Teleporter — Avalanche Interoperability

English poet John Donne once wrote,

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

No person exists in isolation from others. We are inherently connected when we are born into existence and are reliant on one another. Sovereign blockchains on Avalanche, known as Subnets, are no different.

Avalanche is a network of blockchains. These chains, or Subnets, can each have their own custom rulesets just like our modern day countries. Each country has their own currency (native gas token), governments (validators or nodes), and GDP (TVL of various protocols). Just like how each country wants to trade, transact, and communicate with one another, Subnets want to interoperate with one another. For many, existence would be limited and futile if we could not travel and see the rest of the world.

Introducing: Teleporter

At 11:02AM ET on March 6, 2024, the first native (meaning built-into the protocol itself, no third party integrations) Avalanche cross-chain message was sent using Teleporter.

The message was (you guessed it): “No Subnet is an island entire of itself.”

Teleporter is an EVM-compatible cross-subnet communication protocol built on top of Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM). It is implemented as a Solidity smart contract, enabling any Solidity developer to quickly ramp-up and build any application or use case on top. With Teleporter, anyone can send any message from a blockchain (Subnet) to another. Anything that exists on the Avalanche C-Chain, the current liquidity hub of Avalanche, can be leveraged on any other Subnet. The possibilities are truly endless.

Here are a few examples of what one could do:

• Send any asset, e.g. native USDC, from Avalanche C-Chain to any Subnet: USDC on your Subnet will feel native, and there’s no need for third party integrations to get a token onto a Subnet.
• Create a BTC-denominated Subnet that uses BTC (represented as BTC.b) as the native gas token: with massive Bitcoin inflows from the ETFs, you can be the first to create a Subnet where BTC is used for micro payments/purchases that can finalize in seconds.
• Initiate a swap on a Subnet with more liquidity to get a better price: Avalanche C-Chain has ample liquidity, as it is integrated with tons of DEXs, CEXs, and other platforms so the user can conduct a swap using Teleporter and get the best price guaranteed without having to leave their Subnet.
• Obtain oracle information like Chainlink Price Feeds, VRFs (verifiably random numbers), or Functions that are available on one Subnet to another: build the next-generation game or NFT with VRFs to assign randomized attributes or ensure excitement and unpredictability of gameplay.
• Create a seamless experience for your users where they don’t have to deal with any of the web3 nuances like gas or bridging: users can purchase an NFT on Avalanche C-Chain seemingly without having to leave, but the NFT itself is minted on a “gasless Subnet”.

What differentiates Teleporter?

Here’s how Teleporter stands out from other interoperability protocols:

1. Fast: Messages are primarily limited by block confirmation times (a few seconds, ~5s end-to-end including the source and destination transactions). Compare this to other existing solutions that start ~25s and can go up to 7 days.
2. Affordable: No hidden tx fees at the protocol layer — users only need to pay for gas for the 2 txs. And in some cases, only gas on the originating chain, as the dApp may decide to cover destination gas by running their own relayer. For context, relayers deliver the message, and anyone can run a relayer, creating a long-term model of a relayer marketplace that should ultimately drive competitive fees (i.e. low as possible for users but high enough that it will be profitable to run a relayer).
3. Simple: Teleporter, built on top of Avalanche’s native interoperability protocol, AWM, creates an easy interface for any developer to deploy applications. It abstracts away complexities like BLS signatures, which ensures that messages are verified and authenticated. Existing solutions not only require additional trust assumptions and are time/resource-intensive, but are also costly to integrate with or manage. Third party integrations typically require 3 months+ lead time, whereas anyone can start developing on top of Teleporter today.
4. Secure: AWM leverages BLS signatures, a cryptographic signature scheme that enables a threshold of Subnet validators to authentically sign and verify a message. Unlike all other existing third party bridging solutions, no additional trust assumptions are introduced as there is no additional intermediary — the validators of the Subnet are sufficient. Both Teleporter and AWM have been audited (see below). Note: Relayers do not introduce trust assumptions as the message cannot be tampered with, modified, or changed during transmission.

Want to learn more about Teleporter?

Try out the demo here: https://ohmywarp.com/ (click on the “What’s Teleporter” to get a walkthrough)

Launch your own application on a Teleporter-enabled Subnet today. Here’s how you can get started:

• Starter Kit: https://github.com/ava-labs/avalanche-starter-kit (everything you need to jumpstart)
• Docs: https://docs.avax.network/build/cross-chain/teleporter/overview
• Course: https://academy.avax.network/course/teleporter
• Demo: https://ohmywarp.com/ (witness firsthand how fast Teleporter is)
• Repos (everything is open source!):
  – https://github.com/ava-labs/teleporter
  – https://github.com/ava-labs/awm-relayer
  – https://github.com/ava-labs/teleporter-token-bridge (currently under audit, target mid-May for production usage)
• Voice overview & differences between Teleporter and AWM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgrWrmtCdcs
• Audits:
  – Teleporter: https://github.com/ava-labs/teleporter/tree/main/audits
  – AWM: https://github.com/ava-labs/subnet-evm/tree/master/docs/audits

All chains will feel like one

Forming a new country from scratch is a rarity in today’s world. Land and resources are limited. But creating your own chain on Avalanche is easy with AvaCloud, GoGoPool, and Kaleido. With AvaCloud, for instance, you can launch your own devnet Subnet in just minutes — no coding skills required. Further enhance your blockchain with customizable features like bespoke block explorers, managed validators, or bridge contracts.

Best of both worlds: You get to tap into network effects, trading, and learning opportunities with other “countries”, all while being shielded from their high gas fees and congestion issues. Your chain, your tokens, your rules — a digital nation of your own.

The Age of Interoperability is here. With Avalanche, all chains will feel like one.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Jacob Everly, Nick Stamm, Kyle Dineen, Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo and Bryan Matthews for the feedback, inspo, and graphics.