Interoperability is a hard word to say after a few cyclists. It’s an even harder concept to implement in a blockchain ecosystem written in a dozen different programming languages and whose core architecture is fundamentally incompatible.
Looking at today’s blockchain landscape reminds one of the Tower of Babel. The origin myth, which describes why the world speaks so many different languages, has obvious analogies to the state of cryptography in 2023. In the multichain era, we have more choices than ever. And yet we’ve never been more isolated due to language difficulties and incompatible VMs.
After five years of intensive research and development Pantos has emerged as the latest multichain project that claims to have solved the interoperability issue. His team, consisting of experienced blockchain researchers and the business experts behind Bitpanda, is confident that his solution represents a quantum leap in interoperability. So what exactly is Pantos and is it a game changer or just another multichain protocol? To answer that question, we need to consider how we got here.
Houston, we have a bridge problem
The need for blockchain interoperability can be traced back to the earliest days of DeFi, when Ethereum was the main playground for the exploding poly token era. The flood of new tokens, protocols and users caused the main chain of Ethereum to collapse under the strain. During the ICO craze of 2017, network fees skyrocketed, prompting gas wars to jump into the hottest token sales.
Ironically, many of the projects that launched tokens during this period were for new smart contract networks, dubbed Ethereum competitors. EOS and Tezos were among the blockchains to emerge from this era, and while they proved unable to put a gauntlet on Ethereum, let alone deliver a knock-out blow, they launched the multichain era.
A few years later, in 2020, the cryptosphere was awash with EVM-compatible chains and liquidity fled to where it was needed most – and that was typically where the incentives were greatest. It was the summer of DeFi, the term “degen” was being worn as a sign of pride, and yield farming was in full swing.
The Cambrian explosion of scalable EVM networks was great for throughput and fee reduction, but balkanizing a sector that existed almost entirely on Ethereum brought its own problems. Tokens now coexisted on different chains, leading to price differences. Good news for Arbers, but it left ordinary traders vulnerable to losses from unknowingly swapping assets in illiquid pools.
But there was another, even bigger problem caused by the advent of multichain: moving assets between ecosystems came with risks. It was like blockchain builders created a series of cities but forgot to add the streets. Belatedly, they began building the bridges that would unite these isolated ecosystems.
Today, the multichain ecosystem is better served than ever, with bridges for anything, anywhere. Not just fungible tokens, but NFTs and messages can be traded using technologies such as B. be transferred between chains XCM. This has opened up a number of new use cases, allowing events in one chain to trigger a smart contract in another. For example, a user can get LP tokens on Ethereum and their reward tokens on Polygon.
The dramatic expansion of blockchain bridges and interoperability solutions comes at a high cost. More than $2 billion was lost Bridge exploits last year. They remain the weak link in DeFi and the target of sophisticated attackers. Bridges are critical infrastructures and their safety is currently in critical condition. There is a clear need for interoperability solutions that can leverage the many benefits of multichain without compromising its value proposition by introducing attack vectors.
Slow and steady wins the race
Where does Pantos fit into all of this? It took a long time, that’s for sure. Pantos is a project that started in the lab and went through a number of iterations before even committing a single line of code. The Pantos team was not only trying to release another multichain protocol, but were equally interested in moving forward Scientific Research in the field of interoperability.
It’s hard to shake the feeling that many of the blockchain bridges currently connecting the cryptosphere were launched to fill a gap. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that several of these have been exploited – sometimes more than once. The Pantos team believes its slow and steady approach will prove itself.
Pantos started as an open source research project by Bitpanda in collaboration with TU Wien (Austria) and later with TU Hamburg (Germany). The resulting protocol is based on groundbreaking research in oracles, relays, smart contracts and blockchain efficiency. Over the course of development, researchers published nearly a dozen technical white papers addressing various challenges and approaches to achieving true blockchain interoperability.
And now it’s there in beta stage at least. A multi-blockchain system built to the highest security standards, promising a reliable and efficient solution for moving assets between chains.
Take Pantos for a test drive
Pantos includes a cross-chain system for wrapping, unwrapping and transferring tokens. Currently on the testnet, it supports seven blockchains: Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Cronos, and Celo.
The user interface is clean and intuitive with an aesthetic that rivals the best Web2 applications. It is clear that much thought has gone into designing an interface that is uncluttered and easy to understand for the inexperienced Web3 user. From the Pantos dashboard, users can manage their assets, pack and unpack tokens, add them to MetaMask with one click, and move assets to the seven currently supported chains.
Visually, Pantos looks and performs like a dream. The real test will be when it is deployed to the mainnet and used for resizing. If it can show it can transfer assets faster, more securely, and more efficiently, all those years in the lab will have paid off.
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