Team Hyperlane is actively preparing for a presence at ETH Denver in the coming weeks, and we’re delighted to share where you can find the team and learn more about the permissionless interoperable future!

What we’ve been up to:

• Warp Routes Launched!!! Warp Routes are finally live and in the wild. See this post to read more about them, and this walkthrough to deploy your first one!
• Permissionless Interoperability — We’ve been busy at work making constant improvements to the experience of deploying Hyperlane to new chains. Be on the lookout for set of material quality of life improvements in March.
• Permissionless Middlewares: Interchain Accounts and Queries — In addition to the quality of life improvements mentioned above, is work to make the middlewares such as ICA and IQS more easily compatible with Permissionless Interop chains.
• New Interchain Security Modules — Work has been started on several new ISM designs. These will allow you to combine and mix and match between ISMs, as well as introduce new security options to your protocol.
• Mystery Goerli Project — We like Goerli, you like Goerli, everybody likes Goerli. But most of us run into the same problem when it comes to Goerli and other testnets. We’re working on a mystery project that highlights the best features of Hyperlane, that will also solve a major painpoint for all developers using testnets. Stay tuned 😉

Where you can find us:

Here’s where you can connect with the team at ETH Denver and more.

• Hyperlane Community Call — Join us on Monday, February 20 at 4:00pm ET for a lively discussion with the Hyperlane core team and community! As always, this call is hosted on Discord, so make sure to join us!
• Interop Summit — team members Jon Kol and Anett will be speaking at Interop Summit on Monday, February 27 and Tuesday, February 28. Join Jon for a panel called “What Happens When Ethereum and Cosmos Merge?” on Tuesday the 28th at 1:30pm MT. Catch Anett speaking about How Decisions Get Made on Ethereum at 2:30pm MT on Tuesday.
• #BUIDLWeek 2023 — Hyperlane engineer Yorke Rhodes will be running a BUIDLWeek workshop at 1:00pm MT on Tuesday, February 28 at The Vib.
• DeFi Denver — Jon will be giving a talk on Building the Interchain Highway at 1:40pm MT on Wednesday, March 1 at the DeFi Denver event.
• Shared Security Summit — Jon will be speaking at 4:00pm MT on Thursday, March 2 at the Shared Security Summit.

The team will also be present for the main ETH Denver conference event, and will be attending various sessions. We can’t wait to meet you and talk about what you’re building with Hyperlane!

Got feedback? Need help?

The Hyperlane crew is always at your service — whether it’s talking through a new integration that leverages some of the exciting new features noted above, or troubleshooting, or helping you think through your build. Find us on Discord or Twitter!

Share our excitement for the interchain? Check out our job openings!

State of Hyperlane #5 — Bi-Weekly Edition (ETH Denver Spotlight) was originally published in Hyperlane on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Greetings from the Interchain Highway! We’re hard at work building out the permissionless interoperable future — and we’re thrilled to share the latest updates from the Hyperlane crew!

Where you can find us:

Touch base with Team Hyperlane in the coming weeks here!

• Hyperlane V2 is the #1 web3 product on ProductHunt — ICYMI, we celebrated our V2 launch on ProductHunt, and we’re thrilled to share that we captured the #1 spot in the web3 vertical and spent some time on the overall top 10 list. Thank you for the upvotes and the comments!
• Getting ready for ETH Denver — The Hyperlane crew will be heading to Denver in a few short weeks — we’d love to see you there! Besides the main event, you can find us at DeFi Denver and the Interop Summit.

What we have been up to:

The latest and greatest from your favorite interchain protocol.

• Permissionless Interoperability — The MVP has been released and feedback-driven improvements are being implemented. Have you tried to deploy Hyperlane to your favorite chain or rollup yet? Give it a go!
• Gas payments — As mentioned in the most recent update, gas payments will soon be enforced for all Hyperlane chains, helping make protocol operations smoother. Starting February 10th, using the InterchainGasPaymaster contract to pay for gas will be required. Learn more about this in the Hyperlane docs and feel free to reach out on the Discord if you have questions!
• Gnosis support — Hyperlane is now on Gnosis! A more thorough announcement will be shared next week, but as of today you can already use Hyperlane to connect your applications with Gnosis chain. You can find contract addresses here.

