- connects many chains seamlessly
- people will arbitrage between assets when the difference is significant enough
- multichain is cheaper and safer than conventional bridging
A Cross-chain is a bridge that allows different blockchains to communicate and transact. A blockchain bridge is a link through two separate blockchains.
Cross-Chain? Blockchain Bridge?
One can think of blockchains are like independent countries with their own rules and currency, and bridges as border crossings. Let’s compare blockchain to real life. For example, we want to travel from Alaska to Argentina as a traveling analogy. We would have to drive through Canada, the States, and Mexico until South America. Each customs border is like a blockchain bridge. At each border crossing, customs officers will not only check our luggage but charge us customs tariffs (we can assume this as gas in blockchain terms) & require us to get a visa and throw away things that are not legal in that country. In the worst-case scenario, it may be necessary to trade all our cash into that country’s currency before continuing the drive south (similar to exchanging tokens in each blockchain)
Bridging technology, to this day, still contains too many security issues and fees. In addition, each blockchain has a different set of protocols and stipulations, making it difficult to bridge seamlessly. Hence, bridging can create blockchain security issues and preservation of assets while going from one chain to another. So it could be expensive and unsafe
Multichain NFT? OMNICHAIN?
Driven by Ethereum’s problems, such as interoperability, high gas fees, many second-layer platforms, and new blockchains were developed over the last few years. “LayerZero” (a Vancouver company funded by Sequoia Capital & FTX Ventures) leverages the security properties of the established oracles (Chainlink and Band) with an additional layer of security via the open relayer system, developed OMNICHAIN.
In Layman’s terms, this allows OMNICHAIN to enable cross-chain bridging {state sharing, bridging, lending and borrowing, swaps, governance}. Users will be able to swap from altcoins on the Ethereum network to SOL Solana in one single transaction from the source chain instead of bridging a few times. Unified liquidity across all chains with guaranteed finality on the source chain. This new technology makes Web3 more accessible to users and accelerates the exponential adoption of digital assets. Currently, the protocol supports all projects compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). However, it will support non-EVM chains like Terra, Cosmos, Hub, and others in the future.
Going back to the traveling analogy previously, it means OMNICHAIN is similar to holding onto the best passport and VIP access. Instead of driving through North America to Argentina, you fly straight to Argentina on a private supersonic jet with costs lower than driving a car, no customs fees, no tariffs, no need for a visa, and land with all your luggage and everything intact, safe and quickly.
Lending and Borrowing with De-Fi
OMNICHAIN opens alot of opptuniries for de-fi. Nowadays, when a user has tokens on chain A but wants to yield farming on Chain B, the user would have to collateralize on Chain A. The process begins with borrowing, bridge (fee), and swap (fee). Then farm on the destination chain, swap back (fee), bridge back (fee), repay the loan, and un-collateralize. Instead, utilizing OMNICHAIN can collateralize on Chain A, borrow on the destination chain, farm, repay, and unlock the collateral, skipping the four bridging and swapping fees all in one go, which is much more straightforward.
Also, “Sifchain” was recently announced and is the OMNICHAIN solution for DEXs. They might replace the famous “Sushiswap” and “Uniswap” in the future.
Multi-Chain NFTs
The first NFT projects to utilize this OMNICHAIN are “Gh0stly Ghosts” and “tiny dinos”.
Both projects are transferable between Ethereum (eth), Polygon (matic), Avalance (avax), Binance Smart Chain (bsc), Fantom (ftm), Arbitrum (arb), Optimism (opt).
Currently, most P2E games and DAPPs are on the Ethereum blockchain. However, due to its high gas fees, many users have chosen to be on other blockchains. For example, an Ethereum-based project can only be used with Ethereum and possibly its layer two solutions, such as Polygon. But in the future, this Ethereum-based game/application can be integrated with other chains such as OMNICHAIN, enabling much more accessibility to future integration with the rest of the Web3 space.
The “tiny dinos” NFT minted out on seven chains in hours and is now on the secondary market. However, combined with the cute pixel dinosaur profile picture and one of the first NFTs on Omnichain, the floor price skyrocketed from 0.00 ETH to 0.15ETH in 24 hours.
They have no discord or roadmap; however, a community discord was created and now has more than 400 members because of the popularity gained. It is incredible, and when NFTs assets on one chain are cheaper than another, people will buy off another chain and swap it over for the desirable chain to sell for profits.
People will arbitrage between chains when the difference is significant.
Transfer to another chain is quite simple. For example, one can edit the NFT contract directly via a web browser and transfer a different blockchain.
—
to transfer
call traverseChains in the contract write tab
payableAmount — covers the target chain gas fee (any gas not used will be refunded)
chained — target chain id
tokenId — nft token id chain id
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Side note from @LayerZero_Labs
uses different numbers to wallet chain id)
eth 1
bsc 2
avax 6
poly 9
arb 10
opt 11
ftm 12
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This multichain shows promise and lots of possibilities, so the first few NFT projects that utilize this blockchain may turn into the next “Cryptopunks”. A notable upcoming NFT project utilizing this multichain is "Turtle Metaverse".I reckon more and more NFT projects and tokens will be using this new technology instead of a single chain soon. OMNICHAIN bridges the gap between several blockchains while benefiting the holders through arbitrage trading & cheaper gas fees.
The future for OMNICHAIN NFTs is unparallel. I highly recommend we all learn more about this technology on LayerZero.
Thank you. Look forward to hearing your own insights and comments.
Cheers, Eric F
If you want to get in touch about interesting NFT ideas or projects or want to hear about a specific topic, I’m @ericclfung on Twitter.
Thanks to @Parabolic_B & @Shek & @Wabz for reviewing this post.
Disclaimer: I am just an NFT dreamer who has some success in this crypto and NFT space. The above does not constitute an offer or solicitation to offer or recommend any investment product.
https://twitter.com/EricCLFung/status/1512343632480972807?s=20&t=7mnkjl-91OGNXAXBvUtxWg