Maintaining your own bridge to Incognito

[andrey]

Hey guys, recently we’ve had many requests to build bridges between Incognito and other networks. As many of you know, Incognito currently utilizes a mix of trusted and trustless bridges (see our approach here), while we transition to full decentralization.

A pragmatic approach to decentralization

Incognito’s Portal v.3 and subsequent iterations aims to serve as a universal trustless bridge. However, the cryptoverse is very large, and this will take time. In the meantime, from an operational point of view, it’s good to decentralize the building of trusted bridges.

So this topic is about putting the ball in your court. Anyone can build and maintain trusted bridges.

Some examples of trusted set ups with sizeable traction:

• wBTC: 100k+ BTC locked
• renBTC: 19k BTC on the Ethereum network (feel free to argue if Ren’s set up is trustless)
• USDT: $17B supply

There are a few ways this can be done, the simplest of which I will detail below. Bridged tokens benefit from privacy, can be added to the pDEX, and can even have their own incentives.

How to connect a new network and its tokens

The “creator” (core team of a project or trusted community entity) needs to:

1. Create a privacy version of their token on Incognito. You can do this easily from the Incognito app.
2. Verify this privacy version. To do so, the creator simply needs to fill out a short form, also available in the Incognito app.
3. The creator will need to set up own custody wallets for both networks (Incognito and bridged network).
4. Prove to its community that it’s backed 1-1, or whichever mechanism you choose.
5. Create functionality to verify deposit proof of an external Coin and send Incognito version of the Coin to the user.
6. Add your coin to the Incognito DEX, and maintain liquidity (optional).

Trusted bridge code example -->

Conclusion

As with all trusted set ups, it is generally more sensible if core teams or entities are involved in such initiatives. These people are trusted by their communities, are connected to token holders able and willing to provide liquidity, and can spread the word about this integration to their users.

The idea detailed above is just a simple example of the possibilities. If you want to see other blockchain networks integrated with Incognito, or have their tokens listed on the pDEX, bring this idea to their core teams and communities!

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Find more info how Incognito implements trust-less bridges:

1. Incognito mode for Ethereum
2. The Portal
3. Trustless Custodians: A Decentralized Approach to Cryptocurrency Custodianship

[Revolve]

I have a few questions in regards to this method of Bridge Building.
If the coins are minted as an Incognito pCoin, then that means there would be no native way to import coins via Shielding. The Bridge operator would have to create their own shielding method outside of Incognito, is this correct?
Also pCoin supply amounts are non variable, so if a coin isn’t fully mined yet, you would have to create more pVersions of the coin then actually currently exists in circulation?

If these things are the case,
I feel like we need a little bit more framework to utilize this effectively. I have some ideas, but I don’t know the feasibility of them.

• There should be a way in the Incognito App, to manually add a custom Bridge “Server”. (Users who don’t have the bridge added, shouldn’t be able to see or trade the associated bridge coin)
• There should be a standardized call function to retrieve shielding address’s from custom Bridge “Servers”.
• People should be able to download the basic framework of a Bridge “Server” from github.
• These coins should be marked and denoted separately from Incognito minted pCoins and instead marked as a “bridge Coin”. These coins should be able to be variably minted as well. Clicking the more information about the coin would provide the Bridge information that it is associated with.

Verified and audited bridges could be added to the main Incognito platform instead of forcing users to manually import custom bridges. That way if a bridge is built and later becomes more popular it can apply to become verified and added directly to Incognito as a main line for that particular BlockChain. (This would be similar to verified pCoins)

These changes would allow particular coin projects to have complete control over their coin ecosystem, and their bridge on the Incognito network.

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As a side note, this would also allow custom bridge applications. Bridges would be able to be utilized to do specific functions. For example, I could create a custom bridge for USDC for example, and it mints a custom coin on Incognito. However, my bridge is specifically designed to automatically take 50% of the USDC that comes in and transfer them to a interest gaining platform like Nexo, MyConstant, or Crypto.com. The value of the custom minted coin goes up with the amount gained from the interest rate. Meaning because they used my specific bridge, their coins value goes up. On withdraw they would receive more USDC then they put in. The best part is they are still able to trade it and send it around, exchange for PRV. If someone thinks it’s sketchy, they don’t have to import this custom bridge. They would never know the coin exists as they cant trade for it unless they import the bridge manually.

[andrey]

Hey @Revolve

@Revolve

The Bridge operator would have to create their own shielding method outside of Incognito, is this correct?

Yep. They can use our example or define their own way to verify deposit/withdrawals.

Regarding a framework to standardize trusted bridging.
I think it’s a good idea. Before to push this idea forward we need to identify a demand for such a framework. As I know @Matt6412 is going to build the first bridge to Zclassic. I think once the bridge is live, we could use his implementation as a base for the framework.

[Matt6412]

Zcl bridge prob not going to work out… but there’s a few others I’m talking to in regards to making a bridge for… Either way #iwillbridgeit