After exploring the options available, we felt the Gravity Bridge was the most suitable and could help us achieve our results in the fastest whilst safest way possible.

One of the key things that attracted us to the Gravity Bridge is the way in which the Ethereum contract has been highly optimised, utilising batches to dramatically reduce the cost of transfers between Cosmos and Ethereum.

We also felt the decentralised running of the network was most in line with our vision at cheqd. As it’s a non-custodial solution, a stake can be slashed for any misbehaviour in accurately bridging assets or secure messages.

In addition, as a native bridge, the value of tokens on the destination chain and the absence of double spending are guaranteed by the same consensus as on the consensus chain. This means all the validators are coming to a consensus that the individual owns the tokens that are registered on both sides (the same amount of tokens has been launched on both sides of the bridge — i.e. on both chains).

Finally, we also saw the bridge as a powerful way to ensure having a token on another chain doesn’t fracture liquidity like wrapped tokens through a custodian would do.

Potential issues identified

One of the issues that was raised with the Gravity Bridge is down to the upgrade process. Given the team’s warranted focus on simplicity, it has led to the Solidity contract (gravity.sol) being non-upgradeable, whereas the other bridges can be upgraded by multi-sig wallets. This means the validators and their delegators are completely in control of the Gravity Bridge, and no one else can change the code.

Although we recognise this concern, we feel that the validators on the Gravity Bridge chain have a legitimate governance process and have acted in line with our principles to date. We also plan to set up a validator node on the Gravity chain and engage more in the governance and running of the bridge itself.

Context

Whilst beginning our investigation into bridges, we came across varying bridging techniques available, mainly in the Cosmos ecosystem, although these remain much the same across protocols.

Although many of the wrapped tokens available require a custodian to manage this minting and burning (aka. centralised or trusted bridges), the more innovative bridges that now exist (aka. noncustodial, decentralised or trustless bridges) do this through automated methods using contracts on either side of the bridge, as we’ll come on to.

As mentioned, our initial priority with a bridge is for ease of accessing stablecoins for settling payments for trusted data that will be facilitated on the cheqd network. With this in mind, our bridging requirements at this stage are less complex than they might be in the future (for example, we aren’t necessarily in need of a fully-fledged solution that allows the bridging of smart contracts across protocols like EVMos will in time enable).

If you’re a project looking at bridging, we’d recommend you check out this great explainer video put together on bridges by Ken Timsit from Cronos (Cronos also plan to use the Gravity Bridge, launching in Q2)

Evmos

Evmos is a Secondary Bridge leveraging a third party — the Connext Peer-to-Peer Bridge. Connext acts as an intermediary to provide liquidity on both sides by locking up purchased tokens and adding these

Essentially when using EVmos you don’t have an Ethereum contract (like Gravity does with Gravity.sol), but it uses the existing contracts of the tokens that exist on the other side. Therefore, given other third parties provide the liquidity, we felt this would be a greater overhead for our team compared to Gravity and more centralised.

That said, we are excited by EVMos and the great team working on this project, who look to have an exciting year ahead with four different DEXs, lending protocol, two perpetual platforms and at least three NFT collections for the NFT marketplaces.

Connext

Connext is a peer-to-peer bridge / cross-chain swap. It uses a similar method to the Hashed Timelock Contract, a transactional agreement used on the Bitcoin network to produce conditional payments wherein the receiver or the beneficiary must acknowledge the receipt of payment before a predetermined time or a preset deadline.

Basically, when you want to transfer tokens, there is one router which will be assigned and takes the responsibility of fronting the liquidity. In exchange, they will wait to get paid after the transaction is completed on Ethereum with the same amount of tokens.

Connext’s network utilises nxtp, a lightweight protocol for generalised cross-chain transfers. Nxtp is made up of a simple contract that uses a locking pattern (mentioned above) to prepare and fulfil transactions, a network of off-chain routers that participate in pricing auctions and pass calldata between chains and a user-side SDK that finds routes and prompts on-chain transactions.

Thorchain

Thorchain is a blockchain protocol built onCosmos that aims to “make all of crypto liquid”. It seeks to do this by enabling the trading of non-native crypto assets, such as trading Bitcoin for Ethereum, but in a completely decentralised way. In essence, it does much of what Coinbase and Binance do — but without a third party ever taking control of the funds.

The Thorchain protocol also powers a decentralised exchange (DEX) by the same name. LikeUniswap orSushiSwap, the Thorchain DEX allows anyone to trade or lend their crypto assets by providing liquidity to an asset pool and, in exchange, earn a return (or “yield”) on those assets. With 1.5 million transactions to date and >80 validators, it is a leading solution, however, for our use case, it just didn’t offer the simplicity and ease of enabling a $CHEQ token on Ethereum.

