Cross-Chain Interoperability Is Already Here – Just Ask Orbs

Cross-chain interoperability isn’t the most exciting web3 concept, but it’s undoubtedly one of the most valuable. If it’s a domain you work or trade in, you wouldn’t brag about it on your dating profile, but you’d certainly be name-dropping it at your next crypto conference. Because wherever you operate in web3, you should care about interoperability. It’s the difference between liquidity and no liquidity. Between ecosystem and ghost chain.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the very future of web3 is dependent upon cross-chain interoperability challenges being not just solved but widely implemented. Otherwise, blockchains are destined to continue spinning away from each other like asteroids lost in space. Thankfully, we don’t need to pray for an interoperability breakthrough to solve all our cross-chain woes because it’s already here. It’s just, as the saying goes, not evenly distributed.

In other words, the tech is already in place to allow assets, data, messages and anything else that can be transmitted onchain to be sent between every chain, rapidly, efficiently, and regardless of programming language or VM. All that’s preventing this infra from becoming routinely deployed is the inevitable latency between a tech being perfected and being universally integrated.

As a closer analysis of just one of the manifold protocols chipping away at interoperability – Orbs – shows, the omnichain singularity is fast approaching. And it promises to be streets ahead of the patchwork efforts that have carried the industry this far.

Making Blockchains Great Again

While the full history of blockchain interoperability is a tale for another time, or perhaps never, it can be summarized as follows: while progress has been made in connecting the multi-chain landscape in recent years, it’s been piecemeal. For example, Cosmos’ IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) and Polkadot’s parachains are great for allowing networks within these respective ecosystems to communicate but they do nothing for the broader onchain landscape.

If you’ve got USDC on Solana and are trying to execute a swap on Arbitrum, 100 parachains ain’t gonna help you. And no amount of IBC is going to deliver liquidity to the EVM L2 you’re exploring. Interoperability developers need to think bigger with the ultimate goal of connecting it all: all the data, all the assets, anywhere, all at once.

It’s a lot to ask for, but it’s the only way to make DeFi live up to its promise of being fast, liquid, accessible, and capable of holding its own against CeFi and TradFi alternatives. The solution to this grand challenge, as web3 engineers such as Orbs have found, is through the creation of dedicated Layer 3 architecture. One layer to link it all. Which is exactly what Orbs’ L3 stack does.

Acting as a decentralized execution layer, Orbs enhances interactions between chains such as Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Polygon. This allows DeFi protocols to optimize for liquidity aggregation, yield strategies, and multi-chain governance without relying on centralized bridges, which have been frequent targets of exploits, losing over $2.5B alone in the last three years. Even the very word “bridge” is prone to inducing a shudder in seasoned DeFi users, many of whom have first-hand experience of being rekt while trying to funnel funds between chains.

What Orbs Does Differently

As a decentralized execution layer, Orbs has been optimized for a combination of security and cross-chain functionality. Instead of merely enabling communication between chains, it enhances how transactions are executed, making DeFi protocols more efficient and interconnected. Its execution layer, which allows smart contracts to automate operations without reliance on centralized intermediaries, is particularly useful for DeFi applications that require liquidity aggregation from multiple chains.

This makes it possible to implement things such as automated yield strategies that rebalance positions across different DeFi protocols. Orbs also enables use cases such as cross-chain governance, where DAOs can conduct decentralized decision-making across multiple blockchains. In automating these tasks on a trustless and decentralized network, Orbs removes the need for centralized relayers or custodial services, significantly reducing attack vectors.

At the moment, many DeFi projects are still limiting themselves to a single chain out of fear of venturing into pastures unknown and getting something wrong. Which is a perfectly reasonable position to take, given the millions of dollars in user funds that could be lost should they screw up. What plug-and-play solutions such as Orbs do is allow these projects to explore new terrain in the knowledge that they can rely on battle-tested infra that’s already proven itself in the wild, across dozens of chains, protocols, and DEXes.

There’s More Than One Way to Cross a River

If we imagine blockchains as expanses of land separated by water, and bridges as the rickety infrastructure connecting them, it’s easy to see where the danger lies. They’re a chokepoint for the billions of dollars that need to flow between chains and a natural attack point, as any military strategist will tell you. But there’s more than one way to cross a river, and in this analogy L3s can be regarded as tunnels. They’re less susceptible to airborne attacks, more direct, and much safer to use.

Orbs mitigates the risk presented by bridges by removing the need for direct asset transfers via traditional bridges. Instead, its decentralized execution model enables protocols to coordinate multi-chain activities without exposing assets to unnecessary security risks. For example, instead of relying on a bridge to swap assets between Ethereum and BNB Chain, a DeFi protocol using Orbs can coordinate liquidity pools across both networks, allowing users to interact with assets on different chains without requiring direct transfers.

DeFi Without Limits

When you boil it down, the value proposition of Orbs’ cross-chain infrastructure is this: it enables DeFi protocols to become chain-agnostic. Instead of deploying separate versions of smart contracts on every chain or engaging in complicated bridging processes, developers can build once and tap into Orbs’ decentralized execution layer to coordinate operations across multiple networks.

And we’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of the use cases this permits. We’re talking about moving capital between chains with minimal overhead; capturing arbitrage opportunities in real time across different ecosystems; benefiting from advanced DeFi features like auto-compounding and multi-chain governance; and exploring opportunities on new chains without needing to worry about whether there’ll be enough liquidity to exit into stables should the market suddenly become jittery.

Instead of merely bundling or compressing data for cheaper onchain fees (as many Layer 2s do), Orbs offers an execution environment that can run decentralized applications and automation across multiple chains. With more than a dozen networks, from Avalanche to Solana, already using Orbs tech, the interoperability solution web3 has been waiting for is finally here and proving itself onchain. With any luck, 2025 will be the year when L3 solutions see universal integration, inching us closer to the endgame of a landscape in which all chains work as one.