Bridges are mechanisms that allow the transfer of digital assets or data between different blockchain networks. Blockchain bridges aim to connect disparate blockchain ecosystems that may have different protocols, consensus mechanisms, or underlying technologies.
These bridges play a crucial role in enabling interoperability, which is the ability of different blockchains to communicate and interact with each other. They allow users to transfer assets seamlessly across multiple blockchain networks, expanding the functionality and utility of decentralized applications and tokens.
Bridges where introduced in the XRPL blockchains through the XLS-38d amendment by Mayukha Vadari and Scott Determan. This document explains how this amendment is implemented in EVM compatible blockchains to allow the bridging between XRPL blockchains to EVM compatible sidechains.
Since this is an implementation of the XLS-38d specification, there are a lot of new concepts that are not explained in this document. Thus, we recommend reading the original discussion before continuing
This implementation involves a set of new components which have different responsibilities
Bridge smart contracts
This component is formed by a set of new smart contracts that implement the XLS-38d spec in solidity. This smart contracts implement the XChain transactions for any EVM compatible blockchain. Here is a detailed documentation of this implementation as well as the process for deploying them
This server allows bridge operators to listen for transactions on one or both of the chains and signs attestations used to prove that certain events happened on a chain. The following page contains information on how to setup and run a witness server.
The bridge UI is the component used by the final user to create XChain transactions in XRPL or EVM compatible blockchain. It gives a nice UX for users that want to interact with bridges in a very easy and natural way. The following page contains information on how to configure and run this component.