Since we completed our investigation, Osmosis has also spent some time exploring how they plan to bridge their DEX’s requirements. Axelar, Wormhole and Nomad were also discussed here — all options we came across but did less investigating at the time. You can also find the RFPs for these Bridge proposals links: Axelar, Gravity Bridge, Nomad, Wormhole

A brilliant panel with some of the bridge providers can be found here, and the write-up also available here.The Osmosis Discord has had perhaps the most lively debate since Robo McGobo created a special channel for bridge discussions, and representatives from the various teams have been quite responsive there.

Instructions

The following instructions will be lighter weight as much of the general process of sending CHEQ tokens to Ethereum via Gravity Bridge has been explained separately.

Step 1: Set your Source chain and Destination chain

Go to SpaceStation and select the respective chains. Your Source chain should be Ethereum, and your Destination chain Gravity Bridge.

Step 2: Initiate Transfer

Initiate Transfer by selecting the token you wish to transfer and the amount, hit transfer and confirm.

Step 3: Approve the transfer

A MetaMask pop-up will appear. Check the transaction fees and approve the transfers (again, the high transfer fees are on the Ethereum side, not Cosmos.

Fortunately these fees will reduce based on the volumes of transfers on the Gravity Bridge thanks to the Batching mechanism designed as part of the bridge).

Step 4: Transfer tokens to your final destination chain

Finally, transfer the tokens from the Gravity Bridge chain to your final destination chain (the cheqd network).

If at any point you want to check the transfer, you can enter your Gravity address into MintScan using G-Bridge.

And that’s it, your tokens are now available in your Keplr wallet and can be used once again for all things Cosmos!

As we build payment rails for trusted data (more on that below), we want to offer issuers, verifiers (the receivers of trusted data), and holders a choice on the means of settlement. We expect a preference for stablecoins to eliminate the volatility in either pricing or settling payments for trusted data.

More on this in our tokenomics for payment models.

Whilst the Cosmos ecosystem has these, they aren’t as widely adopted yet as either USDC or USDT, both of which are within the Ethereum ecosystem. Furthermore, as we want to work with fiat on and off-ramps to remove the need for end customers to worry about crypto, there are currently more of these available in the Ethereum ecosystem, although we’re sure the Cosmos ecosystem will catch up with new companies joining the likes of Kado.

A nice byproduct of this is providing easier access to CHEQ, whether you’re building upon the network, seeking to secure the network through staking or liquidity mining.

Ethereum was the first ecosystem we bridged to but it certainly won’t be the last.

Context

This guide will provide the information you’ll need to make a transfer of tokens native to Cosmos, across to Ethereum and ultimately onto a Decentralised Exchange (DEX).

It has been constructed using another Cosmos project (StarGaze) as the token that is being transferred across using the Gravity Bridge.

The process follows 3 distinct parts:

Part 1: Transfer CHEQ tokens to Gravity Bridge

In order to transfer tokens from Cosmos to Ethereum, the Gravity Bridge chain is required to hold the tokens you wish to transfer. Therefore, the first step is to send the tokens from the chain you are transferring from on Cosmos, to the Gravity Bridge, via IBC.

Part 2: Transfer CHEQ tokens from to Ethereum

The Gravity Bridge then will be able to transfer the tokens across the bridge, locking them up on the Cosmos side, and minting them on the Ethereum side

Part 3: Add the wrapped CHEQ token to your MetaMask wallet

Finally, if you'd like to interact with DEX's such as UniSwap you will be required to add the token to your MetaMask using a ‘Contract Address’, and then connect this to your UniSwap account.

The final section of the guide will provide instructions on how to complete this process in reverse (i.e. transferring tokens from Ethereum to Cosmos).

Let’s do it…

Part 1: Transfer CHEQ tokens to Gravity Bridge from cheqd

The following instructions for this part use Spacestation itself for the IBC transfer of CHEQ tokens to the Gravity chain. You can however also do a direct IBC transfer within Keplr itself.

Step 1: Connect Wallets

Go to Spacestation on your browser which you use to access you MetaMask andKeplr wallets.

Connect your Keplr wallet containing the tokens you which to transfer.

This will take you through the login process using the browser extensions for both wallets (don’t worry about which side if on Source and which Destination at this stage).

Step 2: Source Chain

Select the cheqd as the 'Source' chain

Step 3: Destination Chain

Select the destination chain - this MUST be the Gravity Bridge chain.

Step 4: Select Token and Transfer

Select the token you wish to transfer and enter the amount noting you'll need an additional amount to pay for gas fees.

A pop-up will appear which you'll need to approve for the transaction to go through.

Part 2: Transfer CHEQ tokens from Gravity Bridge to Ethereum

Step 5: Select Source & Destination

Select Gravity Bridge as the Source, and Ethereum as the Destination.

