Trustless and decentralized bridge connecting Polkadot and Ethereum, Snowbridge announced its launch. It is engineered to be entirely trustless, eliminating the need for multi-signature mechanisms or third-party intermediaries, marking a significant advancement in interoperability within the Polkadot ecosystem.
Snowbridge removes the need for third-party signatures, enhancing security by relying solely on first-party Polkadot and Ethereum validators. This reinforces Polkadot’s value proposition by ensuring that Ethereum assets remain secured by the Polkadot Relay Chain. Developed on BridgeHub, Snowbridge derives its security from the relay blockchain and governance from the DOT token, offering transparent, permissionless, and auditable on-chain logic.
It facilitates the transfer of ETH and ERC-20 assets between Ethereum and Polkadot. However, it is still pending the deployment of integrations by multiple parachains and the addition of support for Snowbridge assets by Talisman, SubWallet, and Nova Wallet. These updates are anticipated to be completed in the near future.
The feature is currently accessible to early adopters, allowing them to view their balances and make transfers on the Snowbridge web application. An initial scale test will be conducted over a two-week period. During this time, a backup admin feature will be active to facilitate upgrades and bug fixes. Once this test phase is complete, the backup admin feature will be removed, and Snowbridge will transition to being fully trustless, utilizing cross-chain governance.
Snowbridge also supports arbitrary messaging, DOT bridging, and XCM transactions between Polkadot and Ethereum, facilitating cross-chain applications. These additional features will be activated shortly after the initial asset transfer functionality has been tested and stabilized.
Polkadot’s SnowBridge Activation Plan Gains Momentum After User Support
The plan to activate SnowBridge was initially rolled out by Polkadot in late last year. Since then, the proposal has been under discussion throughout the spring, receiving support from the users for its anticipated benefits. Market observers have noted that SnowBridge is expected to become crucial in allowing Polkadot’s ecosystem to access Ethereum’s decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape.
SnowBridge is among several bridges currently in development within the Polkadot ecosystem. This project is a collaborative effort of Snowfork and Parity Technologies, has undergone an extended development phase and was introduced on the Polkadot parachain testnet Rococo in January 2024. During this phase, developers utilized SnowBridge to facilitate the transfer of assets between the Ethereum Sepolia testnet and AssetHub on Rococo, initially supporting ERC-20 tokens exclusively. Subsequently, SnowBridge has received multiple updates, rigorous testing, and audits made by the development team and security companies.
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