An update from the OriginTrail team goes over the proposed TRAC bridging approach based on feedback from the OT community, can this be the next step to eliminating the vulnerabilities in current crypto Chainbridging systems?

Teleporting TRAC to the OriginTrail Parachain on Polkadot

The previous version of this RFC proposed the initial TRAC bridge for near-term utilisation be implemented via the Chainbridge system, while enabling emergent bridging infrastructure (such as the Snowfork bridge) as potential long term bridging solutions.
Due to the concerns expressed by the TRAC community regarding the inherent risks associated with such a bridge implementation (details below and in RFC comments), and demonstrated vulnerabilities of similar bridges seen recently within the crypto space (even while writing this update of the RFC), an alternative approach will be implemented — “one way teleports”.

A one way teleport is an already proven approach within the OriginTrail community as it was successfully executed during the Starfleet stage of the OriginTrail Parachain development. Via a “one-time” TRAC bridge from Ethereum to the OriginTrail Parachain the OriginTrail community has successfully staked 100MM TRAC tokens to be transferred to the (then stand-alone) OriginTrail tailored blockchain.

The exact approach and details of the smart contract implementation are specified in OT-RFC-10, however for practicality an outline is presented here:

• A special smart contract is deployed on Ethereum blockchain designed to lock a specific amount of TRAC tokens, to be teleported to the OriginTrail Parachain. The contract is permissionless and anybody can deposit (lock) TRAC into it.
• The equivalent amount of TRAC tokens gets minted on the OriginTrail Parachain to the same address as the one that locked tokens on the Ethereum side (so tokens can be utilised by the same wallet).
• Special care is taken to ensure security of the smart contract — a thorough smart contract audit has been conducted, together with functionality minimization (to lower complexity and thus risk surface) as well as coding and testing best practices.

The near-term TRAC bridging proposal therefore is to:

• Perform one way TRAC teleports from Ethereum to the OriginTrail Parachain by reutilizing the same smart contract already proven in the previous 100MM TRAC Starfleet staking procedure. This contract implementation has been security audited by Quantstamp and proven functional and secure in a production environment. Additionally, the smart contract is built in such a way that the locked funds can be used to integrate with the future bridges.
• Execute teleports in a total of 15 batches in two week intervals.
• This approach removes third-party code (non-OriginTrail ecosystem) from the bridging infrastructure, additionally minimising the risk surface until a more trust-minimising solution is available.
• The approach enables continued exploration of bridging solutions within the Polkadot ecosystem for the mid- and long-term viability of a two-way TRAC bridge. It is expected that multiple options will be available, such as common-good parachain bridges, Snowfork and others, developed by the wider Polkadot community. Once a suitable bridge is available, all teleported tokens will be migrated (subject to the same RFC process as with this implementation).

Teleporting details

Teleporting will occur in 15 batches, each of which will be performed with a process similar to the previously executed Starfleet staking. Due to the nature of the smart contracts and them being audited and tested, only parametric changes can be implemented and no changes in smart contract code will be performed.

Each of the 15 teleportation batches will deploy a separate Teleport contract on Ethereum, managed by a multisig wallet. The illustration below shows the lifecycle of each Teleport contract and its phases as per smart contract design (specified in OT-RFC-10). There are 5 distinct periods defined in the life cycle:

• Preparation period: used for contract preparation and deployment on Ethereum mainnet.
• Boarding period: the period during which TRAC can be deposited in the smart contract for teleportation. The boarding period will last 2 weeks for each batch (except for the first batch lasting 3 weeks).
• Lock period: the period during which tokens are immobile (locked) in the teleportation smart contract on Ethereum. TRAC tokens are teleported to the OriginTrail Parachain and available for use with the same address as used for locking. Each lock period will be set to expire on March 31st 2023.
• Bridge period: the period during which locked tokens can be transferred from the teleportation smart contract on Ethereum to a fully fledged bridge implementation (which is expected to be available in the bridge period). The bridge period lasts for 12 months (latest until March 31st 2024).
• Fallback period: period used in the fallback scenario of a fully fledged bridge not becoming available, after all previous periods have expired. In this period it will be possible to teleport TRAC tokens back to Ethereum, using the accounting feature as described in the contract spec (OT-RFC-10).

To incentivize the teleportation process and utility of the OriginTrail Parachain and the (then deployed) OriginTrail DKG v6, a designated amount of OTP bounty tokens will be made available for the users (to be announced).

The teleport timeline is as follows:

• August 18th (tentative): first Teleportation contract deployment and Batch #1 teleporting start, the first boarding period lasting 3 weeks
• September: first minting of TRAC on OT Parachain, added OTP bounty to enable the use of the OriginTrail Parchain (bonus size TBD)
• Mid-September: Once TRAC is available, execute OriginTrail DKG v6 launch
• Batch #2 and further teleportation batches continue immediately after the first teleportation is completed and validated as successful.

The detailed timeline will be shared in the following documents as soon as this RFC is approved.

The complete and updated OT-RFC-12 v2 document can be found here.

For more on OriginTrail technology and what it can do in the supplychain check out the article detailing Version 6 updates here.