Cross-blockchain decentralized asset transfer protocol for public blockchains

Abstract

The lack of interoperability between blockchains is a primary barrier to adopting the technology. Blockchains suffer from vendor lock-ins as users cannot easily move their assets between blockchains. To resolve this issue, we propose a cross-chain decentralized asset transfer protocol for blockchains without involving any intermediaries. Cross-chain transactions can be efficiently executed using our proposed protocol without including any centralized third party. Most of the existing asset transfer solutions neglect the transaction finality guarantees; however, the protocol presented in this paper keeps track of transaction finality, providing transaction irreversibility guarantees and preventing assets from being lost in the transfer process. The reference implementation for the proposed protocol consists of smart contracts and a Web API for carrying out the cross-chain transfer of assets. The proposed protocol is experimentally validated for the transfer of assets between Ethereum and Binance testnets. The performance testing shows that the cost of the proposed protocol is acceptable.