Interoperability in the blockchain – what is it and how does it work?

We’ve all equated decentralization with blockchain by now, which makes perfect sense as one of the main characteristics of blockchain technology is its decentralized nature.

But with decentralization comes a lot of uncertainty. How can different blockchains connect? Can we find something universal about them? It is clear that there are many dilemmas here, which is why blockchain interoperability has become a hot topic in recent years.

This phenomenon is bound to have a profound impact on the cryptosphere and beyond, and will undoubtedly lead to more innovation and growth. But what is it? How does it work? More importantly, what does it mean to you? Let’s find out!

Blockchain interoperability explained

Blockchain interoperability is a very complex technology from a scientific point of view. What it does, however, is simple – it allows different blockchains that operate independently to connect and communicate.

Thanks to interoperability, blockchains can share data, information and more. In other words, ordinary users can use different blockchains without worrying about compatibility issues.

For a better understanding, it is best to consider emails. When you send an email to someone, you don’t have to worry about choosing the same provider that the other person is using. They can have AOL, Outlook, Yahoo or any other service while using Gmail or Zoho Mail. It doesn’t matter, as the email will reach the other address regardless of provider. This interoperability of email technology is what made it so successful and widely adopted in the first place.

With blockchains, this is not true. Some blockchains are interoperable, and we have several pioneering this technology, such as Polkadot, Cosmos, Cardano and others. But most aren’t, so you might not be able to use them all the time.

With blockchain interoperability, each blockchain will be able to interact and send data and messages to another.

The importance of interoperability for Web3

As we all know, Web3 is coming. We may not be able to predict what it will look like, but various blockchains will certainly play a key role.

Also, decentralized economy will be one of the biggest parts of Web3 and it is one of the main reasons why we need to introduce true blockchain interoperability to make this a reality. People will want to manage their finances and make payments over the web and different blockchains without having to use different tokens and coins each time.

Furthermore, different blockchains have different functions, and a normal user will have to deal with many of them on a daily basis. This must be possible without worrying about interoperability. Essentially, without interoperability, it would be as if we could not use different websites and platforms on the web as easily and simultaneously as we do today.

So if we want to have Web3, we need a way to implement the latest solutions on the new internet just like we do today. In other words, we need blockchain interoperability.

Examples of Blockchain Interoperability Solutions

At the moment we have many projects trying to solve interoperability, each in its own way. Polkadot and Cardano are one of the most prominent blockchains on the web dealing with it.

Polkadot uses something called parachains. These act as individual Layer-1 blockchains and can operate simultaneously on the Polkadot network. Each chain depends on the security of the main chain, but still retains its individuality.

On the other hand, Cardano focused on smart contracts from the start, which effectively led to interoperability.

Cardano and Polkadot are not the only projects trying to solve interoperability between blockchains. We also have many other smaller measures that have gone further.

A good example is t3rn, a smart contract host platform that offers interoperable smart contract implementations with an additional fail-safe mechanism that ensures transaction reversibility, another thing currently not possible with most blockchains.

t3rn offers unified standards for the integration of transaction-based and smart contract-driven blockchains through unique gateways. In other words, multi-chain execution and interoperability is ensured.

The bottom line

Blockchain interoperability is a complex topic and it will certainly not be easy to implement one solution that will handle interoperability for the entire internet. However, it is necessary and inevitable for Web3. It will be interesting to see how it is handled in the future, but we hope that you are now aware of how important it is to tomorrow’s web.