The mainnet for cross-chain interoperability protocol Wormhole has launched with support for Solana, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Terra. Furthermore, it promises to support other major blockchains in the near future.
In a blog post published on August 9, the team said that Wormhole is “a cross-chain messaging protocol, secured by a network of Guardian nodes.”
Here is an overview of how Wormhole works:
“Wormhole Guardians observe and attest to events and data on its connected chains. These attestations are gossiped around the open Wormhole peer-to-peer network, allowing anyone connected to the network to observe the flow of information.
“Attestations from 2/3+ of the guardians in the network are sufficient for an attestation to be created, which allows for asynchronous, fast single-round consensus. These attestations are then persisted and can be shipped to one or more destination blockchain(s) to be parsed and trigger custom application logic.“
The Solana team first introduced Wormhole in a blog post published on 8 October 2020. Back then, they said that Wormhole “allows existing projects, platforms, and communities to move tokenized assets seamlessly across blockchains to benefit from Solana’s high speed and low cost.”
According to a report by CoinDesk, Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon published a statement saying Wormhole offered a “succinct and clear vision” for an interchain future. He said the protocol offered an “easy, scalable” method for transporting liquidity and messages across blockchains.
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