Cross-Chain Interoperability

Deep dive into the Orion Bridge.

To further add liquidity into DeFi, Orion is capable of offerint cross-chain interoperability through the Orion Bridge.

What is the Orion Bridge?

Orion Bridge is the first peer-to-peer atomic swap bridge: enabling users to trade native assets across different blockchains without limits, delays, refused orders, blocked funds, or exploits.

Cross-chain bridges exist in market, but not without their faults - namely fees, vulnerabilities, delays, exploits, and more. And while bridges exist as separate entities, no bridges have been integrated into trading platforms for true cross-chain trading. Until now.

Orion Bridge is integrated into Orion Terminal, enabling true cross-chain and cross-exchange liquidity aggregation for the first time: the first step in market-wide interoperability.

As a result, users can trade popular ERC20 assets, with the low fees and high speed of Binance Smart Chain. Other chains will be integrated to reduce fees further, while increasing speed, asset availability, and more.

Key technology underpinning Orion Bridge

Atomic swaps

Atomic swaps are automatic exchange contracts that allow two parties to trade tokens from two different blockchains. While a well-known concept in the community, they are implemented in a small number of projects. Until now. Atomic swaps enable immediate exchange of two assets on different blockchains, without wrapped assets or delays.

Atomic swap is an operation that involves two assets, each of which has its own native blockchain and the technical ability to create secure exchange operations between network users without resorting to the services of a trusted third party and without trusting each other. For example, if BTC and ETH have support for atomic swaps, then users can safely exchange ETH for BTC. The operation is called atomic, because it implies that the whole procedure cannot stop halfway, transferring only part of the coins, it either occurs completely and both parties receive the expected coins, or it does not occur at all and both parties retain ownership of their assets.

Peer-to-Peer

Peer-to-peer technology enables true decentralization: the direct exchange of an asset between individual parties without the involvement of a central authority. In a digital peer-to-peer network, each user is an equivalent owner of and contributor to the network. This requires the use of encryption to enable two parties to safely conduct a transaction without the need for a trusted third party. With transactions recorded on every peer's network, it is extremely difficult—even "computationally impractical"—to overwrite or falsify ledgers in a cryptocurrency exchange.

In a P2P network such as Orion Bridge, each peer may be referred to as a node, and the collective work of these nodes is what maintains the Bridge. Therefore, the structure of a P2P network is sustained by its users. There is no central server or host, and thus the decentralized framework of Orion Bridge makes it highly resistant to cyber attacks - as well as more scalable. The more users join Orion Broker Network, the more resilient and scalable the bridge becomes. Bigger P2P networks achieve high levels of security because there is no single point of failure.

Unlike other bridges dependent on centralized entities and validators, users of Orion Bridge swap with only one counterparty - Orion Brokers. This eliminates the risk of 51% attacks and other vulnerabilities seen across leading bridges.

Broker network

Delegated Proof of Broker (DPoB) is Orion’s governance model, built on a network of brokers and stakers, fulfilling every function on Orion Protocol's underlying aggregation technology, with the ORN token at its core. Orion's Broker Network underpins the entire ecosystem, and Orion Bridge is no different. Orion Brokers are always online via Orion Broker Software, so users never need to 'seek' a counterparty for exchange.

Brokers never get access to traders’ accounts or funds as the terminal is governed by smart contracts to enforce secure conditions of the token exchange. When a trader signs an order, it’s a commitment to exchange assets at the specific terms included in the order - these parameters are signed in the order message and cannot be changed by any parties. Only if the order is filled by a selected broker will the transfer of assets occur atomically within the smart contract: the trader gives the sold asset in exchange for the bought asset. The exact amounts of exchanged assets are strongly enforced by the conditions specified in the order and cannot be altered by the broker.

Security

Peer-to-peer technology enables true decentralization: the direct exchange of an asset between individual parties without the involvement of a central authority. Unlike other bridges dependent on centralized entities and validators, Orion Bridge users swap with only one counterparty - our brokers. This eliminates the risk of 51% attacks and other vulnerabilities seen across leading bridges. You don't lose ownership of your assets until you receive the corresponding pegged token on your chosen chain.

Time / Delays

While a well-known concept in the community, atomic swaps are implemented in a small number of projects, until now. Via our proprietary peer-to-peer atomic swap technology, Orion Bridge enables immediate settlement for Withdrawing and Depositing - tokens become available for trading right after the user transaction is mined.

Bridges like Multichain (Anyswap) on the other hand have an average settlement time of 10-30 minutes (and up to 12 hours for larger transactions), while withdrawals on Polygon can take up to 3 hours, and up to one week on Optimism.

Fees

Orion Bridge charges a 0.15% broker fee. Meanwhile, there are just two low-cost transactions for depositing/withdrawing, making it one of the most cost-effective solutions in market. On Orion Terminal, these fees are only for bridging itself - either depositing or withdrawing. Trading popular ERC20 assets will only incur negligible BSC network fees.