In the world of blockchain, change is an eternal theme. The emergence of Ethereum was like a thunderclap that shook the entire decentralized application (DApp) world. At that time, almost all DApps regarded Ethereum as their base, where they set up camp and took root. However, as DApps thrived, they began to make more demands and expectations on this "home" like a group of rebellious children in adolescence.
The performance is not fast enough, the gas fee is too high, the privacy is not enough... Ethereum, the "only seedling", is gradually overwhelmed. New public chains have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, and Layer2 expansion solutions are endless. DApp developers are like being in a buffet restaurant, choosing whatever they want. However, new choices also bring new troubles: fragmented ecology, fragmented liquidity, and poor cross-chain experience. DApps are navigating this fragmented multi-chain world, somewhat at a loss, scratching their heads, and longing for a bridge that can seamlessly connect all chains to connect them all.
At this time, Omni-chain applications appeared. Simply put, Omni-chain is a new architectural design that aims to break down the barriers between different chains and enable DApps to achieve true cross-chain collaboration and asset mobility.
Among the many projects exploring Omni-chain, Bifrost in the Polkadot ecosystem is a pioneer. They plan to use Polkadot's unique cross-chain capabilities to build an Omni-chain infrastructure so that DApps can easily achieve cross-chain deployment and interoperability.
In short, Bifrost's goal is to open up the "Ren Du Meridian" of DApp in the multi-chain world, allowing value to flow freely between chains and allowing DApp to achieve a truly "integrated" experience. This is a grand vision that requires breakthroughs in architecture design, cross-chain communication, asset transfer, and many other aspects.
This article is to take you into the world of Omni-chain, tell you why it can become the "key move" in the evolution of DeFi, see how it breaks the "deadly point" of multi-chain splitting, and witness its great power in the Polkadot ecosystem. It can be said that this is an in-depth thinking about the future of DApp and a comprehensive dissection of Omni-chain and Bifrost.
Omni-chain: The inevitable choice for DeFi evolution
The emergence of omni-chain is by no means accidental, but an inevitable product of DeFi's development to a certain stage. With the vigorous development of the public chain ecosystem and the increasing maturity of Layer2 technology, development teams have more options when choosing blockchain networks. Each chain has its own unique design and positioning, which can meet the personalized needs of different applications. The underlying architecture of the chain is also becoming more and more modular and configurable, making it easier for developers to create "customized" chains. As a result, more and more applications have chosen the hybrid mode of "single chain deployment + multi-chain deployment" in order to obtain a larger business scale and user base.
However, "multi-chain deployment" is not a perfect solution. It has exacerbated the fragmentation of the Web3 ecosystem to a certain extent. The copies of applications on different chains are separated, data and assets cannot be interoperable, and it is inconvenient for users to switch between chains. This fragmentation greatly damages the user experience and reduces the efficiency of capital utilization and capital scale effect.
It is this pain point of fragmentation that gave birth to the omni-chain application. It aims to connect various chains and give applications a smooth experience like "integration". Omni-chain applications usually adopt the "headquarters + branches" architecture, with the core logic deployed on a main chain, while branches deployed on other chains focus on accessing end users. This architecture is easy to expand, user-imperceptible, and easy to integrate, which greatly improves the user experience and development experience in a multi-chain environment.
It can be said that the omni-chain application carries the beautiful vision of breaking the "information island" of blockchain and realizing the interconnection of Web3. It is not only a countermeasure to ecological fragmentation, but also represents a new direction for the development of DeFi technology. I believe that in the near future, omni-chain will become the "standard configuration" of DApp, allowing value to flow freely between chains and allowing users to enjoy an unprecedented integrated experience.
Broken Liquidity: How Omni-chain Can Save Multichain DeFi Protocols
Before discussing the problems solved by omni-chain, let’s take a look at the dilemma faced by the current DeFi protocol. You know, for many DeFi applications, sufficient liquidity supply is the key to ensuring user experience. When users trade, borrow, and provide liquidity in the protocol, they need sufficient capital pools as support, and the size and depth of the capital pool directly determine the efficiency and stability of the application.
However, in a multi-chain ecosystem, it is difficult for the same DeFi protocol to obtain sufficient liquidity on all chains. Developers have to accumulate users and funds from scratch on each chain, which will undoubtedly disperse the efficiency of the protocol and affect the overall performance. What's more troublesome is that the liquidity on different chains is isolated from each other and cannot be exchanged, further exacerbating the fragmentation of funds.
Omni-chain came into being, providing a new way to solve this dilemma. Different from simply copying the original single-chain application to multiple chains, Omni-chain encourages developers to design the application as a cross-chain collaborative whole from the beginning, and take Omni-chain interoperability as a prerequisite for top-level design. This new construction model, called Omni-dApps, enables applications to naturally have the ability to seamlessly collaborate between different chains.
Omni-dApps are usually composed of functional modules distributed on different chains. These modules can interoperate through cross-chain messaging and eventually form a complete application. Compared with traditional multi-chain deployment, Omni-dApps can extend its reach to more chains and cover a wider user group. And all this is imperceptible to end users. When they access applications on their respective chains, it is like using a complete local application, and they will not feel the cross-chain operations and liquidity scheduling behind it. User experience and liquidity are seamlessly integrated.
Omni-chain's "Headquarter-Branch" Model: A New Paradigm for Web3 Applications
So, what is the architecture of the omni-chain application? To use a vivid analogy, it is like the headquarters-branch structure of a large company.
In the omni-chain application, the core business logic is deployed on a designated blockchain, forming a logical "headquarters". This chain generally chooses a public chain with strong comprehensive strength and mature development ecology or a consortium chain for specific scenarios. The headquarters focuses on the core functions of the application, is responsible for the storage, consensus and calculation of key data, and is the cornerstone of the entire application.