What’s in the pipeline:

Want a peek into the future? Here’s what the Hyperlane crew is working on:

• V1 sunset coming soon — February ’23 — Now that we’ve launched V2 of Hyperlane, it’s time to end support for V1 of the protocol. If you’ve been building with us on V1, we encourage you to read the migration guide and chat with the team about switching over to V2. We’re here to support you as you switch over, and can’t wait for you to experience the great new features V2 has to offer!
• On-chain Fee Quoting — February ’23 — This much-requested feature is finally coming! On-chain fee quoting is in the works, and we’re excited to share more about this soon.
• Audit progress — February ’23 — Our latest audit reports are in final review and should be published by the auditors shortly.
• Additional Interchain Security Modules — March & April ’23 — Work is commencing on additional ISMs to expand the menu of security options available to Hyperlane developers. Learn more about Sovereign Consensus and ISMs in the Hyperlane docs.
• Permissionless Interoperability Improvements — Through April ’23 — With the MVP released, it’s all-hands-on-deck to continuously improve this functionality. Expect quality-of-life improvements as well as additional middleware support in coming weeks.

Got feedback? Need help?

The Hyperlane crew is always at your service — whether it’s talking through a new integration that leverages some of the exciting new features noted above, or troubleshooting, or helping you think through your build. Find us on Discord or Twitter!

Share our excitement for the interchain? Check out our job openings!

State of Hyperlane #4 — Bi-Weekly Edition was originally published in Hyperlane on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Coming on the heels of our V2 launch (Twitter thread here, ICYMI!), here’s the latest and greatest from the Hyperlane team. Stay on the lookout for more frequent, brief updates from our team as we continue to build in public!

What we have been up to:

Here’s what the Hyperlane team has been working on since we last checked in.

• V2 is now live We’ve completed our first major version upgrade, and we’re so excited for you to build on V2 Hyperlane! Sovereign Consensus, Permissionless Deployment, and a whole host of developer experience improvements are here. Read more about what you get with the new version, check out the migration guide, and hop onto our Discord to share your feedback.
• Permissionless Deployment Hyperlane is live on 8 chains (9 soon ) today, but we know the future is so much more connected, and we know you have a wish-list of chains in mind. By popular request, we’re enabling developers to deploy Hyperlane to your favorite EVM chain! There’s a handy guide in our docs to get you started, and we’re excited about the future of this feature beyond EVM (stay tuned!).
• Warp Routes Want to move your token between chains? We’ve got the solution for you — Hyperlane Warp Routes. Unlike other token wrapping protocols, Warp Routes are secured by Sovereign Consensus, allowing developers to specify the security model that governs the minting, burning, and unwrapping of their interchain token. We’ll be sharing more about this soon (keep an eye on our Twitter and blog!) but for now, head over to the docs to see our guides on deploying Warp Routes and deploying the Warp Route UI.

What’s in the pipeline:

Curious about what’s next? Here’s where we’re heading in the next few weeks.

• Gas — January ’23 Coming very soon, usage of our default InterchainGasPaymaster will be required, and will result in reasonably accurate destination chain gas payments and gas refunds. This means all Hyperlane contracts will have to account for Gas payments if they aren’t already. Gas enforcement will ensure smoother operations of the Hyperlane protocol, including griefing-resistance. If you’re about to launch with Hyperlane, check in with us to ensure you’re up to date! Want to learn more about this upcoming change? Join our Discord and be on the lookout for announcements.
• Sovereign Consensus Upgrades — February ’23 We launched V0 of Sovereign Consensus (Hyperlane’s bespoke modular security model) with V2 of the protocol, but it’s about to get some major developer-friendly improvements. By popular demand, recipient-defined validator sets are on their way. More details to come soon!
• Surprise EVM addition — January ’23 We told you were doing everything we can to make adding new chains as easy as can be. With that, we found ourselves adding another popular EVM chain. Can you guess who? It was a popular ask by Hyperlane builders. Stay tuned for an announcement by the end of the month 😉

Got feedback? Need help?

The Hyperlane crew is always at your service — whether it’s talking through a new integration that leverages some of the exciting new features noted above, or troubleshooting, or helping you think through your build. Find us on Discord or Twitter!

Share our excitement for the interchain? Check out our job openings!

