TeleportDAO

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16 Jan 2024

What is TeleportDAO?

TeleportDAO is a secure and trustless infrastructure that connects blockchains together. Using TeleportDAO, users can move any data (messages like contract calls, or assets like tokens, NFT, etc.) from one blockchain (called source chain) to another blockchain (called target chain). TeleportDAO does this in a trustless manner and it works between any programmable and non-programmable blockchains.

Technology

TeleportDAO is a light client bridge (Relay) that is the most secure solution to blockchain interoperability as it does not rely on third parties. Instead, all the cross-chain data is verified by smart contracts. To deploy TeleportDAO smart contracts, the target chain needs to be programmable, however, the source chain can be programmable or non-programmable. TeleportDAO adjusts to different blockchains with different consensus mechanisms and different speeds.

Cross-chain dApps

Relay makes the whole data of the source chain accessible on the target chain. This can be used to relay messages from one blockchain to another, perform cross-chain contract calls, wrap tokens and access applications on the other blockchain, etc. The opportunities to build on top of a cross-chain infrastructure are countless; many applications can become cross-chain or multi-chain to gain more users and be exposed to different ecosystems. TeleportDAO provides such a secure infrastructure so that developers can focus on high-level applications.
Despite the popularity of blockchain projects, these blockchains often have different characteristics (such as speed, programmability, levels of security, privacy, and decentralization), each focusing on a particular area or industry. This results in a collection of siloed blockchains, preventing blockchain technology from reaching its full potential.

Use Cases

Over the past few years, blockchains have grown and built their own mature ecosystems. Now, it seems crucial to connect them so their users are able to access other blockchains’ ecosystems. In the following, the real-world use cases of TeleportDAO are explained by a few examples. Suppose that Alice has assets on the source chain. Now consider the following scenarios:

Alice wants to pay Bob, a merchant who only accepts payments on the target chain.
Alice wants to move her assets to the target chain to get better APY by depositing them into a yield aggregator.
No dApp exists on the source chain (e.g. Bitcoin), so Alice wants to leverage the target chain dApps.
Alice has an NFT on the source chain and wants to get a loan. There is a lending dApp on the target chain that accepts NFTs as collateral.
Alice has medical data on the source chain and wants to sell it. There is a data marketplace on the target chain where she can sell her data.
Alice wants to participate in the DAO of a target chain dApp using her assets on the source chain (cross-chain DAO).
Alice wants to call a contract on the target chain using the native token of the source chain.

Light Client Bridge

A bridge between two blockchains connects them together. Some bridges only enable moving assets from one blockchain to another, and some bridges move the whole data of one blockchain to another. The second type covers the first one
RELAY — Relay is an interoperability solution that makes it possible to access the whole data of the source chain from the target chain. In a Relay, there are parties called Relayers who submit block headers of the source chain on the target chain. A smart contract (Relay contract) checks the validity of submitted block headers by checking the consensus mechanism of the source chain. The smart contract, then, decides which blocks should be finalized according to the finalization rule of the source chain. Therefore, the Relay smart contract that exists on the target chain, acts as a light client of the source chain
Access Cross-chain Data — After adding the new block header by a Relayer, TeleportDAO checks for any previous block header that got finalized. When a block header gets finalized on the source chain, it will get finalized on the target chain in a very short delay. Users can refer to finalized block headers on the target chain for proving the inclusion of some data on the source chain.

Bitcoin Bridge

TeleportDAO’s Bitcoin bridge contract validates the Proof-of-Work mechanism of Bitcoin. For every submitted block header the Relay contract verifies:

The block header refers correctly to a previously submitted header.
The header shows enough work has been done.
Re-targeting the difficulty has been done correctly.
Some other checks: the header hasn’t been submitted before, the block number isn’t too old, etc.

If a block header passes all checks, it is considered a valid block header. However, the valid header cannot be used for checking transaction inclusion since it may rewind from the main chain by future block headers.

Finalized Headers

Every time a valid block header is added, the Relay contract checks whether a previous block header gets finalized. To do so, Relay uses the longest chain rule of Bitcoin, i.e, a header is finalized if it is buried under six consecutive valid block headers. Users can provide Merkle inclusion proofs against the finalized headers. Also, the Relayers who submitted block headers that become finalized will get a reward.