Snowbridge is live!
A long wait, but we're just getting started!
Launch time!
Snowbridge is a newly launched bridge between Polkadot and Ethereum that is designed and implemented to be fully trustless, with no multi-sig or third party involved. It’s a major innovation for interoperability in the Polkadot ecosystem.
Snowbridge is one of the longest running and most complex public goods project in the Polkadot ecosystem outside of Parity itself, and many teams have been eagerly waiting the launch.
We’re happy to announce that Snowbridge is now live on Polkadot! This has been a huge endeavor for our team, Parity and many others in the ecosystem.
This first release is focused on transferring ETH and ERC20 assets from Ethereum to Polkadot and back. We’re still waiting on multiple parachains to deploy their integrations and for wallets to add support for Snowbridge assets, but expect these to be completed soon.
If you’re an eager early adopter you can try it out now, but a few important things to keep in mind:
Talisman, SubWallet and Nova wallet are in the process of shipping their support. Until then, you may not be able to see your AssetHub balances of Snowbridge assets in your wallet app. Don’t worry you can view your balances and transfer them from the Snowbridge website, and SubWallet support should go live within a few days.
We are running an initial scale test over the next 2 weeks as part of this wider public release. We do still have a backup admin feature active as part of this process so that we can upgrade and recover if any bugs are encountered during this period. We will be removing this feature and going fully trustless in 2 weeks.
After this point, all control and upgrades will happen using our cross-chain governance, via Polkadot’s governance tracks.
Try it out: https://app.snowbridge.network/
What’s the big deal?
Snowbridge is a critically important upgrade for the Polkadot ecosystem. All Ethereum assets currently in the Polkadot ecosystem flow through bridges that rely on third-party signatures, ie, bridging or governance signatures from private keys, token holders or validators that do not match Polkadot and Ethereum’s validator set.
All parachains and dApps in the Polkadot ecosystem where these assets flow currently have their trust model handicapped by these third parties, rather than taking their full security from the Polkadot Relay Chain. This undermines the value proposition of Polkadot itself.
Snowbridge’s model is trustless, ie, it relies only on signatures from first-party Polkadot and Ethereum validators and transparent, permissionless and auditable on-chain logic. It runs on BridgeHub, a system parachain that draws its security entirely from the relay chain and governance directly from the DOT token.
Snowbridge’s launch also represents a major opportunity for growth for Polkadot as we unlock a new wave of potential assets and interactions with Ethereum. We hope to see lots more interoperability and experimentation with cross-chain systems over the coming years built on top of Snowbridge.
What’s next?
Snowbridge also supports arbitrary messaging, not just asset transfer and we’ll be enabling this feature in the next few months once this first release is fully baked.
You can look forward to bridging your DOT and other Polkadot-native assets to Ethereum once that goes live, as well as full support for XCM Transactions between Polkadot and Ethereum. Snowbridge enables an interface between Polkadot XCM and Ethereum smart contract calls and will unlock true cross-chain applications.
We’ll also be putting a governance proposal out soon that details more about the longer term future of the project and finalizes our longer term funding, so keep an eye out for it!
If you’ve read this far, you may be wondering if there are any plans for a liquidity program for the bridge. We don’t have anything to share about this yet, but discussions are happening 🤫🤫
Anything else?
If you’re interested to dig into the project more and understand what being fully trustless means in more detail, check out our technical docs on the link below:
Additional Links
Snowbridge App: https://app.snowbridge.network/
Technical Documentation: https://docs.snowbridge.network/