State of Hyperlane #3 — Bi Weekly Edition was originally published in Hyperlane on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Happy 2023, Hyperlane builders and friends! We hope the holiday season treated you well, and that you’re as excited as we are to get back to building. The team at Hyperlane has made it our resolution to make the interchain developer experience as compelling and stress-free as we can, and we’re thrilled to be working on protocol enhancements that prioritize security, flexibility, and ease of use.

Where you can find us:

Whether you’re looking for the latest and greatest updates from our team, or just hungry for more insights into the interchain space, we’ve got you covered. We’re kicking off the new year with some great conversations, be sure to tune in!

• Twitter Space with Zaki Manian — 1/12/23 at 10am ET on Twitter Don’t miss this Twitter Space featuring Cosmos legend and Hyperlane team member Zaki Manian. We’ll be digging into interoperability, modular blockchains, and rollups — come through!
• Hyperlane Community Call — 1/17/23 at 4:30pm ET on Discord Join the Hyperlane team for our latest Community Call on Tuesday the 17th. We’ll have the core team on-hand to share some exciting new updates (V2, anyone?) and talk about the future of Hyperlane — 2023 is going to bring some big things for us and our builders!

What we have been up to:

It’s a new year, and we’ve got some big news to share.

• Hyperlane V2 The Hyperlane team is thrilled to say “stay tuned” for the imminent launch of the latest major version of the protocol. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on. Want a head start on your migration from V1 to V2? Check out our handy guide here.
• Audit Underway We’re pleased to announce that with our latest version upgrade comes a fresh audit — giving our builders additional peace of mind.
• Message Explorer API The Hyperlane Explorer you know and love has gotten a shiny new expansion — an API! Make calls to get messages, get statuses, and search messages. Learn more on the Hyperlane docs.
• Immunefi Bounty Program Hyperlane x Immunefi is a collaboration with security at its core. Hyperlane offers bounties of up to $2.5 million through our ImmuneFi program.
• Celebrating Moonbeam Illuminate Hackathon Winners The Hyperlane team is delighted to share the winners of the Moonbeam Illuminate hackathon: Safe Hyperlane Router, SwapOS & Hashi, HyperApes & Themis, Interchain Safe Portal & Mitsuba, Hyperlane DeFi, and Strawpoll. Read our Twitter thread to learn more!

What’s in the pipeline:

Here’s what we’re working on this month:

• Warp Route — January ’23 Our take on token bridging (formerly known as Trade Route) is just around the corner. Soon, you’ll be able to create wrapped tokens that are sovereign. Curious? Check out the spec.
• Permissionless Deployment — January ’23 By popular demand, we’re hard at work on an expansion to the protocol that will help our builders bring Hyperlane to where you are. Read more in the docs.
• On-Chain Fee Quoting — January ’23 Message senders will soon begin paying for processing on Hyperlane, and our team is invested in making this transition as seamless as possible for our builders. With minimal code changes, senders can move towards a more sustainable future. Learn more about gas payment enforcement in the Hyperlane docs.
• Sovereign Consensus V1 — February ’23 Hyperlane’s signature security model, Sovereign Consensus, is leveling up. The relayer will soon support recipient-defined validator sets, allowing Hyperlane users to customize their security.
• Non-EVM Execution Environments — Q2 ’23 Stay tuned for updates on our forays beyond EVM! We’re looking forward to supercharging your Hyperlane experience this spring.

Got feedback? Need help?

The Hyperlane crew is always at your service — whether it’s talking through a new integration that leverages some of the exciting new features noted above, or troubleshooting, or helping you migrate from V1 to V2. Find us on Discord or Twitter!

Share our excitement for everything interchain? Check out our job openings!

State of Hyperlane #2 was originally published in Hyperlane on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recently, Hyperlane released our Interchain Query System, which empowers dev teams to make view calls between Hyperlane-supported chains. In the spirit of querying contracts across chains, we did an exercise we like to call “DX Games” — in which the Hyperlane dev team selected a handful of other protocols to play with for an afternoon, learning about the developer experience offered by our peers in the space.

Our team set out to make a series of simple, interchain view calls — the goal of each call is to simply query state from a contract on another chain. We attempted this exercise using docs and sample code from six of the other projects in the cross-chain ecosystem — Axelar, Celer, Connext, IBC, LayerZero, and Wormhole.

