Cardano and Nervos to launch cross-chain bridge

By Michelle Lim
June 2, 2021
2 minute read

Input Output Hong Kong, one of the companies behind the Cardano blockchain, and Chinese public blockchain Nervos announced today that they will be launching a cross-chain bridge to connect the two networks.

Fast Facts:

The bridge will allow users to transact between the Cardano and Nervos blockchains using ADA and CKB — the respective native cryptocurrencies of the Cardano and Nervos blockchains — and create their own tokens.

The bridge, when completed, will be Cardano’s first cross-chain bridge and Nervos’s second after Ethereum. It “will mark an important milestone for Nervos as it builds solutions to support multichain applications by connecting with other chains, including Cardano, who shares Nervos’s vision for a truly interoperable blockchain ecosystem and provides a faster, cheaper chain alternative as Ethereum gas fees continue to be a problem for users,” according to a statement shared with Forkast.News.

Although most stablecoins and decentralized finance protocols operate on the Ethereum blockchain, alternative blockchains such as Cardano, Cosmos and Polkadot have emerged to challenge Ethereum’s dominance, especially given its high transaction fees, or gas fees. Cardano is in the midst of a transition to enable smart contract functionality on its blockchain.

As DeFi becomes increasingly multi-chain, interoperability between chains continues to grow. “We believe that blockchain technology will only achieve mainstream acceptance when end-users are not locked into one blockchain or standard, but can seamlessly access value and utility, regardless of which blockchain they are using,” said Romain Pellerin, IOHK’s chief technology officer. “As a result, bridges like this are an absolute necessity in order to ensure that users have a seamless experience.”

Cardano is currently the world’s fourth-largest cryptocurrency, with a market value of over US$56 billion, while Nervos is ranked 145, according to CoinGecko. Nervos is one of the public and permissionless blockchains integrated into the global service offered by China’s state-backed Blockchain Service Network.

Michelle Lim

Michelle is a Producer at Forkast. Prior to joining the team, she wrote for CNN and served with the Singapore Foreign Service. She holds a Master of Journalism from the University of Hong Kong and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the National University of Singapore.