Interoperability Mechanisms in Blockchains: A Comparative Analysis of Cross-chain Transaction Costs for ERC-20 Tokens

• Ronan D. Mendonça UFV
• Ítallo W. F. Cardoso UFV
• Rafael Coelho UFJF
• Josué N. Campos UFV
• Glauber D. Gonçalves UFPI
• Alex B. Vieira UFJF
• José A. M. Nacif UFV

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/wblockchain.2024.2332

Abstract

Providing data interoperability between blockchains is a challenge for most applications with this feature as a requirement. The number of existing platforms with different types of protocol implementations makes it difficult to achieve full interoperability. This work presents the importance of interoperability for the blockchain ecosystem and the definitions of the mechanisms used to communicate among them. Therefore, we structured, implemented, and experimented with the Notarial and Hash-Time Lock Contract interoperability mechanisms to obtain and present the costs and complexity of interoperating an ERC-20 token. The results show the complexity of achieving interoperability through the mechanisms listed and demonstrate the fixed costs of the mechanisms.

References

Belchior, R., Vasconcelos, A., Guerreiro, S., and Correia, M. (2021). A survey on blockchain interoperability: Past, present, and future trends. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 54(8):1–41.

Besançon, L., Silva, C. F. D., and Ghodous, P. (2019). Towards blockchain interoperability: Improving video games data exchange. In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC), pages 81–85.

Buterin, V. (2016). Chain interoperability. R3 research paper, 9:1–25.

Esquivel, E. V., Campos, J. N., Mendonça, R. D., Vieira, A. B., and Nacif, J. A. M. (2023). Detecção de vulnerabilidades em contratos inteligentes utilizando arvore sintática abstrata. In Anais do XXIII Simpósio Brasileiro em Segurança da Informação e de Sistemas Computacionais, pages 335–348. SBC.

Gordon, W. J. and Catalini, C. (2018). Blockchain technology for healthcare: Facilitating the transition to patient-driven interoperability. Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, 16:224 – 230.

Hewa, T., Ylianttila, M., and Liyanage, M. (2021). Survey on blockchain based smart contracts: Applications, opportunities and challenges. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 177:102857.

Jin, H., Dai, X., and Xiao, J. (2018). Towards a novel architecture for enabling interoperability amongst multiple blockchains. In 2018 IEEE 38th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), pages 1203–1211. IEEE.

Mendonça, R. D., Campos, J. N., Vieira, L. F., Vieira, M. A., Vieira, A. B., and Nacif, J. A. (2022). Tokens não fungíveis (nfts): Conceitos, aplicações e desafios. SBC.

Nakamoto, S. et al. (2008). Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin.

Ndiaye, M. and Konate, P. K. (2021). Cryptocurrency crime: Behaviors of malicious smart contracts in blockchain. In 2021 International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC), pages 1–8. IEEE.

Ou, W., Huang, S., Zheng, J., Zhang, Q., Zeng, G., and Han, W. (2022). An overview on cross-chain: Mechanism, platforms, challenges and advances. Computer Networks.

Qasse, I. A., Abu Talib, M., and Nasir, Q. (2019). Inter blockchain communication: A survey. In Proceedings Annual International Conference Research Track, pages 1–6.

Rogers, I., Carter, D., Morgan, B., and Edgington, A. (2022). Diminishing dreams: The scoping down of the music nft. M/C Journal, 25(2).

Rouhani, S. and Deters, R. (2017). Performance analysis of ethereum transactions in private blockchain. In 2017 8th IEEE(ICSESS), pages 70–74. IEEE.

Vogelsteller, F. and Buterin, V. (2015). Eip-20: Token standard, ethereum improvement proposals. [link].

Wang, X. and Feng, J. (2018). The research of consortium blockchain dynamic consensus based on data transaction evaluation. In 2018 11th International Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Design (ISCID), volume 2, pages 214–217. IEEE.

Wegner, P. (1996). Interoperability. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 28(1):285–287.