The Whitepaper ?

Almost immediately since the inception of public blockchain technology the one question constantly faced by the entire blockchain community has been “What is the killer application?”. So far, the killer application for Ethereum has been its use as an ICO platform. In 2017 over $6,000,000,000 USD was raised in ICO funds, 2018 added another $7,000,000,000 USD; the ICO market is several orders of magnitude greater than the next largest application. Naturally, applications began to form around the ICO market; trading platforms, ICO trackers, marketing operations, ICO facilitators, etc… Since the middle of 2018 the ICO market has seen a steep decline in popularity; while ICOs still account for thousands of transactions worth millions of dollars there is no denying we are in the tail end of the ICO market. Naturally this raises a question — what is the the next major dApp in the blockchain ecosystem?

At Aion, our goal has always been to build the best blockchain platform to serve as the infrastructure for the next generation of dApps. One of the key tenets of Aion has been interoperability; the ability for disparate blockchains to communicate and exchange data. Our first public facing interoperability platform was the Aion Token Bridge (ATB); an interoperability application specifically designed to transfer ERC-20 tokens from Ethereum to native coins on Aion. Over the course of 3 months the ATB successfully transferred almost 100 million tokens from Ethereum to Aion without a single token lost.

Parallels are often drawn between the current blockchain environment and the early Internet. Early in the development of the Internet there was a multitude of protocols all competing to connect disparate systems. Eventually the TCP/IP protocol emerged; a packet switched generic message passing system which could easily be implemented on consumer grade hardware. Rather than a focusing on a single application such as document transfer TCP/IP does not distinguish between applications. The TCP/IP network stack abstracts message passing details away from the user, simply providing users with a standard interface through which to send data.

Transwarp Conduit Design

Today we present the Aion Transwarp Conduit (TWC); a generic bridging solution connecting distinct blockchains. The TWC follows a notary based design where a set of signatories as well as source and destination smart contracts provide the security necessary to secure a transaction as it passes from the source to the destination blockchain. During the TWC design we chose an approach similar to that taken by TCP/IP; a bridge should not focus on any particular application, rather bridges should provide the framework and infrastructure for developers to pass generic data between their applications.

By focusing on a generic message passing system we gain several advantages:

• Separation of concerns: Bridge developers may focus on ensuring secure data transfer between blockchains without worrying about application semantics. Conversely, application developers may focus on building inter-chain applications without worrying about how communication between the two chains will occur.
• Opportunity to explore: By keeping the bridge as generic as possible we give developers the opportunity to explore the potential of applications existing across multiple blockchains. Developers can truly search for that “killer application” without being boxed into a specific set of restraints to ensure compatibility with other interoperability solutions.
• No application lock-in: While token trading and speculation has certainly driven a great deal of blockchain usage and innovation, tokens will not always be the driving application. We’ve already seen ICO related transactions drastically drop off since mid 2018. Rather than focusing on tokens, the TWC allows developers to focus on any blockchain application they desire.

Is the Transwarp Conduit a perfect solution?

While the collective blockchain community hates to admit it, blockchain innovation sometimes moves too fast for its own good allowing the equivalent of “snake oil” to be sold as the next great innovation. Whenever a new protocol or solution is proposed, it must be critically examined. As such when we examine the TWC, we must ask is the TWC the perfect interoperability solution?

No

One of my favourite quotes commonly attributed to Voltaire is “Perfect is the enemy of the good”. This theme is commonly seen in the blockchain community; if a solution is not the perfect solution, some fraction of the community will vehemently oppose it.

The TWC is almost certainly not the perfect solution, the accompanying paper provides details on a number of vulnerabilities inherent to notary based solutions. However, while the TWC is not the perfect solution it is a good solution to motivate inter-blockchain dApp development. Developers may begin to design and build a new class of dApps focused on leveraging multiple blockchains. Eventually the perfect solution may be developed and messages may be routed between chains differently however following the TCP/IP design application semantics remain the same.

Conclusion

The Aion Transwarp Conduit is a generic blockchain interoperability framework allowing developer defined messages to be transferred between connected blockchains. The TWC design focuses on separating message passing from application design allowing developers to focus on building their application and bridge developers on building the TWC. A more in depth explanation of the TWC protocol along with accompanying smart contracts may be found below.