Avalanche's Growth Inspires Third-Party Cross-Chain Bridges

Avalanche (AVAX), a layer 1 proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain network, has acquired a new cross-chain bridge from Umbria Network to help traders transfer liquidity between the Ethereum mainnet and the Avalanche blockchain.

The Avalanche blockchain supports multiple virtual machines, including WebAssembly (WASM) and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing different subchains to combine specific modes of operation.

Multiple virtual machine support makes it easy to connect to Avalanche. The network launched its official Ethereum bridge in 2021 to allow bidirectional transfers of ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens between the two blockchains. But its growth as a network, and its native token, AVAX, has seen huge gains over the past few months, leading to the creation of third-party cross-chain bridges.

Narni is Umbria Network's new cross-chain bridge that promises to offer 90% lower transaction fees than the official AVAX bridge. The platform claims its bespoke system, using a single asset liquidity pool and a custom oracle protocol, reduces the computational complexity of the bridge, reducing costs by up to 90%.

Speaking to AVAX and the role of the cross-chain bridge, Umbria co-founder and co-lead developer Barney Chambers explained to Cointelegraph that the Avalanche blockchain allows for decentralized applications that would not be economically viable on Ethereum. He added:

“Umbria is the glue between all L1 and L2 blockchains, allowing users to move their assets cheaply and in a timely manner. At Umbria, we envision a future where users don’t even need to know what block they are using chain,"

Cross-chain bridges have become the lifeline of the decentralized finance ecosystem, especially when the gas fee issue on Ethereum has not been resolved and seems to continue until the transition to ETH 2.0. Avalanche, BNB Chain, Solana, and Tezos are popular blockchains that offer cross-chain bridge support.