Building hashport - A new interoperability solution for Web 3 built on Hedera
Born out of the desire to invent a better way of doing distributed consensus, Hedera Hashgraph is a project that has always sought to tackle some of the biggest challenges in the DLT space. Not taking the traditional blockchain approach, the protocol uses a novel data structure – the hashgraph – and a ‘gossip about gossip’ consensus algorithm in an effort to increase DLT scalability and achieve true asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT).
As Hedera has grown to become one of the most prominent players in the industry, it has remained committed to building innovative solutions to help address the most pressing issues hindering the DLT industry. This commitment has inspired the next wave of Hedera products; including the hashport DLT portal.
The challenge
One of the biggest challenges for the DLT industry is the lack of interoperability between different networks. This significantly limits the reach of distributed ledger technologies, as it means that each DLT network remains a self-contained ecosystem that cannot interact with other DLT networks.
To give an example of why this is so detrimental to the overall DLT ecosystem – imagine that you have Bitcoins and want to use some of your tokens in an Ethereum-based DeFi app. Currently, there is no baked-in mechanism that can let you do that, so to access the app, you first have to turn to a third-party provider to exchange some BTC for ETH. Clearly, in this case, the lack of interoperability interrupts the free flow of crypto and limits the overall market liquidity.
The general approach to solving this problem is via bridges. A blockchain/DLT bridge is used to connect two separate DLT networks, allowing them to exchange tokens and arbitrary messages.
hashport - a DLT portal leveraging the Hedera Consensus Service
hashport seeks to set a new standard for bridge technology. It is a completely trustless two-way DLT portal that utilizes the powerful Hedera Consensus Service to enable interoperability between Hedera Hasgraph and EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) networks. hashport is operated and governed by a diverse group of industry-leading organizations to validate transactions and maintain the security of the network. Thanks to hashport, the Hedera community can easily access the thriving DeFi and NFT ecosystems on Polygon, Ethereum and beyond.
Having been a long-time technical partner of Hedera, LimeChain played a key role in the development of the project. Our team worked together with Hedera and BCW Group to bring hashport to market. We continue to support the project post-launch, both as a technical partner and as a validator. Working alongside industry-leading organisations as members of the validator swarm, LimeChain continues to ensure security for hashport users and looks forward to learning more about new use cases for the interoperability solution.
