Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
cross-chain communication
liquidity fragmentation
routing
decentralization
blockchain interoperability
Towards Policy-Enabled Multi-Hop Routing for Cross-Chain Message Delivery
🤖 AI Summary
Cross-chain communication often relies on centralized hubs or supports only directly connected chains, leading to fragmented liquidity, limited scalability, and centralization risks. This work proposes xRoute, a novel framework that introduces, for the first time, policy-driven multi-hop routing, name resolution, and a decentralized relaying mechanism into cross-chain communication. Built upon the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, xRoute integrates a policy expression language, a routing computation algorithm, and on-chain path verification to enable applications to define custom routing policies, while a decentralized relay network handles message delivery. Experimental results demonstrate that xRoute significantly enhances cross-chain connectivity, decentralization, and scalability under high load across IBC-compatible chains, all without requiring trusted intermediaries.
📝 Abstract
Blockchain ecosystems face a significant issue with liquidity fragmentation, as applications and assets are distributed across many public chains with each only accessible by subset of users. Cross-chain communication was designed to address this by allowing chains to interoperate, but existing solutions limit communication to directly connected chains or route traffic through hubs that create bottlenecks and centralization risks.
In this paper, we introduce xRoute, a cross-chain routing and message-delivery framework inspired by traditional networks. Our design brings routing, name resolution, and policy-based delivery to the blockchain setting. It allows applications to specify routing policies, enables destination chains to verify that selected routes satisfy security requirements, and uses a decentralized relayer network to compute routes and deliver messages without introducing a trusted hub. Experiments on the chains supporting the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol show that our approach improves connectivity, decentralization, and scalability compared to hub-based designs, particularly under heavy load.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
cross-chain routing
policy-based delivery
decentralized relayer network
Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC)
blockchain interoperability
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