🙌🧐1/n cBridge 2.0 is the first and only cross-chain architecture that allows Liquidity Providers to freely choose between the "self-managed" and the "pooled-together" liquidity models. Today, we talk about some fun design challenges. We will unveil solutions in the coming days!
2/n Under the self-managed, a.k.a "non-custodial", model, LPs hold full control of their liquidity 100% of the time. To make this possible, each LP also needs to run a cBridge node "program" in a server so that they can respond to users' asset cross-chain requests.
3/n Self-managed model has the very obvious benefits of not needing to trust any centralized or decentralized third parties. However, this is also a double-edged sword.
4/n First, for LPs, the barrier of entry of operating a bridging node is quite high: the LP needs to: 1. maintain a safe "hot wallet" env for the private key; 2. ensure operational reliability; 3. manage external RPCs for chains; 4. manage liquidity; 5. tune fee profile; etc.
5/n Second, from the perspective of the entire bridging network, when a user request comes in, how does the system decide which cBridge nodes to use? Do users have to "talk" to potentially different nodes and have back-and-forth complex interactions?
6/n Then third, there is the "Griefing Problem". Where the selected bridge nodes just "vanish" and refuse to serve users' requests. Users then have to wait for a very long timeout while having funds locked up and there is no promise he won't be griefed again.
7/n Or the same thing can happen for users, but the problem is that, due to the isolation of information between two different chains, there is no way to tell who is the actual bad guy from any single-chain state.
8/n cBridge 2.0 makes LP's life much easier for problem #1 and solves #2 with simplicity and provides the world's first solution to #3 with high efficiency, all with a construct called State Guardian Network. Wanna know more details? Stay tuned for tmr's thread!
9/n Now, remember cBridge 2.0 architecture also supports a pooled together liquidity model? It is designed for LPs who want to pool together their funds to provide liquidity for the network without running bridging nodes but with high efficiency, security, and simplicity.
10/n cBridge 2.0 architecture integrates these TWO models seamlessly to provide users with the best service and LPs with the utmost flexibility. The pooled-together model surely comes with tradeoffs and we will dive into that soon. For now, gn/gm!
In locally verified bridges, since liquidity is also self-managed by the relayers themselves, there is additional complexity in node scheduling and handling griefing as mentioned below (malicious relayer locks user fund). Celer cBridge 2.0 is the first to solve these challenges.
🎉🥳#TGIF and it is ELI-5 time! Today, we talk about the last topic for the self-managed model for cBridge 2.0: how cBridge 2.0's design provides the first-ever solution to the "griefing problem" in the non-custodial bridging system using the Celer State Guardian Network.
1/n So what is “griefing”? In the self-managed bridging model of cBridge 2.0’s two models, two steps are always needed for the cross-chain transaction to happen for both the bridge nodes and the user in the following sequence.
2/n Step 1 for the user: make a “time-locked” transfer to the bridge node on the source chain, where only she has the key to unlocking this transfer.
Step 1 for the bridge node: make a locked transfer to the user on the destination chain, using the exact same lock as the user.