Modular March EP 11: Permissionless Interoperability for the Modular Future

The checkered cross-chain past is something you just had to live through to understand. We tend to think the best have survived and the unfortunate events of 2021-2022 have led to a completely different way of thinking about interoperability security for the modular expansion. In today’s piece Rob & Andy sat down with Jon Kol, CEO of Hyperlane, to understand their design choices around permissionless. At its core, Hyperlane aims to establish an open framework that enables any blockchain to seamlessly connect with others, creating a interoperable ecosystem without long BD queues and permissioned deployments. But, what does this really mean for security and liveness? Rob and Andy asked Jon about their design choices, security modules, mailboxes, and tried to approach this from a realm of “what could go wrong?” and “how well is this system designed?”. Hyperlane has been a leading part of the Modular Expansion (notably, the team coined the term we believe). We expect them to continue this trajectory as they expand into new verticals like yield routes and other innovative interoperability concepts. We really think the permissionless nature of adding new chains and giving optionality for interoperability partners is a key aspect of their design focused around security.