Blockchain interoperability conflates the need for distributed systems to communicate with third-party systems without the existence of a canonical chain or orchestration layer. As there is not “a chain to rule them all” (due to reasons such as performance, privacy, and market forces), these distributed systems rely on exchanging data and value across network boundaries. Interconnected systems achieve a higher value than the sum of their parts, similar to how the Internet emerged as a set of isolated Local Area Networks (LANs) - and, by force of surprising synergies, such networks fundamentally transformed society, forever. Concurrently, in the last decade, we have witnessed the astonishing development of blockchain technologies, which seem more connected than ever. These recent developments have, slowly but steadily, contributed to the improvement of the scalability of blockchain networks, as well as providing new functionality and use cases [66], but there is still a long way to go until mass adoption. In this paper, the authors will dive into the rabbit hole of blockchain interoperability and explain why it is needed, what has been done in the last decade, and where it is going.Belchior, Rafael & Süßenguth, Jan & Feng, Qi & Hardjono, Thomas & Vasconcelos, André & Correia, Miguel. (2024). A Brief History of Blockchain Interoperability. 10.36227/techrxiv.23418677.v4.
2.2.1 Cross-chain privacy. It is generally agreed upon that anonymity (in terms of unlinkability), confidentiality, and indistinguishability of transactions are beneficial privacy properties in the cross-chain context [4, 47]. An anonymous asset transfer (or exchange) will hide the identities of the parties involved in the transfer. Confidentiality will hide the number of transferred tokens. Indistinguishability means an external observer cannot say whether or not the transaction is part of a swap. Researchers and practitioners alike have done work in cross-chain, specifically in the areas of asset transfers (namely between privacy-enhanced blockchains, as the source, and public blockchains, as the target , leveraging promising technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs). Although there is a long way ahead, existing work seems to suggest that in scenarios where at least one confidential blockchain is involved (by confidential, we mean permissioned or privacyenabled by default lik
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· Hyperledger Fabric, ZCash, or Monero, e.g., confidential to confidential), preserving the property of unlinkability is possible, therefore achieving some level of anonymity (and possible some confidentiality depending on the blockchain, as ZCash would allow). Privacy on asset exchanges has also been studied . Privacy on asset exchanges looks more straightforward than other interoperability modes: HTLCs share secrets only understandable by the involved parties, making it harder to draw direct associations between transactions. Of course, by analyzing certain heuristics (simpler: amount locked, cryptographic parameters such as the prime field for a private HTLC; more complex: time intervals for swaps, user activity interactions, crossing with off -chain data) one could de -anonymize the actors behind cross -chain transactions. Recent work has revealed interesting insights on cross -chain privacy , namely its de -prioritization compared to security, common usage of zero -knowledge proo
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J. ACM, Vol. 37, No. 4, Article 111. Publication date: August 2024. A Brief History of Blockchain Interoperability
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Interoperability Solution Benchmark. Multiple benchmarking efforts and standardization 2.2.2 efforts are in progress. However, there are still considerable challenges since the lack of a uniform API and concrete benchmark datasets hinders a systematic comparison between cross-chain systems (although directions for evaluating interoperability solutions already exist ) and a few interoperability solutions are assessed in detail . Methodology and empirical studies to assess components around cross-chain solutions, such as cryptographic primitives, libraries, compilers (especially relevant for SNARK or STARK-based solutions ), SDKs, and hardware accelerators, among others, need to be further developed. Studying interoperability solutions in the Web3 world will also give back to traditional interoperability research, as we collect insights on integrating centralized with decentralized systems. A good starting point is directed to evaluate scalability (in terms of the number of b
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