Connecting Cosmos to Polkadot through Plasm Network: The MVP of Plasm Network’s Secret Network bridge is now ready.

Hyungsuk Kang
Astar Network
Published in
4 min readApr 13, 2021

Previously, during our first community Crowdcast, we talked about building a bridge with Secret Network. Today, this has become a reality on our testnet.

Here is the demo!!

Plasm Network & Secret Network

We’ve completed building our bridge with Secret Network. This build will start on our testnet before deploying to mainnet down the road. Once Kusama Network is ready, we will make this bridge on Shiden Network, a sister network of Plasm Network on Kusama. For our testnet deployment, we will use SecretBridge (on testnet level) to bring Plasm to Secret Network and use it in SecretSwap, Secret’s first AMM, against SCRT and ETH assets.

Plasm developers will be able to move their assets to Secret Network. The moment Plasm Network becomes a parachain, we will deploy this bridge on our mainnet — Shiden Network first, and Plasm Network afterwards.

Originally, Plasm Network was a Polkadot Parachain candidate that would act as a dApp hub on Polkadot. We are currently focusing on infrastructure developments and bridges. And,

Plasm Network 2.0 will be a multi-chain and multi-virtual machine smart contract hub powered by Polkadot. We are going to connect Polkadot to Cosmos, Ethereum, and more through Plasm Network!

The biggest immediate benefit for users with this bridge is that they can gain transaction privacy. Users can turn Polkadot-based assets into Secret Tokens, which combine the programmability of ERC-20s with the privacy of coins like Zcash or Monero. Interactions with Secret Token contracts are encrypted, viewable only to address owners or holders of their viewing key. The bridge will also give users access to Secret DeFi, privacy-preserving decentralized finance apps built on the Secret Network.

What’s next?

After some extended testing on our testnet, we will go live oncePlasm becomes a parachain on Polkadot. With the current EVM we can also use this bridge between Shiden Network and Secret Network. This is great news for dApp builders who want to use Shiden (the canary network of Plasm) for deploying their dApps.

Tutorials and guides on how to use this bridge are in development. Those guides will be available in our documentation.

Have a look at our demo bridge between Plasm Network and Secret Network:

Bridging Cosmos to Polkadot

Secret Network is a layer1 blockchain with its consensus and on-chain governance, built atop the Cosmos/Tendermint framework. With our bridge built with Secret Network, we will connect the Cosmos ecosystem to Polkadot. How does this work? More importantly, we can utilize this implementation for other L1 blockchains based on Cosmos/Tendermint!

One major component of the Cosmos ecosystem is their Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC) — A system that allows different blockchains to connect and communicate with each other. As soon IBC is implemented on Secret Network, the door is opened for the Cosmos community to join Polkadot, and vice versa.

“Cosmos, the framework Secret Network is built on, is billed as “the internet of blockchains” and aims to create an interconnected ecosystem of blockchains, whereas many current blockchains are like individual silos.”

Bridges in Secret Network

About Secret Network

Secret Network is the first ever privacy-enabled Layer 1 blockchain, featuring privacy-preserving smart contracts (“secret contracts”) that utilize hardware-based and software-based privacy technologies to protect data. Secret contracts are unique in that they allow for encrypted inputs, outputs and state. Data on Secret Network is private by default, public when desired. Secret Network is also open-source and permissionless — anyone can operate a node, deploy an app, or contribute to the network and its ecosystem.

Website | Forum | Twitter | Discord | Telegram

About Plasm

Plasm Network is a multi-chain dApps hub on Polkadot that supports Ethereum and layer 2 solutions like ZK Rollups. Plasm aims to be a multi-chain smart contract platform that will support multiple blockchains and virtual machines like EVM and WASM.

Website | Twitter | Telegram | Discord | GitHub

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