Introduction

Wormhole is a decentralized, universal message-passing protocol that connects to multiple blockchains. 

In simple terms Wormhole allows different blockchains like Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Terra, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche and Oasis to communicate with each other. It addresses two of the main problems that plague blockchains today:

• Tokens are hard to move between blockchains without relying on centralized exchanges for bridging and swapping tokens. However, this means users are subject to counterparty risk.
• Decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts on different blockchains cannot communicate with each other, making interoperability between chains difficult to achieve.

Wormhole solves this by monitoring several chains for messages emitted by smart contracts on those chains. This is achieved through the Wormhole Core Layer, a core contract deployed on each chain that routs the received messages to the target chain, the core function of the previously mentioned universal message-passing protocol. A guardian network consisting of 19 nodes secures Wormhole.

This system enables cross-chain communication protocols like token and NFT bridges, cross-chain oracles and other messaging applications that would not operate without Wormhole’s infrastructure.