The Future of Prism — Part 3: Bridge Factory
Part 4 — Cross Chain Smart Contract Interactions
A feature currently being built within Prism Network is what we are terming the “Bridge Factory”. This will allow any project to utilise a smart contract to set up their own cross-chain token with a fixed supply across any connected networks they decide to bridge to. This will be usable not only for new tokens but for pre-existing ones, meaning any token can easily become cross-chain.
To put it simply, this is how bridging of a project’s token would work:
- Project is on Network A and wishes to bridge their token to Network B.
- Project interacts with the Bridge Factory contract to setup their own personal bridge between these networks. A copy of their token contract is deployed on Network B.
- Team members of the project or individual users can now bridge their tokens across to the new chain. This is done by locking up their tokens in Network A (home network) and minting copies of their tokens in Network B. This ensures that the circulating supply of tokens always remains the same even across multiple networks. When transferring from Network B back to Network A, tokens are burned on Network B and then unlocked on the home Network A.
What is known as a “Satellite Bridge” connects the networks and informs outbound networks when the transaction locking up the tokens has been completed. An important part to note of this is that the team behind the projects that do this retain the keys to their own bridge. This means that the bridges are not all linked under one centralised smart contract and puts the responsibility on the developers to maintain and run their Satellite Bridge smoothly, which includes the back end infrastructure. It is our belief this should provide a more robust system when compared to other/previous bridging protocols which when hacked have led to all the tokens that utilised it becoming compromised due it being a shared bridge. As much as possible and makes sense, decentralisation should be a goal we work towards in DeFi — not just for idealistic reasons but for bringing greater security as a whole to the space.
While we are still working on the finer details of this concept, we are currently doing some preliminary tests on how to implement this and working on a prototype. We hope to have more news about this to release soon. As ever with Prism Network, if you have feedback or an idea to improve upon the concept we are more than happy to hear your thoughts. You can get in touch with us at our Discord.
