The dawn of a multichain future is upon us. The crypto ecosystem has evolved rapidly from just Bitcoin, to many other blockchains each with their own ecosystem and supporters. However, every blockchain is different, and to interact with one another, the proper infrastructure is needed. Most people think of cross-chain interactions as just transferring tokens from one chain to another, but there is much more that can be done than just bridging assets.
An example of this being put to use would be cross-chain governance for protocols and DAOs. With the onset of the multichain ecosystem, many projects have found themselves having to issue their governance token on multiple chains. While this is good as it expands the number of holders, it becomes an issue when undertaking a governance vote. Governance becomes tedious, with the protocol having to decide which chain it should be held on, and whether a separate proposal is deployed on each chain. However, cross-chain protocols will allow for unified governance, as every holder from each chain will be able to cast their vote without having to bridge over their tokens.
In this article, we examine LayerZero, which is a more generalized cross-chain protocol, and the new DeFi dApps (i.e. Stargate, SushiXSwap and Radiant Capital) built on top of this infrastructure.
