Today I will talk about, in my opinion, the centerpiece of #blockchain interoperability: relayers. What is this process, how it works and what services can it enable? Here are the answers : #IBC @cosmos $ATOM

The relayer is the process that relays the packets containing transaction data to other chains. If you've ever seen a Track & Field Relay race, the baton on IBC would be the Packet and each sprinter would be a relayer process

In a past thread, I mentioned that IBC has no context about the overall network topology. Nevertheless, a relayer HAS to be aware of the existent connection paths in order to transfer a given packet to the destination chain. https://twitter.com/fekunze/status/1351545906957529089

The context of the network for the IBC protocol is the same "view" as the one you would have while driving your car on a highway . The relayer, on the other hand, can offer you an "aerial view" of all the routes of the chain

For this reason, a relayer can prevent a token to become non-fungible with other IBC tokens by sending the packets back through the right connection paths in order to (un)wrap the tokens https://twitter.com/fekunze/status/1351988937716330496

This is called the Relaying Strategy, and IMO is THE most important part of a relayer. Because it allows you to choose different alternatives for relaying a packet. Do you prefer to use the cheapest route (low fees), shortest path (small latency), or the most security?

Now, the relayer works by running light clients of the connected chains. It keeps both chains updated to track the latest client and consensus state of each other so that proof verification for packets is valid. It also relays packets as they come by listening to chain events

Relayers also allow for the initialization, via handshakes, of new chain connections and independent parts of the chain state that are able to decode packet data (channels). Here is a great thread by @buchmanster about the core IBC components. https://twitter.com/buchmanster/status/1354961254398484489

Relayers can provide a lot of UX abstractions for end-users and enable a wide variety of APIs for all the interconnected chains in the network. All wallets and exchanges will be connected to these APIs instead of connecting to each individual chain https://twitter.com/zmanian/status/1358909771059920898

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