Chain Fusion Day at EthCC[7], Brussels

Some key highlights from the ICP-powered Chain Fusion Day

EthCC, one of the most significant crypto yearly conferences in the Ethereum ecosystem was held in Brussels in July 2024. Internet Computer Protocol hosted an event, Chain Fusion Day during this week that brought together key innovators, founders, and thought leaders to discuss how Chain Fusion tech fosters a more unified Web3.

Chain Fusion is the answer to the fragmented modular landscape of Web3. By offering a single environment to build dapps, the technology fuses the unique capabilities of different chains.

Here are some highlights from Chain Fusion Day held in Brussels on July 10, 2024

The Power of Chain Fusion

Jan Camenisch, CTO of DFINITY Foundation, presented a talk on ‘The Power of Chain Fusion,’ which covered the inception and evolution of Chain Fusion technology at ICP. From diving into the technical foundations of Chain Fusion to how developers can leverage the technology to build multichain applications — here are a few key insights from this talk:

The idea of Chain Fusion is let’s develop and build with all of those chains: Chain Fusion offers a unified platform where developers can build across multiple blockchain networks, leveraging the strengths of each.
Wouldn’t it be great if ICP smart contracts could also hold Bitcoin? ICP smart contracts can hold and transact Bitcoin, opening horizons for Bitcoin DeFi.
On ICP, we care a lot about usability, so that code pays for the gas: ICP prioritizes user experience by integrating a reverse gas model where developers pay for the gas fees.
ICP smart contracts can have public keys for different chains which they can use and transact with these chains: One of ICP’s unique features is allowing smart contracts to possess public keys from different blockchains, enabling transactions across these networks.
For Bitcoin, ICP nodes also have light clients of the Bitcoin network: For Bitcoin integration, ICP nodes operate as light clients of the Bitcoin network, ensuring trustless and decentralized interactions.
Decentralized RPC integration with other networks, call many RPC providers, get the results there, and compare them: Decentralized RPC integration with other networks is achieved by making multiple RPC calls, and comparing results to ensure reliability and security.
Chain Fusion combines technical foundations with ecosystem applications to enhance multichain interoperability.

An integral aspect of the technical foundation of Chain Fusion is chain-key signatures. Jan explains,

“So chain-key signatures allow ICP smart contracts to own a public key, to control a public key, and that public key can be an Ethereum public key, it can be a Bitcoin public key, it can be a Solana public key. So with that, they can actually natively own tokens on other chains. So now we can build smart contracts that can transact Bitcoin automatically, or you can sell Bitcoin and buy Ethereum. You can sort of work balances across these chains, like tons of applications. And so they can sign transactions, submit them to other chains, via HTTP outcalls. And the way this works is with threshold signing. So the nodes of an ICP subnet collaborate together to produce a signature with respect to that public key. So it’s like network custody if you want.”

Making Chain Fusion a reality

The panel on Chain Fusion: Unifying web3 experiences explored how different projects utilize the ICP tech stack to build unique dapps across sectors. The panel emphasized how historically there has always been a lack of interoperability among blockchain networks.

Louis Lou, Founder of Omnity Network, highlighted how most developers did not prioritize interoperability five years ago and how the entire scenario has since changed. Today, multichain is no longer an option, but an inevitable component.

The panel also agreed on how ICP plays a pivotal role with its Chain Fusion technology by enabling different blockchains to be able to communicate, ultimately enhancing the experience for both the developer and the user.

Wasim Fukase, the Co-Founder of Chainsight, stated:

“When it comes to utilizing Chain Fusion, we use IC technology in terms of integrating with EVMS, non-EVMS, and Bitcoin, and that’s where we actually get a lot of daps using us right now. Therefore, at Chain Sight, what we’re trying to kind of solve is that it doesn’t really matter which chains you’re using. With IC, using threshold signatures as well as ECDSA, we’re able to kind of move anywhere we want to.”

Noting how the Bitfinity Network integrates with Chain Fusion, Alessandro Rietmann, the Co-Founder of Bitfinity Network, stated,

“With Chain Fusion, we can offer compatibility between the Internet Computer and the Ethereum ecosystem, allowing developers to use Ethereum’s tooling and deploy on a synchronous environment built on an asynchronous chain.”

Significance of AI in a multichain world

The panel on Decentralized AI in a multichain environment brought together experts from NapthaAI, DecideAI, and Outlier Ventures for discussion around the pitfalls of centralized AI, an AI DAO, the need for a better UI/UX for DePin services, and the role of decentralized AI.

One of the discussions in this panel centered around the significance of multichain for AI development.

Richard Blythman, Founder of NapthaAI, emphasized,

“If you look at financial markets, I think it’s closer to 70 or 80% of the participants are bots. And, you know, we think that it’s gonna be 99%, 99.9% of web3 is bots.”

He highlighted that this shift towards an AI-driven economy requires an infrastructure that can handle vast amounts of data and interactions. ICP is driving this through its Chain Fusion technology which would enable AI applications to operate across various blockchain networks.

Raheel Govindji, CEO of DecideAI, discussed leveraging ICP for decentralized AI by stating

“I think probably startups and enterprises might just start using decentralized AI for training pieces so that they don’t have to put their data on AWS or in open AI servers”.

Chain Fusion in Action: Helix Networks and Omnity

In this segment, Louis Liu, the founder of Omnity Network, shared insights on how Omnity is harnessing the Chain Fusion tech. Louis introduced Omnity’s work as the “living proof of Chain Fusion technology.” He emphasized,

“Omnity works as a Bitcoin token hub. It can bring Bitcoin assets, BTC itself, potentially others to all the other blockchain environments where they are highly effective, highly programmable blockchain so they can deal with Bitcoin assets in a very creative way.”

A critical aspect of Omnity’s cross-chain functionality is Remote Procedure Call (RPC) integration. Louis explained,

“For each blockchain, we have a canister to do the adaptation. Essentially, it’s RPC migration based on HTTP outcomes and adapts to their transaction, construction, and signature scheme. This allows Omnity to interact with multiple blockchains such that “it speaks the language interpreted by the specific blockchain network.”

Gozard Ocvirk, Co-Founder of Helix Markets, dived into the key challenges faced by decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and how Helix Markets is leveraging Chain Fusion and ICP technology to overcome these obstacles. Gozard explains,

“Helix Markets was basically trying to solve the problem with the fragmentation of liquidity across different chains. We saw that a lot of blockchain protocols and crypto are like Legos. The unfortunate thing is that none of them fit together. So it’s like playing Lego, but you can’t build a house,”.

On explaining how Helix Markets leverages Chain Fusion tech and specifically how the integration of threshold signatures facilitates multichain, Gozard says,

“All these chains are really bad at talking to each other. But the one thing that they do have in common is cryptography. So that means most of the blockchains out there today use either ECDSA or Schnorr signatures”.

By leveraging these common cryptographic standards, Helix Markets can sign transactions via the protocol allowing for native chain integrations without the need for bridges.

Overall the Chain Fusion day brought an opportunity for projects to exchange insights, developers to gain ideas, and explore the potential of the future of a multichain universe. More importantly, it dawned realization that with Chain Fusion technology, we are on the right path to building the best version of the decentralized internet computer for everyone. Watch the entire playlist of all the panels and showcases for more.

As we continue to build a more integrated, multichain world, we are excited to build a more unified Web3 together.