EthCC, one of the most important annual cryptocurrency conferences in the Ethereum ecosystem, takes place in Brussels in July 2024. The Internet Computer Protocol hosted an event called "Chain Convergence Day" this week, bringing together major innovators, founders, and thought leaders to discuss how chain convergence technology can promote a more unified Web3.
Chain Fusion is a solution to the fragmented modular landscape of Web3, combining the unique capabilities of different chains by providing a single environment for building dapps.
Here are some highlights from the Chain Convergence Day, which took place on July 10, 2024 in Brussels.
The power of chain fusion
Jan Camenisch, CTO of the DFINITY Foundation, delivered a speech titled “The Power of Chain Fusion”, covering the birth and development of chain fusion technology at ICP, from a deep dive into the technical foundations of chain fusion to how developers can use this technology to build multi-chain applications. Here are some key insights from this speech:
The idea of Chain Fusion is to let us develop and build with all of these chains - Chain Fusion provides a unified platform where developers can build on multiple blockchain networks, leveraging the strengths of each network.
Wouldn’t it be great if ICP smart contracts could also hold Bitcoin? ICP smart contracts can hold and trade Bitcoin, opening up prospects for Bitcoin DeFi.
On ICP, we care deeply about usability, so code pays for gas - ICP prioritizes user experience by integrating a reverse gas model (developers pay for gas).
ICP smart contracts can have public keys from different chains and can use these public keys to transact with these chains - One of the unique features of ICP is to allow smart contracts to have public keys from different blockchains, thus enabling transactions across these networks.
For Bitcoin, ICP nodes also have a light client for the Bitcoin network - For Bitcoin integration, ICP nodes operate as a light client for the Bitcoin network, ensuring trustless and decentralized interactions.
Decentralized RPC integration with other networks, calling many RPC providers, getting the results there and comparing them - Decentralized RPC integration with other networks is achieved by making multiple RPC calls and comparing the results to ensure reliability and security.
Chain Fusion combines technology foundation with ecosystem applications to enhance multi-chain interoperability.
An important aspect of Chain Fusion’s technical foundation is chain key signatures, as Jan explained:
“So chain key signatures allow an ICP smart contract to own a public key, control a public key, and that public key could be an Ethereum public key, it could be a Bitcoin public key, it could be a Solana public key, so they can actually own native tokens on other chains, so now we can build smart contracts that can automatically trade Bitcoin, or you can sell Bitcoin and buy Ethereum, and you can do work balancing on these chains, like a ton of applications do, so they can sign transactions through HTTP calls, submit them to other chains, and the way it works is it uses threshold signatures, so the nodes of the ICP subnet collaborate to generate a signature based on that public key, so it’s like web hosting if you will.”
Making chain integration a reality
The panel titled “Chain Convergence: Unifying the Web3 Experience” explored how different projects are leveraging the ICP technology stack to build unique dapps across industries, with the panel highlighting that historically, there has been a lack of interoperability between blockchain networks.
Omnity Network founder Louis Liu emphasized that five years ago most developers did not prioritize interoperability, but the whole situation has changed since then, and today, multi-chain is no longer an option, but an inevitable component.
The panel also agreed on how ICP can play a key role with its Chain Fusion technology, enabling different blockchains to communicate, ultimately enhancing the experience for developers and users.
Wasim Fukase, co-founder of Chainsight, said:
“With Chain Fusion, we used IC technology to integrate with EVMS, non-EVMS, and Bitcoin, and that’s where we’re actually getting a lot of DAPs right now, so at Chain Sight, what we’re trying to address is that it doesn’t matter which chain you use, using IC, using threshold signatures, and using ECDSA, we’re able to move to wherever we want.”
Alessandro Rietmann, co-founder of Bitfinity Network, noted how Bitfinity Network integrates with Chain Fusion:
“With Chain Fusion, we can provide compatibility between the Internet Computer and the Ethereum ecosystem, allowing developers to use Ethereum’s tools and deploy in a synchronous environment built on an asynchronous chain.”
The significance of artificial intelligence in a multi-chain world
The Decentralized AI in a Multi-Chain Environment panel brought together experts from NapthaAI, DecideAI, and Outlier Ventures to discuss the flaws of centralized AI, AI DAOs, the need for better UI/UX for DePIN services, and the role of decentralized AI.
One of the group’s discussions revolved around the significance of multi-chain for the development of artificial intelligence.
Richard Blythman, founder of NapthaAI, stressed: “If you look at the financial markets, I think close to 70% or 80% of the participants are bots, and, you know, we think 99%, 99.9% of web3 is bots.”
He stressed that the shift to an AI-driven economy requires infrastructure that can handle large amounts of data and interactions, and that ICP is driving this shift through its Chain Fusion technology, which will enable AI applications to run on various blockchain networks.
DecideAI CEO Raheel Govindji discussed how ICP can be used to enable decentralized AI, saying, “I think startups and companies will probably just start using decentralized AI for training so that they don’t have to put their data on AWS or on open AI servers.”
Chain Fusion in Action: Helix Markets and Omnity
In this session, Louis Liu, founder of Omnity Network, shared insights on how Omnity leverages Chain Fusion technology. Louis introduced that Omnity’s work is “living proof of Chain Fusion technology.”
He stressed: “Omnity is the Bitcoin token hub, and it can bring Bitcoin assets, BTC itself, and other assets into all these other blockchain environments where they are all efficient, highly programmable blockchains, so they can handle Bitcoin assets in very creative ways.”
A key aspect of Omnity’s cross-chain capabilities is remote procedure call (RPC) integration, Louis explained: “For each blockchain, we have a container that we adapt, which is essentially an RPC migration based on HTTP results and adapts its transactions, structure, and signature scheme. This allows Omnity to interact with multiple blockchains so that it can use the language interpreted by the specific blockchain network.”
Helix Markets co-founder Gozard Ocvirk dives into the main challenges facing decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and how Helix Markets is overcoming these obstacles using Chain Fusion and ICP technology.
“Helix Markets is basically trying to solve the problem of liquidity fragmentation between different blockchains, and we found that a lot of blockchain protocols and cryptocurrencies are like Lego blocks, and unfortunately, none of them fit together. So it’s like playing with Lego blocks, but you can’t build a house,” Gozard explained.
Explaining how Helix Markets leverages Chain Fusion technology, and specifically how the integration of threshold signatures facilitates multichain, Gozard said: “All of these blockchains are terrible at communicating with each other, but one thing they have in common is cryptography, which means that most blockchains today use either ECDSA or Schnorr signatures.”
By leveraging these common cryptographic standards, Helix Markets can sign transactions through the protocol, enabling native chain integration without the need for a bridge.
Overall, Chain Fusion Day provided an opportunity for projects to exchange insights, developers to get ideas and explore the future potential of a multi-chain world, and more importantly, it made us realize that with Chain Fusion technology, we are on the right path to building the best version of the decentralized Internet Computer for everyone.
As we continue to build a more integrated, multi-chain world, we’re excited to build a more unified Web3 together.
Further reading
Chain Fusion - Unified Web3 Experience:
internetcomputer.org/chainfusion
ICP as Bitcoin L2:
internetcomputer.org/bitcoin-integration
Hello Ethereum:
internetcomputer.org/ethereum-integration
Enter the ICP ecosystem:
internetcomputer.org/ecosystem
Chain Fusion Technology: The Key to a Multi-Chain Ecosystem
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