On other chains, omni-chain applications deploy some relatively lightweight access modules, similar to branches. These "branches" focus on interacting with end users. They collect user operation requests and pass them across chains to the headquarters for processing. At the same time, they are also responsible for presenting the results returned by the headquarters to users. From the user's perspective, they only need to interact with the branches, but can enjoy the powerful functions provided by the headquarters, just like using a local application.
Of course, the real enterprise architecture is often not that simple. The various departments of a large company may be scattered in different cities, forming a virtual headquarters. The same is true for omni-chain applications. For performance, cost and other considerations, some modules of the headquarters will be split out and deployed on other specialized blockchains. But no matter what, for the end user, the omni-chain application always looks like a unified whole, and these internal complex structures are shielded.
The three major advantages of the Omni-chain architecture: scalability, user experience, and cross-chain integration
First of all, the omni-chain architecture is highly scalable. Because the core logic of the application is processed centrally on the "headquarters" chain, the entire application is logically unified and has a consistent state. When developers need to expand the application to a new chain, they only need to deploy a standardized branch module on the new chain, which will immediately inherit all the status and data of the headquarters and directly provide services to local users. Developers do not have to repeat the core logic on each chain, nor do they have to bother to maintain data synchronization between chains, which greatly reduces the cost of expansion.
Secondly, the omni-chain architecture can bring a better user experience. When using omni-chain applications, users do not need to care about which chain the backend logic of the application is deployed on. No matter which chain they are on, they can seamlessly access all the functions of the application through the local branch module and enjoy a smooth experience like using local applications. Users do not have to learn the unique operations of each chain, prepare various tokens to pay cross-chain fees, or transfer assets back and forth between chains. The omni-chain architecture shields the complexity of the multi-chain environment well, allowing ordinary users to easily use cross-chain applications.
Finally, the omni-chain architecture makes cross-chain integration extremely simple. Now, if other applications want to integrate the omni-chain application, they only need to establish a connection with the headquarters to obtain the functions and services of the omni-chain application on all chains at once. This is much simpler than the traditional multi-chain integration model, which requires the integrator to establish connections with the branches of the omni-chain application on each chain separately, greatly increasing the workload and maintenance costs. The omni-chain architecture provides a unified integration entrance, which greatly improves interoperability.
It can be seen that the omni-chain architecture has achieved breakthroughs and optimizations in scalability, user experience, cross-chain integration, etc. through clever design. It combines the advantages of the multi-chain architecture and avoids its defects. It can be said that it truly stimulates the potential of the Web3 multi-chain ecosystem. I believe that in the future, more and more applications will adopt the omni-chain architecture to provide users with more seamless and efficient cross-chain services.
How does Bifrost implement Omni-chain LSD based on Polkadot?
The Omni-chain architecture places high demands on cross-chain communication, but the current cross-chain technology is not mature enough, which leads to many difficulties in the implementation of omni-chain applications. There is a lack of secure and efficient information transmission channels between heterogeneous chains, and there is no standardized cross-chain message format, making it difficult for developers to achieve seamless collaboration between modules on different chains.
However, the Polkadot ecosystem has a unique advantage in solving these problems. Thanks to Polkadot's unique shared security architecture and XCMP cross-chain communication protocol, parallel chains can exchange information securely, and its security is even comparable to the relay chain itself. Polkadot's cross-chain message passing format XCM is a highlight. It provides a standardized language to encode cross-chain instructions. Chain A can use XCM to tell chain B exactly what it wants to do. These instructions can be very complex, such as "first perform certain operations on chain B, then jump to chain C to perform other operations, and finally return to chain A." XCM will faithfully pass and execute these instructions, and developers don't need to worry about the underlying technical details.
As a DeFi protocol built in the Polkadot ecosystem, Bifrost uses these infrastructures to design its omni-chain LSD (Liquid Staking Derivative) service. Bifrost uses a customized parallel chain to serve as the "headquarters" of the LSD service. This chain is responsible for maintaining the global state of LSD and providing basic functions for minting and redeeming vTokens. At the same time, the official liquidity pool of vTokens is also deployed on this chain. Users can freely trade vTokens in the pool to improve the efficiency of fund utilization.
On other chains, Bifrost has deployed a series of "branch" modules, which are like the user's "service front desk", responsible for collecting users' staking requests and forwarding these requests to the headquarters' parallel chain for processing through XCMP. The branch module also acts as a "home service provider". When the headquarters completes the minting of new vTokens, the branch module will retrieve these vTokens through XCMP and distribute them directly to the user's on-chain address. In this way, no matter which chain the user uses, the minting, redemption and trading of vTokens can be completed directly on the chain. Polkadot's powerful cross-chain capabilities make all this simple and efficient.
What’s even more exciting is that other developers can directly integrate Bifrost’s branch module to introduce staking services for other dApps. For example, a lending protocol can call Bifrost’s branch module to automatically convert the user’s staked DOT into vDOT, and the user’s assets will also receive additional staking income. All this does not require manual operation by the user, and the experience is seamless.
In general, Polkadot's advanced technology stack and Bifrost's clever architecture design give LSD services omni-chain capabilities. Users can participate in Bifrost's staking mining on any parallel chain and enjoy the fun of freely trading vTokens on the chain. DApp developers can also integrate Bifrost's modules with one click, making staking services at their fingertips. This is a great practice of blockchain interoperability, in which Bifrost plays a pioneering role.
In the future, we have reason to expect the emergence of more omni-chain protocols like Bifrost to push DeFi into a new era of interconnection.
Lao Mao (Twitter): https://x.com/readonlm
Bifrost related links:
Website：https://bifrost.finance
Twitter：https://twitter.com/Bifrost
Dapp：https://app.bifrost.io
