost half of the chains in the Hyperlane chain registry are added by other teams: https://hyperchains.vercel.app/. You can’t say that about any other interop networks. Hyperlane is hitting escape velocity thanks to its open-source community.
AltVM Expansion
With so many new VMs coming out, Hyperlane is once again uniquely architected to connect them all. Hyperlane’s open framework allows it to be adapted to new VMs by anyone. This enables experts in different ecosystems to adapt Hyperlane to their domains.
- Mitosis, an up-and-coming liquidity chain, adapted Hyperlane for the CosmWasm VM on their own to access interoperability and build a scalable multichain ecosystem. In addition, Stride, the largest Cosmos liquid staking hub, uses this implementation and continues to self-deploy Hyperlane across Cosmos and the modular ecosystem (Forma for example). 2 great teams working off each other to expand Hyperlane! Compounding collaboration across ecosystems is what allows Hyperlane to scale exponentially.
- Other examples: Eclipse helped adapt Hyperlane for the SVM, enabling their ecosystem and future SVM rollups with interoperability. Pragma adapted Hyperlane for the Starknet/Cairo VM, bringing Hyperlane to another key ecosystem of rollups.
- More info on all the altVM Hyperlane developments here: docs.hyperlane.xyz/docs/protocol/non-evm-implementations
No Vendor Lock-In
True to its open philosophy, Hyperlane doesn’t enforce any lock in at any part of the stack. In contrast to other interoperability networks, Hyperlane also enables you to bridge with any token standard and use any verification method.
Hyperlane is built with a modular security design, allowing developers to customize and swap out the security models used to verify messages between chains. Think security legos. You can plug and play different pre-built security legos or build your own. This enables future security models, like Superchain native interoperability or ZK light clients, to be easily plugged in once ready.
This also empowers teams to just focus on building security, without worrying about all the interop/relayer infra. For example, Nodekit building their cross-rollup sequencing layer with Hyperlane underneath.
Integrate Hyperlane once and access future improvements just by swapping ISMs. You can even swap out the Hyperlane message passing layer with any other verification method (including competitors). You control your destiny with Hyperlane.
Future Proof
To recap, Hyperlane is permissionless, allowing anyone to expand it to any chain and any VM. Its modular design allows you to swap in future security models as they come out. Every new chain expansion, VM expansion, or security expansion is accessible by any Hyperlane-integrated chain and app.
The compounding effects of this open framework allows Hyperlane to scale exponentially and Connect Expansion.
Join Expansion.
The Hyperlane vision is playing out in real time. This next crypto growth phase will leave many interoperability/bridge projects behind. And Hyperlane is ready.
Expansion.
Start building with Hyperlane now: https://docs.hyperlane.xyz/docs/intro
More about Hyperlane
Hyperlane is the open interoperability framework. It empowers developers to connect anywhere onchain and build applications that can easily and securely communicate between multiple blockchains. Importantly, Hyperlane is fully open-source and always permissionless to build with.