Each dev was assigned to a protocol and given one hour to complete their task. This included selecting a chain pair, reading docs and exploring sample code, and attempting to query state and write the return value to storage.

One of our primary goals was to put ourselves into our customers’ shoes — it’s easy to think about developer experience from a tunnel-visioned place, and exercises like this keep our team more aware of how we might better serve developers on their interchain journeys.

Highlights, Lowlights, and Learnings:

Axelar

• What we liked: We appreciate their ready-to-modify example code as a jumping-off point. We also like their message explorer — it was incredibly valuable during this exercise. Good tooling and meaningful error messages are a major lift.
• What we didn’t like: Message processing with Axelar took longer than anticipated — we had some frustrations while testing. We also didn’t expect to pay for the “pong” message manually when sending a message on the origin chain without insights into the payload.
• DX lessons: Speed and transparency of message processing saves a lot of developer headache. We’ve recently added breakdowns in the Hyperlane message explorer to highlight detailed message status — from sent to finalized to validated to relayed — so developers can see exactly where their message is at a given moment.

Celer

• What we liked: The docs made it pretty clear how complex the Celer system is — no hiding from it. There’s also a “Hello World” repo that can be downloaded as a starting point.
• What we didn’t like: The monorepo shared by Celer came with some dependency struggles that took some time to handle. Documentation on the relayer/executor fees was also fairly sparse, and we weren’t able to understand how this fee was enforced. There’s an additional network to work with, so there’s more that devs need to understand (like how to interact with RPCs).
• DX lessons: Sample code is great, but sometimes developers want to jump into an action without having to say “Hello World” — for this reason, we’ve set up several 5-minute quickstarts in our docs that let developers dig into how our contracts/middleware work without having to clone a repo.

Connext

• What we liked: We liked how the starter kit ran fairly well out-of-the-box. We were also fans of Connextscan as a message explorer.
• What we didn’t like: We had a transaction revert without a clear error message, which made debugging difficult. Connext is also not yet on mainnet as of the time of this post, but we’re looking forward to that soon.
• DX lessons: Debugging is a critical part of development, so we’ve built error messages and revert reasons directly into the Hyperlane message explorer. If your transaction doesn’t complete, you’ll have insights as to why.

IBC

• What we liked: Interchain Accounts (ICAs) are very cool (we just launched our own!), and it’s also interesting to explore outside of EVM.
• What we didn’t like: Choosing a chain pair to work with proved challenging, as this was outside of our usual ecosystem. That said — we’re excited to learn more about Cosmos!
• DX lessons: Getting started isn’t always the easiest; we’ve recently taken this to heart and put some more care into our documentation and quickstart tutorials to help new-to-Hyperlane devs get up and running quickly.

LayerZero

• What we liked: Our team enjoyed how quickly we were able to get up and running with sample code from the docs, and we liked being able to use the endpoints directly for a more bare-metal solution. We also enjoyed that the refund for overpaid gas was instant and came back during the send.
• What we didn’t like: We were mildly surprised by how many parameters developers were expected to provide on the send side. Gas payment was a little confusing — we had to retry a few times with different values to reach the necessary target.
• DX lessons: For some actions, simpler is better — and you can sometimes streamline things with tooling and middleware. It’s the inspiration behind Interchain Queries on Hyperlane.

Wormhole

• What we liked: Wormhole offers a very customizable solution that feels more like an API than a messaging protocol.
• What we didn’t like: Getting started wasn’t as easy as with some of the other protocols — fetching the signed VAA (verified action approval) required some custom code that wasn’t copyable from the docs. Additionally, building the verification logic was new for our team, and we ended up building a vulnerability into our solution that wasn’t immediately obvious.
• DX lessons: Out-of-the box should get you pretty far — custom code is best suited for custom applications. We’ve been inspired to work on middleware (like Interchain Accounts and Interchain Queries) that supports common use cases, allowing developers to focus on application-specific work.

In Conclusion:

Our team had fun making view calls with various protocols. In addition to learning more about the landscape, we were able to appreciate each protocol’s “special sauce” and learn what makes for good DX in the interchain space. We can’t wait for our next round of explorations!