Login to your MetaMask wallet using the browser extension and connect.

Step 6: Select your CHEQ tokens & Enter the amount you wish to transfer

The token you have sent to Gravity Bridge will now appear on the list within Gravity Bridge with the available amount listed. Enter the amount you wish to transfer.

Note: The transaction fees are high due to the costs of transactions on the Ethereum side. You can select either a day, an hour or instant, at increasing costs.

Part 3: Add the CHEQ token to MetaMask & connect to UniSwap

Once you have completed the transfer you will need to wait for duration you have selected.

Step 7: Add CHEQ to your MetaMask wallet

During this time you can get started with adding CHEQ to your MetaMask wallet.

Open your MetaMask wallet and select ‘import tokens’ at the bottom of the window

Select ‘Custom Token’ and enter the CHEQ 'Token Contract Address'.

CHEQ**:** 0x70EDF1c215D0ce69E7F16FD4E6276ba0d99d4de7

Here are a selection of other Cosmos chains available thanks to the Gravity Bridge

ATOM: 0xdaf0b40b961CA51Fc914fbabdA8E779619576caD STARS: 0x4547254E6E3195cE57Bc50352193A25c2F4B8FCf HUAHUA: 0x7bE48633D86AA9821284B01030b8a3F9B06eA876 NYM: 0x525A8F6F3Ba4752868cde25164382BfbaE3990e1 NYMT: 0xE8883BAeF3869e14E4823F46662e81D4F7d2A81F PLA: 0xa752Ef191E8b103150D5FE4a6639A598Ede5a50F

When entered this will automatically retrive the CHEQ token symbol and denomination (10^9 for CHEQ). CHEQ will now appear in your list of assets on the MetaMask homepage.

Now you can wait for CHEQ tokens that have been sent via Gravity Bridge to appear in your MetaMask wallet.

To create an ERC20 representation of the Cosmos based CHEQ token we’ve used a bridge. A blockchain bridge or ‘cross-chain bridge’ enables users to transfer assets or any form of data seamlessly from one entirely separate protocol or ecosystem to another (i.e. Solana to Ethereum, or in our case Cosmos to Ethereum and vice versa).

Bridges generally use some kind of mint-and-burn function to keep token supply constant across all platforms. When the token leaves one blockchain, it is burned or locked, and an equivalent token is minted on the opposite blockchain. Conversely, the equivalent token is burned or locked when the token moves back to its original network. This equivalent token is known as a ‘wrapped token’ because the original asset is put in a wrapper, a kind of digital vault that allows the wrapped version to be created on another blockchain.

The CHEQ-ERC20 wrapped token can be found here (you can also add it to your MetaMask wallet through this link — go to profile summary > click ‘more’ > ‘add token to MetaMask’ )

Now that you have CHEQ-ERC20 tokens you can engage with DeFi activities within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Within UniSwap you can either Swap tokens, or add them to a Liquidity Pool.

To find out more about Liquidity Pools, head to What is a Liquidity Pool?

Adding tokens to a Liquidity Pool

Step 1: Find Pool

As a pool has been created on UniSwap these instructions offer insight into how to use UniSwap, however other options exists and CHEQ will likely appear on them in the near future.

Head to the CHEQ:USDT pool.

Step 2: Add liquidity and initiate transaction

Select ‘Add liquidity’ which will take you to the UniSwap app.

On the app, enter the amount of tokens you’d like to deposit and hit ‘Preview’

Select ‘Add’ which will initiate the transaction.

Step 3: Confirm transaction

Check the gas fees and confirm the transaction. I

If you'd like to reduce the transaction fee you can select a lower one using the updated MetaMask. To turn this on, go to your settings in MetaMask and select 'Experimental' and toggle the 'Enable Enhance Gas Fee UI' to ON

Once the transaction has completed you'll see your positions appear on your UniSwap account.

The Gravity Bridge is a trustless, neutral bridge between the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems built by the team. Built using the Cosmos SDK, it uses the validator set to sign transactions instead of a multi-sig or permissioned set of actors.

The neutrality here implies that the entire focus of the Gravity community is on providing the most effective and secure bridge possible instead of on a DeFi application on the local chain. This neutrality aggregates volume from a number of blockchains and sources, increasing efficiency and lowering costs. All control over the bridge is handled entirely by the Gravity Bridge validator set.

The Gravity Bridge has two defined components:

The way Gravity Bridge works is similar to how all cross-chain bridges work, i.e. locking up a native token on one side of the bridge and minting a representation of that token on the other. The user then uses this representation before it is returned to the bridge and redeemed for the native asset on the other chain.

The most critical component for bridges to and from Ethereum is the Solidity contract. It holds the native assets being sent across the bridge.