Bridges

In today's blockchain world, interoperability is important. Traditionally, a user was restricted only to the blockchain they were using and could not communicate to the "outside world". With the advent of oracles and smart contracts, you can now move assets back and forth across different blockchains such as Neo and Ethereum. This gives the user options.

With Phantasma, users can do a 1:1 cross-chain and bi-directional swap of fungible tokens across Neo and Ethereum. This is only possible with a bridge. For example, a bridge allows the user to send ether from the ethereum blockchain to the Phantasma blockchain all the while maintaining the same supply and price on both ends. This is achieved by using oracles and smart contracts. When you are using our wallets (Poltergeist or Ecto) and sending an asset such as ether, you are really sending it to a smart contract. Swapping tokens consists of a two-step process that requires your signature. This process is actually happening when you claim. When you sign, you're confirming the destination address matches the source address. Since your private key is linked to these addresses, it works seamlessly.

The use case of oracles are an important aspect of using a bridge. Oracles feed information from the outside world to the blockchain via smart contracts. For example, if you were to use our bridge to swap ether to Phantasma, our oracles use an API such as cryptocompare to feed information to our smart contracts. Once Cosmic Swaps 2.0 is live, this is how the kcal:soul price ratio will be determined when trading. Additionally, Phantasma uses three API's for Ethereum's blockchain to aggregate gas fees and caches it, adding 20 gwei to the transaction to avoid any stuck swaps in the event a user sets too low of a gas fee for themselves.