The Metaverse Needs Cross-Chain Interoperability, Like Now

I’m becoming fascinated by cross-chain interoperability, or rather the lack of it for now but where it may lead and why it needs to happen.

For me, a lot of activity feels like it’s centered on two approaches -

> One size fits all
> Winner takes all

And it breeds that whole ‘maximalist’ attitude which turns into a bit of a cult.

In its simplest terms, blockchain interoperability (or cross-chain depending on whom you read) allows for different blockchain protocols to actively communicate with each other. Therefore, different chains can interact and share data, which results in making it easier to use different blockchain networks.

A common comparison is akin to emails — we send emails every day, and the biggest success of email is that someone with a Gmail account can send emails to someone with a completely different TLD account.

In its current state, there are no layer one blockchain protocols that can do this type of processing. For the time being, most efforts have been channeled towards providing applications with the ability to interoperate with each other within the same protocol but not bridge out to other chains.

Now, this is also compounded by the fact that every chain treats the so-called “blockchain trilemma” differently, and as I explained two months ago I think the fabled problem is wrong, that the widely held belief that decentralized networks can only provide two of three benefits at any given time concerning decentralization, security, and scalability is focusing on the wrong things.

The beef I have with this is that decentralization is not a part of the solution — it’s inherent to what blockchain and web3 are supposed to achieve and therefore should be removed from the equation in lieu of something else.

If one chain favors speed over security then this becomes incompatible with another chain that favors security over speed, and yet this is a greater challenge to solve than just thinking about triangles and why one-size-fits-all chains are the wrong way to go about this. You can tell already because the only metric projects tout the loudest is TPS speeds, which for many industries is the least interesting.

The needs of a blockchain in healthcare will be different to that of manufacturing or supply chain will be different to that of pure financial transactional chains will be different to that of video games. Each industry will have its own requirements that must be satisfied so throwing healthcare use cases for example into a general purpose or popular chain rather than one specifically matched to the sector is a massive mistake to me.

At the moment there are only a handful of projects like Cosmos, Polkadot and Cardano offering the levels of flexibility to try and accommodate these differences and also build interoperability between Layer 1 and Layer 2 protocols from the outset.

To me, this means that the most popular chains currently on the market to build with may not be the right ones to build on for the long term.

(just to be clear - I hold no positions on any chain mentioned in this article, I’m simply more aligned from an ideological perspective to how some of these are structured)

And this is especially important when considering that the Metaverse is supposed to be this digital domain filled with interconnected and interoperable virtual worlds. The idea that the current crop of chains are incompatible with one another without effort when virtual economies and movement between worlds are supposed to be seamless in the metaverse should ring a lot of alarm bells.

And so should claims that there is one underlying chain to power the lot of them. Because that screams closed and centralized, and not open and decentralized.

Again, one-size-fits-all protocols cannot win here because they cannot cater for every use case effectively. There is no Swiss Army Knife solution here for all the reasons stated above already. Time will tell obviously where success and failure will lie, and there should not be one winner who takes all either or many metaverse and web3 projects risks being painted into a corner with no way out to survive.

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