Building a Cross-Chain Bridge/side networks for privacy ?!

[hugeblack]

We all know about the use of blockchain bridge which we see is mostly used today to avoid high fees as assets are transferred from one blockchain to another and to benefit from low fees and decentralized transfer (DeFi) capabilities.

The conversion usually works as follows:
BTC ---> WBTC/BEP-20 ---> any BEP-20 tokens ---> WBTC/BEP-20 ---> BTC

The advantage is that BSC transaction fees are much cheaper and the transfer possibilities are greater.

Will we soon see similar examples, but their purpose is to enhance privacy, such as

BTC ---> XMR ---> BTC as a Cross-Chain Bridge

Or second-layer solutions or side networks, or is privacy not something valuable and worth building on?

[Zed0X]

I don't think anyone is brave enough to create that kind of cross-chain bridge involving XMR (at least not someone looking to keep the business long-term and profit from it). There is already an ongoing pressure to delist privacy coins on CEX, any platform aiding anonymity and privacy will be attacked as well.

I read on a 3-year old Reddit post about a platform called Secret Network which was supposed to allow you to bridge XMR to other tokens. When I looked at their website, it doesn't look like XMR is on the list of coins. I don't know if they removed it on purpose.

[Gurujebs]

We all know about the use of blockchain bridge which we see is mostly used today to avoid high fees as assets are transferred from one blockchain to another and to benefit from low fees and decentralized transfer (DeFi) capabilities.

The conversion usually works as follows:
BTC ---> WBTC/BEP-20 ---> any BEP-20 tokens ---> WBTC/BEP-20 ---> BTC

The advantage is that BSC transaction fees are much cheaper and the transfer possibilities are greater.

I think there are disadvantages to this to more than the advantages. They are too centralized as they claim to be decentralized platforms. For instance, the wormhole bridge that was hacked about a year ago, to date the hack tokens has not been recovered and the tokens are been move from one Dexes to anotherm.

Another disadvantages of this bridges are rug pull and stealing of liquidity, we have seen situation where of Solana was bridge to other blockchains but when the pyramid collapse, people were trying to convert back s.BTC and many more but there wasn't native bitcoin available to convert to native chain, all coins were worthless and useless because of some guys. If this is to be done for privacy reasons, we need extra security and cautions.

Will we soon see similar examples, but their purpose is to enhance privacy, such as

BTC ---> XMR ---> BTC as a Cross-Chain Bridge

Or second-layer solutions or side networks, or is privacy not something valuable and worth building on?

This will be cool but the bridges I'm seeing all around claimed to be decentralized but they use to have backdoor protocol to override some stuffs. Hope this wouldn't be a problem when the government don't want some particular transaction to go through or maybe pull down, US in particular dislike XMR and Dash.

[dkbit98]

Or second-layer solutions or side networks, or is privacy not something valuable and worth building on?

If you want to have best privacy just use monero, no need for any mambo jumbo bridges and similar stuff you need for other coins.

I would not build anything privacy related on binance chain, and there are people already working on privacy solutions for bitcoin using second layer networks, sidechains, etc.
Bitcoin Liquid Network already has confidential transactions for L-BTC and L-USDT and it can work together with Lightning inside Aqua wallet.
It is easy to swap monero to bitcoin and vice versa using atomic swaps, bisq and other small exchanges.

[tranthidung]

The conversion usually works as follows:
BTC ---> WBTC/BEP-20 ---> any BEP-20 tokens ---> WBTC/BEP-20 ---> BTC

There are many interactions through 'Smart Contracts' with this bridge scheme. Many hacks on Smart-contract-based bridges and I don't feel much safe to use Cryptocurrency Bridges.

Are Blockchain Bridges Safe? Why Bridges Are Targets of Hacks

Will we soon see similar examples, but their purpose is to enhance privacy, such as

BTC ---> XMR ---> BTC as a Cross-Chain Bridge

It is moving fund around different blockchains with an important middle chain is Monero. It is very big different than the first scheme that works on Smart Contracts.

It is more secured to use on-chain transactions through Proof of Work blockchains for privacy but make sure you check their blockchain power and security.
https://howmanyconfs.com/

[hugeblack]

I don't think anyone is brave enough to create that kind of cross-chain bridge involving XMR (at least not someone looking to keep the business long-term and profit from it). There is already an ongoing pressure to delist privacy coins on CEX, any platform aiding anonymity and privacy will be attacked as well.

If privacy has a value, people will try it, especially if it is built on blinded bearer certificates^[1] or there is no central point of failure, then everyone will try to use it.
There is already a similar solution called Tornado Cash^[2], but it is a decentralized mixer based on smart contracts, so it runs on Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible networks more than Bitcoin or Monero.

Mixero (Bitcoin Mixer)^[3] claims to have a mixing method based on the Monero bridge, but the mixer is centralized and we cannot verify the validity of these claims.

I think there are disadvantages to this to more than the advantages. They are too centralized as they claim to be decentralized platforms. For instance, the wormhole bridge that was hacked about a year ago, to date the hack tokens has not been recovered and the tokens are been move from one Dexes to anotherm.

I agree with you, all of these bridges are centralized, but things can be improved by making them decentralized so that the service can be hosted (something like BISQ) and a multi-signature address can be used.

It is easy to swap monero to bitcoin and vice versa using atomic swaps, bisq and other small exchanges.

This is true, but we cannot consider it a Bitcoin mixing. For example, if my Bitcoin address is added to OFAC blacklist, then using bisq will move this problem to another user, but it will not mix bitcoins. The government can easily place warnings that you need to obtain Proof Of Source before desposting to any CEXs.


[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Blinded_bearer_certificates
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash
[3] https://mixero.io/