During the Decentralized Lugano blockchain event in April, Ethereum co-founder and author of the Polkadot whitepaper, Gavin Wood, announced XCM.
In honour of this great news for the Polkadot ecosystem, Cryptosmart interviewed Gavin Wood. During the interview, Wood announced that XCM will be launched in the coming days.
XCM, Polkadot’s new feature unveiled at Decentralized Lugano
XCM (cross-consensus messaging) is Polkadot’s feature that defines the language in which messages must be exchanged between different blockchains that want to interact with each other.
The aim of Polkadot is to allow different blockchains to interact directly with each other, without having to go through the usual bridges. XCM is the functionality that will allow this to happen.
Unfortunately, the bridges currently used often involve certain risks, particularly in terms of solidity and reliability, and some of them have recently been exploited by hackers. Moreover, in the event of a problem on one of the two bridge chains, there is a risk that the problem will spread to the others.
In contrast, Polkadot’s parachains can interact with each other securely thanks to XCM and XCMP.
Parachains are blockchains that operate only within a certain domain, specializing in doing a specific thing well. Polkadot technology provides security to parachains that inherit the security layer of Polkadot’s consensus protocol.
XCM will be launched soon and will allow parachains to communicate directly with each other for the first time.
The importance of Lugano in the blockchain world
At the same time, Lugano is increasingly turning out to be the European capital of blockchain, so it is probably no coincidence that the Decentralized Lugano event was chosen for this momentous announcement.
The event was organized by the Lugano office of Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL), and the guest of honour was Gavin Wood.
The event was also attended by the mayor of Lugano, Michele Foletti, who revealed that the idea of making Lugano the European capital of blockchain was born at the beginning of the pandemic.
Already in March last year, a letter of intent was presented between the city of Lugano and Tether to develop the Plan B project. The goal is to enable payments in BTC, USDT and LVGA as early as October of this year, coinciding with the Bitcoin conference in Lugano.
The city is also organizing a blockchain campus for this summer, all expenses paid, with free accommodation and meals to provide specialized training for students.
Lars Schlichting explained that Switzerland is a very attractive country for blockchain and crypto companies because it has embraced these technologies early on, accepting the implementation of regulations to ensure security and legal certainty.
Schlichting said:
“Companies that come to Switzerland know very well what can be done and what cannot be done legally, they know that they will not be tracked for committing unauthorized activities . There’s an open environment from a political point of view (Plan B), we’ve even had federal councillors who have encouraged the crypto movement.”
He also advised crypto companies that want to operate in Switzerland to talk to an advisor to understand the necessary approvals and available space, as the crypto sector is constantly evolving and represents the future of financial infrastructure.
He finally added:
“All the initiatives that the city of Lugano is putting in place, Plan B in particular, suggest that the goal of making it the European Blockchain capital could come to fruition in the near future.”
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2022/05/05/polkadot-xcm-finally-announced/