Wanchain's Bridge to the Ethereum Blockchain Is Now Open

Amber Baldet, former JPMorgan blockchain program lead, has expressed her doubts about the proliferation of blockchain protocols: "Each of these blockchains speaks a different language," she said in April.

On Monday, the Beijing- and Austin-based startup Wanchain announced the live release of its protocol's version 2.0, which allows for decentralized transactions between its blockchain and ethereum using a form of atomic swap.

In January, it executed a token migration from ethereum to its own blockchain.

For now, Wanchain's solution only allows ether to be transferred to wanchain and back, but in time, the statement continued, wanchain will "Allow for seamless integration with almost any blockchain in existence."

Teaching blockchain protocols to speak each others' languages is a daunting technical challenge, Lu contends, because "Different blockchains have different consensus algorithms."

In Wanchain's solution, a group of specialized nodes called "Storemen" use a technique called secure multiparty computation to lock a certain amount of ether on the ethereum blockchain - preventing it from being spent, but without destroying it.

Nuco's aion project started its work with ethereum as well, releasing a "Testnet" version of its ether token bridge in June, plus a handful of other projects and startups have been working on creating links between disparate blockchains - for instance, dogecoin and ethereum.

Wanchain and Aion joined Icon, another project aimed at cross-chain communication, to form the Blockchain Interoperability Alliance in November, in an effort to prevent a confusing array of competing standards.

With the release of wanchain 2.0, it is now possible to conduct an ICO on Wanchain that accepts both its WAN tokens and ether.

Since Wanchain's cross-chain communication is a "Generic solution," he said, it would be able to link to central bank-issued crypto assets the same as any other blockchain.