Project Description:
Hashi is an Oracle Aggregator created to tackle the heterogeneous nature of bridge solutions and standardize cross-chain communication. It currently supports 17+ adapters, including all major GMP protocols such as Wormhole, LayerZero, Axelar, CCIP and 3 ZK light clients (Telepathy, DendrETH and Spectre).
Its design focuses on 'additive security’ - enhancing cross-chain security by aggregating multiple security mechanisms, as opposed to trusting a single one.
Put simply, Hashi acts as a multi-sig of bridges.
Let’s imagine a user wants to send a message from chain A to chain B. To achieve this, Hashi has adapters for several oracles (including bridges, zk light clients, networks of validators…):
- The user initiates the transaction
- Hashi checks that the request exists in Chain A through the selected oracles
- In Chain B, Hashi waits for the selected oracles to reach the consensus
- When a majority of oracles validate the message, the message is approved
- Hashi activates the target contract (which for example could be a cross-chain token transfer)
The only way for such a system to fail would be attacking simultaneously all the selected cross-chain rails in a coordinated way!
To extend its capabilities, we launched Hashi Everywhere, an initiative that enables the relaying of block headers across any chain. Hashi Everywhere allows for the use of storage proofs and access to the cross-chain state of contracts
Hashi’s vision for the multi-chain world is to eliminate bridge hacks, just as multi-sig smart accounts enhance security for user funds compared to EOA wallets.
To achieve this, we need a paradigm shift in how we approach cross-chain state validation.
Apart from pushing cross-chain messages via multiple sources, Hashi’s block header relay feature can become a game changer for cross-chain applications.
Using multiple adapters (ZK light clients and GMP bridges), Hashi periodically relays block headers from any chain to any other, allowing application developers to ‘cross-check’ the state of a remote chain. The state (finalized block header) of a remote chain is the ultimate source of truth for the network.
Our ultimate goal is to provide developers with credibly neutral access to cross-chain state and facilitate users adopting additive cross-chain security while maintaining Hashi as a public good.
Recently, Hashi has successfully undergone three comprehensive security audits, ensuring the security and integrity of Hashi’s infrastructure.
Public Repository:
Budget Breakdown
Milestone 1: $60,000 - Deployment on Multiple Chains (Target: Q4 2024)
-
Expected Outcome:
The deployment of Hashi across seven Layer 1 and Layer 2 chains will expand its reach and utility across various blockchain ecosystems. This milestone includes the initiation of block header relays between blockchains, utilizing multiple zk light clients and General Message Passing bridges simultaneously.
The chains targeted for this deployment include Ethereum, Gnosis Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, BNB Smart Chain, and Base. -
Cost Breakdown:
-
Gas Costs:
The following examples provide an idea of the gas costs.
The average gas cost per route (Chain A → Chain B) per month, using a single oracle, is approximately 0.0638 ETH.
For ten routes using two oracles, the gas cost per month is estimated at 1.2768 ETH. With the Ether price as of August 21st at $2601, this equates to approximately $3320.89 per month for the ten routes.
Over three months, a setup with two oracles covering ten routes, in gas costs alone would amount to approximately $9,962.67, with fluctuations in ETH price and gas market conditions potentially affecting these costs. -
Deployment and Configuration:
This includes the work of a DevOps engineer responsible for deploying and configuring the contracts and off-chain components required for message relaying across the supported chains. -
Hashi Explorer Integration:
As part of the deployment, messages relayed across chains will be integrated into the Hashi Explorer, providing developers with easy access to real-time message status. This step enhances the usability of Hashi for developers and improves transparency within the ecosystem.
- Operations and Management:
Ongoing operations costs include the management of off-chain infrastructure, ensuring that the relaying of messages and block headers remains secure, reliable, and consistent across all supported chains.
Given these costs and operational requirements, we have estimated a $60,000 budget allocation for this milestone, ensuring that Hashi is effectively deployed and maintained across multiple chains.
-
Milestone 2: $40,000 - Gas Cost Optimization (Target: Q1 2025)
-
Expected Outcome:
This milestone focuses on optimizing gas costs by off-loading certain operations from the mainnet to verifiable off-chain computing solutions such as zkVMs and teeVMs. These optimizations will help reduce the operational costs associated with cross-chain transactions, making Hashi more accessible and cost-effective for users while maintaining the highest levels of security.R&D Focus:
This optimization task will require R&D work, involving two FTEs. They will focus on designing, testing, and implementing these off-chain computing solutions to ensure that they effectively reduce gas costs without compromising security.
The $40,000 budget is allocated to operational costs and funding associated with this R&D effort. The outcome of this milestone is expected to significantly enhance the efficiency and scalability of Hashi, positioning it as a more sustainable solution for cross-chain transactions in the long term.
