On November 22, a hack on HECO Chain bridge, owned by popular exchange HTX, compromised $86.6M worth of digital assets. According to Blockchain security firm PeckShield, the bridge was compromised and assets like stablecoins, ETH, SHIB, LINK and more were illegally transferred from the bridge to suspicious addresses. This is not a standalone event.

In April 2022, in one of the biggest heists in cryptocurrency history, attackers siphoned $540 million worth of Ethereum and USDC stablecoin from Axie Infinity-owned Ronin Bridge. The game developers were forced to raise $150 million to reimburse the affected users. Other bridges including the Qubit Bridge, Wormhole Bridge and Meter.io Bridge have been compromised with millions of dollars stolen in the process.

These events reflected the susceptibility and persistent vulnerability of blockchain bridges to hacks and manipulation despite their vital role in the blockchain industry. This prompted blockchain developers and co-founders of Polytope Labs, Seun Lanlege and David Salami to build Hyperbridge, a cross-chain protocol that allows the secure exchange of information across blockchains.

Polytope, the beginning

Hyperbridge is Polytope Lab’s plan to connect Africa to the world. Image source: Polytope Labs

Polytope Labs is a blockchain research and development firm that publishes research on blockchain protocol design, cryptography, privacy, interoperability and scalability; maintains a community of blockchain researchers & engineers; and spreads the blockchain gospel across the world through events and talks. The company has received grants of up to $130,000 from Web3 Foundation and Polkadot for actively contributing to open-source projects.

Initially, Polytope operated an early-stage investment arm which failed to take off as the startups it backed encountered challenges, mostly due to a lack of technical expertise among the founders, Lanlege said. This inspired the company’s shift towards building its own blockchain products.

At the centre of Polytope’s work is research, which helps give direction while building solid Technical projects. Drawing inspiration from the Ethereum Foundation’s research-driven operations, Polytope has centred research in its technical development process.

Earlier this month, Polytope’s successful launch of Hyperbridge on TestNet garnered significant attention, signaling a ready market for secure bridges.

Interoperability problems

Normally, blockchains are fragmented – different blockchains, Layer 1 (L1) blockchains, and Layer 2 (L2) scaling solutions alike are built with different technologies, possessing unique features and limitations; and catering for different markets but blockchain bridges bring them all together. For example, a bridge allows users to move assets from a native blockchain to one with cheaper transaction fees. Essentially, blockchain bridges are applications that allow users to move assets from one blockchain to the other. By ensuring the transfer of tokens across chains, they facilitate a multichain ecosystem and open up new markets -but not without security challenges.

The security problem in blockchain bridges arises from the use of an intermediary by numerous bridges, Lanlege told NODO. This means that if someone manages to compromise an intermediary, they become capable of deceiving any of the participating blockchains by providing false information about the transactions occurring on the other end.

The Polytope’s approach

To fill this need are blockchain bridges, the kind that Polytope Labs is building. Unlike other blockchain bridge, Polytope Labs’ Hyberbridge doesn’t rely on one third party or consensus mechanism, instead its aggregate the consensus of multiple chains, essentially decentralizing the process

“Our architecture removes the need for an intermediary, making the system completely decentralized,” Lanlege said.

Lanlege believes that the business fundamentals of building a Web3 product is strongly tied to its real functionality; “you can't just sell something that doesn't work”. According to Lanlege, in the case of blockchain bridges, some have been built with intermediaries from a business perspective because it appears like it would work, but in practicality, they get easily exploited.

“Technical decisions underpin the success of your company. So, if you make terrible technical decisions, it becomes significantly difficult for you to succeed. It takes technical leadership to create truly successful projects.”

Many, including Lanlege, believe the success of prominent layer 1 blockchain protocol Ethereum can be traced to the technical and scientific leadership of co-founders: Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin. “In my experience, if the leadership of the company isn't technical, as in engineers or scientists, they will make terrible technical decisions, which will cost them in the business part later on,” he said.

Hyperbridge is the underground tunnel that will connect Africa to the rest of the world, Lanlege said. This sentiment is not unrelated to the systemic disconnection of Africans from the global financial system. Crypto removes those walls, but the existence of multiple protocols and networks that can’t communicate with each other means that the problem of moving value across jurisdictions persists. “If these networks can't communicate with each other, then basically, we just recreated the same problem that we had in the real world. This is why we picked bridges to work on because bridges bring that freedom to transact across blockchain networks,” he said.

Similarly, a bridge like Hyperbridge can help connect African blockchain networks such as Bantu and Zone together and expose them to the crypto liquidity in the existing networks across the globe. “Hyperbridge has to exist first before any local chain that can tap into the global crypto liquidity can exist,” he said.

The Hyperbridge is a core blockchain infrastructure whose use case is designed to reach beyond the continent. According to Lanlege, Hyperbridge will be on the main net by the second quarter of 2024