The Great Osmosis Bridge-Off
Here is where we stand after the town hall. Osmosis plans to choose a bridge provider to connect Osmosis to Ethereum and preferably other EVM chains as well. If a bridge can handle other ecosystems beyond that, so much the better.
Bridge Selection Criteria
These criteria reflect my sense of the discussions occurring among Osmosis stakeholders in places like Updates from the Lab, “Thoughts on Bridges and Osmosis,” the Bridge Provider RFP, and social media. However, since cross-chain bridges are a complex subject and this is a condensed list, some facets will inevitably have been skipped. Similarly, the thumbnail sketches of the bridges that follow leave out a great deal of nuance. For more detail, please refer to the full town-hall recap and the various bridge proposals: Gravity Bridge, Nomad, Wormhole, Axelar.
UX: Bridging should be fast, reliable, and inexpensive. It should also be invisible. The best bridges will be working quickly to abstract themselves into the background. A bridge should allow users to deposit and withdraw funds from other chains with Keplr on Osmosis, without having to leave the app.
Security: Bridges have many potential attack vectors, including smart contracts on source and destination chains, and the security setup of the bridge itself. The potential cost of corrupting the bridging chain/agent is of particular interest, as are any other avenues of attack that affect safety or liveness. Mitigation strategies like insurance funds and rate-limiting should also be considered.
Execution: The best bridge team will have the ability to execute more functionality in a timely manner — better cryptography, more chains, NFTs, interchain accounts, generic message passing, and potentially helping to standardize IBC interchain standards. Tooling and integration is important as well. This will likely require a high degree of technical competence and an exclusive focus on bridging.
Reputation/Alignment: A strong reputation and incentive-alignment with Osmosis and the broader Cosmos community will drive adoption. This includes a commitment to IBC and interchain standards. It also includes the perception of the Osmosis and Cosmos communities’ ownership of the bridge.
Wormhole
UX: Bridging requires interaction with the Wormhole chain, but the code for moving the relaying and redeeming of bridged assets into the background (by paying independent relayers) is in audits. Bridge fees are to be determined. Wrapped assets on Wormhole are fungible.
Security: Wormhole is a Proof-of-Authority bridge with 19 Guardians, many of whom are Cosmos validators. Bridge contracts are upgradeable. Bridge hacks can be covered by Jump Crypto, as seen in the recent $320m Wormhole hack, but their willingness to do so again is unknown.
Execution: Wormhole is connected to 8 blockchains, with 15–16 expected by the end of the year. They have been active for about a year and a half and are the default bridge on Solana and Terra. Their NFT bridge is live, and there is a CosmWasm bridge for NFTs currently undergoing audits. They can pay a premium for audits, marketing, subsidies, and developers (when available).
Reputation/Alignment: Wormhole is backed by Jump, one of the best-funded firms in crypto. They aim for market-share first, decentralization second, as evidenced by their PoA bridge. They have written a module for minting Cosmos-native tokens with CW20s and are planning to launch a Proof of Stake chain on Cosmos for accounting and governance (not bridging).
Gravity
UX: Gravity bridge development is supported by a core team from Althea, and additional collaborative efforts, like the Ethernal team. A granting and growth framework is in place to support additional teams and continuing development. Frontends are permissionless and several different teams currently develop and support these front ends including Cosmostation (https://spacestation.zone/) and Blockscape (https://bridge.blockscape.network/). Permisionless front ends provide resiliency and censorship resistance. Batching has been implemented to reduce fees.
Security: Gravity is high security. It runs on a PoS bridge zone and has non-upgradeable contracts. Insurance can be added by governance.
Execution: The focus is on stability/security over speed of execution. Team splits time between Gravity and Althea. Timeline for adding more EVMs is end-of-year. NFT transfers available end-of-summer. Interchain accounts should be available sooner.
Reputation/Alignment: The most Cosmos-native bridge, developed by numerous parties within the ecosystem. Some in the community argue the ecosystem airdrop did not fully honor this alignment, instead consolidating ownership of the bridge chain with early investors and validators. Gravity has disputed this narrative.
Axelar
UX: Deposit addresses allow bridging to be easily integrated into Osmosis front-end UX. Many-to-many bridge connections. Fees set at 0.1% currently, but plan to lower. Axelar adds around 20–30 seconds to finalize bridge transactions, but this will be lowered.
Security: Axelar runs on a PoS chain with many of the usual Cosmos validators. It has upgradeable smart contracts. The insurance fund is planned to contain 5% of AXL tokens.
Execution: Fast, focused team of 25 with world-class cryptographic experience. Multiple EVM chains already connected. Bitcoin and others being added.
Reputation/Alignment: Axelar is a Cosmos chain. Token distribution is relatively centralized: team (30%), foundation (40%), and investors (30%). Initial coin offering requires KYC through a third party (Coinlist). Pledged 1% of tokens to Osmosis for incentives if chosen.
Nomad
UX: Optimistic bridging takes roughly 30 minutes, but liquidity partner Connext can directly provide liquidity on the destination, provided that enough liquidity is available. For Connext-bridging, the UX could be easily abstracted. However, at this point it is difficult which transaction sizes will work for different chains and assets.
Security: There is no bridge chain, just an “Updater” run by Nomad. With Nomad’s optimistic bridging, transactions automatically succeed unless challenged by a Watcher. Watchers are currently run by Nomad, but the plan is to let chains select their own. (However, these custom Watcher sets will produce non-fungible asset representations.) Bridge chain risk is nonexistent; instead, the risk is that Nomad or an attacker could upgrade the Updater. Another attack vector is that any Watcher can stop transactions from going through by claiming fraud. Connext liquidity providers assume the risk of funds being lost from their contracts, though there might be spillover effects from an attack. There is no insurance planned.
Execution: They have shipped a novel bridging solution and gotten buy-in from some prominent projects. The team is focused only on bridging. Timeline for non-token transfers is unclear.
Reputation/Alignment: Evmos has selected Nomad as its canonical Ethereum bridge. They are active in the Polkadot ecosystem with Moonbeam. There is no token. Governance occurs through a multi-sig. The previous bridge project of some of the team members (Optics) had multi-sig issues.
Next Steps
The DAO will be voting soon, likely with a series of yes/no proposals, since the Cosmos SDK does not have multiple-choice voting. This is clunky UX, so we would welcome a better proposal. As always, get involved on social media, and make your voices heard!
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