Funding Requested: $100,000
Plans should you fall below, reach, or exceed funding goals:
-
Below Funding Goals: If the funding falls below the target, priority will be given to relaying block headers from chain to chain.
-
Meet Funding Goals: All planned milestones will proceed as outlined, ensuring the broad deployment, and cost optimizations of Hashi.
-
Exceed Funding Goals: Should the funding exceed the target, additional resources will be allocated towards expanding the scope of deployment to include more chains, improving the developer tools and community engagement, and increasing the frequency of block header relays. This would further improve the robustness and adoption of Hashi across the cross-chain ecosystem.
Impact Measurement and Reporting
Inputs > Activities > Outputs > Outcomes > Long Term Impact
Short-term Outcomes (0-3 months):
Completion of Initial Milestones:
- Initial deployment across multiple Layer 1 and Layer 2 chains to begin, with block header relays initiated.
Mid-term Outcomes (3-6+ months):
Increased Adoption and Engagement:
- Hashi will be operational across seven Layer 1 and Layer 2 chains, providing secure cross-chain communication.
- We anticipate a growing number of developers and projects integrating Hashi into their cross-chain protocols, driven by the additive security and flexibility offered.
- The implementation of gas cost optimization will further reduce the barriers to adoption, making Hashi more cost-effective and accessible, leading to higher user engagement and increased adoption rates.
Long-term Impact (5+ years):
Establishment as a Cross-Chain Security Standard:
- We aim to make Hashi a widely recognized standard for secure cross-chain communication, with broad adoption across multiple blockchain ecosystems.
- Over the next five years, we expect Hashi to be integral to the security infrastructure of many leading blockchains, ensuring a more secure, future-proof and vendor-lock-in-free ecosystem.
- The long-term impact includes setting a new benchmark for cross-chain security, reducing the frequency and severity of cross-chain exploits, and fostering trust and reliability in multi-chain environments.
Outcomes Measurement:
-
Quantitative Metrics:
-
Number of Chains Integrated: Tracking the number of chains where Hashi is deployed.
-
Cross-Chain Messages Relayed: Measuring the volume of cross-chain messages / block-header relays handled by Hashi, indicating its usage and reliability.
-
User Engagement: Monitoring the number of developers and projects actively using Hashi.
-
-
Qualitative Metrics:
-
User Feedback: Collect feedback from developers to assess satisfaction with Hashi’s integration and functionality.
-
Community Growth: Evaluate the growth of the Hashi community, including participation in discussions, and contributions to the project’s development.
-
-
Tools for Measurement:
Hashi Explorer: We developed and launched the initial version of the Hashi Explorer, a tool designed to oversee and monitor the validation progress of cross-chain transactions. In time, the explorer will be used also to monitor the relay of block headers across chains, user interactions, and transaction volumes.
This approach will allow us to track and report both the immediate and long-term impacts of Hashi, providing clear evidence of the project’s success and possible areas for future improvement.
Interim Reporting
Regular Updates:
We will provide updates on our progress on a quarterly basis.
Milestone Verification:
Each milestone will be verified through progress reports. These reports will document the specific deliverables associated with each milestone, providing clear evidence of their completion, the status of ongoing activities, key achievements, challenges encountered, and steps taken to address them.
For example, the deployment of Hashi on specific chains will be supported by technical documentation and records of successful relays, ensuring transparency and accountability throughout the project.
Sustainability Plan
Hashi is designed as a public good, with the core mission to enable cross-chain additive security. To maintain its accessibility and benefit to the broader community, we have chosen to operate Hashi through grant funding, ensuring that it remains free to use for developers.
Grants-Focused Approach
As of today, Hashi does not generate revenue through product sales, subscriptions, or fees. Instead, our financial sustainability relies on securing grants from key players in the cross-chain space. This strategy allows us to continue developing and enhancing Hashi without imposing costs on the community, ensuring that it remains a public good accessible to all.
We will continue to pursue grant opportunities from organizations and initiatives that align with our vision of secure and decentralized cross-chain communication. These grants will be crucial in funding ongoing development, maintenance, and expansion efforts, allowing us to scale Hashi and integrate it across more chains.
Strategic Partnerships
We have established significant collaborations with major industry players.
Hashi is being integrated for its credibly neutral, secure interoperability across chains, within solutions such as Safe and KeySpace by Coinbase Wallet.
Case Studies and Testimonials
Gathering Feedback:
We will collect feedback by creating dedicated Telegram groups, allowing us to engage directly with developers and users who are actively integrating or using Hashi. This approach has proven effective in the past, enabling us to gather real-time insights, address any concerns, and understand the needs of our community.
Showcasing Success:
The feedback and testimonials collected will be compiled and presented through our quarterly reports.
