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fix: infeasible -> impossible
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thisisjoshford committed Feb 13, 2025
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Expand Up @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ Omni Bridge introduces a more elegant solution using Chain Signatures. Instead o

A light client is a smart contract that lets one blockchain verify events happening on another blockchain. In Rainbow Bridge's case, the Ethereum light client needs to track NEAR's blocks, verify its validators' signatures, and confirm transactions. This comes with major technical challenges: it requires storing two weeks of Ethereum block data, maintaining an updated list of NEAR validators and their stakes, and most crucially, verifying NEAR's ED25519 signatures - a process Ethereum wasn't built for. This verification is computationally expensive, making the whole process slow, costly, and ultimately a major bottleneck.

For example, with Rainbow Bridge, transactions from NEAR to Ethereum take between 4 and 8 hours due to the 4-hour challenge period and block submission intervals driven by Ethereum's high gas costs. More importantly, this approach becomes increasingly impractical when connecting to multiple chains, as each chain would require its own light client implementation. Some chains, such as Bitcoin, don't even support smart contracts, making it technically infeasible to implement a NEAR light client.
For example, with Rainbow Bridge, transactions from NEAR to Ethereum take between 4 and 8 hours due to the 4-hour challenge period and block submission intervals driven by Ethereum's high gas costs. More importantly, this approach becomes increasingly impractical when connecting to multiple chains, as each chain would require its own light client implementation. Some chains, such as Bitcoin, don't even support smart contracts, making it technically impossible to implement a NEAR light client.

While we still need to support light clients of different networks on NEAR (which is significantly easier to implement), a different approach is needed for verifying NEAR state on foreign chains.

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