Cross-chain interoperability is one of the most intensely pursued developments in blockchain technology and it comes as no surprise that multiple approaches are in the works. The Metronome team recently published an article outlining the differences between some of the more well-known attempts – and how these are different from Metronome’s “chainhop” approach.

Here are the most well-known attempts at interoperability:

• Smartbridge technology – A method for blockchains to share information with one another via an intermediary blockchain. These bridges can also execute payments via smart contracts.
• Wrapped tokens – A way to mint new tokens on one chain to represent blackholed (or locked away) tokens from another chain without ever moving the same token from one chain to the other.
• Atomic swaps – The use of smart contracts to execute cross-cryptocurrency trades at the same time, a sort of escrow smart contract set.
• Chainhop – How Metronome achieves the movement of one asset/coin across two or more blockchains. Metronome will initially use a system of off-chain validators to ensure that cross-chain transactions are valid and do not violate the MET global supply – the Metronome team believes this to be true portability.

To help illustrate, the team also produced a chart comparing these visually.

Read the rest over on the Metronome Medium.

Dariusz Jakubowski, Bloq’s head of community