Thread by @danrobinson

Fast trustless bridges usually require payments to be locked up in escrow

But what if users could just send to the relayer—trustlessly, and at a fraction of the capital and gas cost of the escrowed model?

Introducing Across Prime, a new design from me @hal2001 @mrice32

🧵

Intent-based bridges use relayers to send payments faster than the speed of cross-chain messages

The simplest way to build a fast bridge is to have a trusted relayer. Users send money directly to the relayer and hope the relayer fulfills their intent on the destination chain

What if we don't want to trust the relayer?

@AcrossProtocol helped pioneer a trustless model based on escrow: users send payments into escrow, and the relayer claims it later after proving they fulfilled the intent

This requires each payment to be locked up for some period

Across Prime introduces a bonded model, where payments go directly to relayers, but are secured by a security deposit

Since bonds can be reused as soon as payments are confirmed, this is more capital-efficient

It's also more gas-efficient, since it doesn't require a claim tx

I've loved working with @hal2001 @mrice32 and the rest of the innovative @AcrossProtocol team on pushing the limits of bridge designs

Full post here:

paradigm.xyz/2025/05/across…