💬 Safe and Easy Cross-Chain Communication
Today's Highlights
- Nomad - cross chain messaging protocol
- This Week On BuzzBelow - a recap on this week's topics.
- In Other News - a few interesting developments we're tracking.
Nomad - cross chain messaging protocol
Nomad is a generalized cross-chain communication protocol that allows users to securely build applications and transfer digital assets across different blockchains. Its core design is centered around traditional optimistic rollup (ORU) mechanisms, but with a novel security model. Therefore, Nomad has public verification, low gas fees, and broad participation.
Nomad has developed a base layer for a cross-chain communication network that provides fast, scalable, inexpensive messaging for all smart contract chains and rollups. Essentially any L1 or L2 that supports user-defined computations can utilize Nomad to achieve optimized output. This creates considerable interoperability between different blockchains and improves upon existing ORU solutions, such as shortening latency to thirty minutes (compared with a latency of one week in most ORUs) and lower gas overhead on message senders. So Nomad enables applications to be deployed effortlessly across many different chains, and compose liquidity and state regardless of where it originated, while end users benefit from low latency and cheap transactions.
xApps are a key component of Nomad and function as a cross-chain application that can be built and securely deployed to virtually any blockchain. xApps are natively interoperable and allow users to seamlessly bridge assets between different chains. xApps help break through some of the limitations and confinements of traditional decentralized applications, which by nature, are limited to their native chain and require significant workarounds to communicate and send assets to other chains. In order to effectively build these xApps, Nomad has developed Routers. In short, Routers serve as the framework that enables developers to deploy xApps to any existing cross-chain channel without friction.
Another core feature of Nomad is its novel security model. Nomad, by design, does not include light clients. So no validators or blockchain, but instead the protocol functions as a deployment of smart contracts between two chains with an off-chain component. This in turn means that the protocol also does not include formal security. This approach allows Nomad to achieve significant benefits in terms of simplicity and operating costs, but with the tradeoff that it will not be provably secure. In order to overcome this, Nomad is instead designed to be secure in practice. Nomad’s core channel relies on fraud proofs and proof of publication to prevent channel failure.
Nomad has raised a total of $22.4M in funding. Pranay Mohan is the CEO and co-founder of Nomad.