Aion Is Launching a 'Token Bridge' to Connect Blockchains

Aion's token may have grown up on the ethereum blockchain, but it's moving out.

The Aion network has been built to foster interoperability across blockchains. One of the key tools to this functionality is the network's "token bridge," which is designed to allow tokens to move between chains.

The first token bridge will work between the Aion network and ethereum, on which its token currently operates.

Rather than using a smart contract to hold copies of tokens, as pairs of networks like Kik's new chain and ethereum will do, Nuco has proposed actually destroying tokens as they move – put simply, so there really is only one token at a time.

According to Matt Spoke, CEO of Nuco – the company founded by Deloitte alums that's behind Aion – the bridge then "issues an AION [token] on the other side."

"It's a micro-network, it's a collection of nodes that's decentralized, there's multiple participants, and those other nodes on the network are acting honestly, but that bridge is responsible for agreeing they witnessed the event," Spoke went on to say. "That's the function that we built in."

Ethereum will come first, according to Spoke, but the plan is to extend it across all blockchains.

"The design of the bridge is going to get more and more generic over time. We want that to communicate with any other blockchain," he told CoinDesk.

The token bridge is Aion's next step on its roadmap, following the launch of its mainnet at the end of April.

"Even in the enterprise context, interoperability, every one of their RFPs [request for proposals] has an interoperability requirement ... Hyperledger networks can all talk to each other and they're all private," Spoke pointed out. "But there's not a common solution for a cross between protocols."

Additional reporting by Pete Rizzo.

Pinion and chains image is public domain