Cross-Chain Bridge Assessment Process

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Hi all, today we are very excited to announce the creation of the Uniswap Bridge Assessment Committee, and the kickoff of the Assessment process.

First, the Committee. We are very proud of the group that we have assembled thus far. As previously mentioned their mandate will be to diligence the set of bridges and bridge-agnostic solutions listed below. With a focus on the needs of Uniswap governance, they will leverage this diligence to provide a short-term recommendation for how the Uniswap community might approach bridges in the coming weeks. And, they will also provide guidance on the ideal long-term solution to build towards and support, and a recommendation for how Uniswap community may continue to monitor and diligence bridges as the space evolves.

As a reminder, the selection criteria we used to select the engineers included the following: relevant technical experience, understanding of bridge architectures and potential risk vectors, and alignment with Uniswap’s long-term interests, particularly regarding its ability to remain secure as it is deployed across chains. For the PM role, we also looked for excellent organizational skills and experience with technical writing. Importantly, we precluded individuals who have a vested interest in a given bridge team. And, for each candidate, we conducted a reference check that could speak to the individual’s technical competence and character.

We are also seeking to grow the team in the coming weeks. If you meet the criteria above, or have a recommendation to join the Committee, reach out to me on Twitter (here).

Our team members are as follows:

  1. Ermyas Abebe. Ermyas is one of the co-authors of the Cross-chain Risk Framework, a framework for analysing cross-chain projects. He was previously a Principal Research Scientist at ConsenSys Software, where he conducted in-depth analyses of crosschain protocols. He is a member of the IEEE ICBC Crosschain Workshop Program Committee. LinkedIn, Twitter.
  2. Jasraj “Jazzy” Bedi. Jazzy is the co-founder and CTO of Zellic, Inc, an audit company. In this role he has conducted multiple audits across bridges in the space, and has contributed to in-depth post-mortems of bridge hacks which have occurred in the past. LinkedIn, Twitter.
  3. Sean Casey. Sean is the co-CTO and Head of Enzyme Protocol Development at Avantgarde Finance. His expertise lies in smart contract engineering experience and protocol integrations. He has deep knowledge of the Uniswap Protocol, having led Avantgarde’s integration with the Protocol. Avantgarde is also an active Uniswap delegate. LinkedIn.
  4. Ben O’Neill (Project Manager). Ben is the VP of Business Operations at Chaos Labs, an on-chain economic security & risk platform that uses simulations to test protocol vulnerabilities across DeFi, bridges, and tokeneconomics. Previously, Ben was the VP of Business Development & Operations at Messari. Notably, while at Messari, Ben led the creation of Messari transparency reports, a product that verified and made public a set of objective standard information across protocols - work that is very analogous to the work of the Bridge Assessment Committee. LinkedIn, Twitter.
  5. Peter Robinson. Peter is soon to be the Head of Blockchain Research at Immutable, starting in March (will work with the Bridge group until then). With Ermyas, he is one of the co-authors of the Cross-chain Risk Framework. He was previously a Technical Director, Researcher, and Applied Cryptographer at ConsenSys Software, with a focus on researching and advising on crosschain technologies. He also previously co-chaired the Crosschain Interoperability Working Group for the EEA and is co-chair of the IEEE ICBC Crosschain Workshop Program Committee. He also completed his PhD at the University of Queensland on Crosschain Communications. LinkedIn, Twitter.
  6. David Hyland-Wood. David is an entrepreneur and multi-disciplinary engineer with deep expertise across a number of areas. He is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Queensland School of Engineering, with a focus on on blockchain and distributed systems consensus. He previously served as a Lead Researcher at ConsenSys Software, focused on developing the first international blockchain standard for PegaSys, the ConsenSys protocol engineering group. He is also a member of the IEEE ICBC Crosschain Workshop Program Committee. LinkedIn.

All Committee members are excited to leverage their expertise in crosschain communication to assist the Uniswap community. They hope that this work will also help the other protocols in navigating decision-making around bridges as well.

Now, onto the bridges and bridge-agnostic solutions. The Committee will be analyzing 8 bridges:

  1. Axelar (submission post here)
  2. Celer (here)
  3. deBridge (here)
  4. Hyperlane (here)
  5. LayerZero (here)
  6. Multichain (here)
  7. Router Protocol (here)
  8. Wormhole (here)

and 3 bridge-agnostic solutions:

  1. Multi-bridge implementation, built by the Celer team (here)
  2. Block Header Oracle based solution, being built by Gnosis team (here)
  3. ERC-5164: Cross-chain execution (interface supporting execution across EVM networks) (here)

Some bridges may themselves be able to be used as the infrastructure for an agnostic solution as well (as suggested by Hyperlane here). That will also be examined.

@benhoneill and I will keep the community updated with developments and timelines for delivery. If you have any questions please direct them to one of us on behalf of the committee and we will triage appropriately. (Devin Twitter, Ben Twitter)

Bridge teams, I will be connecting you to this group over the next few days.

Thanks all, we are so excited to kick this off!

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