Advancing Values of Freedom and Privacy
Hashi advances the value of freedom by empowering users and developers to conduct cross-chain operations securely and flexibly.
By allowing the easy configuration of setups with multiple cross-chain solutions, Hashi gives developers the freedom to choose the security mechanisms that best suit their needs. Additionally, Hashi enables seamless switching between different cross-chain solutions, ensuring that developers are not locked into any single provider and can adapt their security setup as needed.
While Hashi is not specifically a privacy-oriented solution, its focus on enhancing security and flexibility supports the broader value of freedom in the cross-chain ecosystem. Users can operate with greater confidence, knowing that their cross-chain transactions are protected by a robust, configurable framework that adapts to evolving security needs.
Supporting Decentralization
Hashi inherently supports decentralization by actively promoting the use of multiple cross-chain solutions and security systems, as opposed to trusting a single entity.
Instead of relying on a single provider, Hashi’s framework allows users to use simultaneously various cross-chain protocols, reducing the risks associated with vendor lock-in, potential vulnerabilities, and the inability to adapt to changing security needs.
This approach prevents single points of control or failure from compromising the integrity of cross-chain operations.
Team Information
Our team comprises six people, including two tech leads, one senior engineer, one full-stack engineer, one devops engineer and one project manager and has a proven track record in developing cross-chain solutions.
It is led by Georgios Gontikas and Thomas Bertani.
Georgios has been active in the industry since 2017. He led Hashi from its inception and worked on the zk Bridge for Gnosis Chain. He was previously Product Lead at Chainsafe, where he worked on the inception and launch of Sygma interoperability protocol.
Thomas entered the blockchain space in 2012 and has pioneered oracles, bridges and coprocessors since 2014, founding Oraclize/Provable and pNetwork.
Alessandro is our senior engineer. He has been working in the industry since 2016 and together with Thomas since 2017 in Oraclize/Provable, Eidoo, and pNetwork, gaining wide cross-chain experience, also covering the role of CTO for the Eidoo wallet.
Ludovico is our project manager. Previously, he has been an innovation manager helping web2 firms adopt blockchain. He has worked in pNetwork with Thomas, Alessandro and Marco in 2023.
Marco is our devops engineer. He has joined Thomas in 2017 as sysadmin and gradually worked more and more in devops roles on different projects, including Oraclize/Provable, Eidoo and pNetwork.
Zeng is our full stack engineer. He has been collaborating with Georgios since 2023, and is specialized in cross-chain development. He has been contributing in the development of the Gnosis Bridges, Gnosis zkBridge integration and Hashi.
Our team has a proven track record of executing on grants. For example, Hashi has been awarded a grant to secure Gnosis Chain canonical bridges, which oversee over $800M in TVL. This grant is currently in progress, and the team is delivering on time, as can be verified here.
Social Proof
In time, Hashi has gained a significant reputation in the cross-chain space.
A few weeks after its inception, in 2023, Hashi was recognized by the Uniswap Independent Committee for having the best approach to cross-chain security with its Multi-Message Aggregation approach.
In 2024, Hashi was selected to secure Gnosis Chain’s canonical bridges (with their $800+ M in TVL), as well as Lukso Chain’s canonical bridges.
Moreover, we have implemented integrations and established new partnerships with several cross-chain projects, including LayerZero, Hyperlane, Succinct Labs, Axiom, Router Protocol and others.
More recently, as mentioned above, both Safe and Coinbase are assessing the implementation of Hashi in some of their cross-chain solutions.
Transparency
Our budget is carefully allocated to ensure that all funds are used efficiently to support the continued development and operation of Hashi.
-
Team Funding for 3 Months: A significant portion of the budget will be dedicated to supporting our team over the next three months. This includes covering salaries and operational expenses to maintain our development pace and ensure we can meet our roadmap milestones. Specifically, these funds will be used to support the reliable relaying of block headers across multiple chains and to improve the Hashi Explorer.
-
Project Operations: Another key area of our budget will be allocated to covering the operational costs of running the project. This includes expenses for hosting the off-chain relayer infrastructure, which is essential for the continuous and secure relay of block headers between different chains.
-
Gas Costs: We will also allocate a portion of the budget to cover the gas costs associated with relaying messages and block headers across seven different chains.
The gas costs vary depending on the number of oracles used in the setup, and are subject to change based on Ether prices and gas market conditions.
Should we receive funding from Octant, it will primarily go towards these outlined areas to ensure the project’s sustainability and success. We are committed to using the funds transparently and efficiently to achieve our goals.
Other funding
Hashi is and will remain a Public Good that operates on grants.
Grants are needed and used exclusively to support the development of Hashi, benefitting the broader cross-chain community.
As of today, the grants awarded to Hashi amount to a total of $200,000.