Why is TxFusion sacred? Why did zkSync Era give it the "official cross-chain bridge"?

Haotian (Twitter/X:@tmel0211)

According to the ZK Credo Manifesto, zkSync Era has recently completed the decentralization of Eco Portal, Block Explorer and the official Cross-Bridge, and these core parts are open sourced and provided by third-party technical parties.

However, what is puzzling is that the "official cross-chain bridge" involving the deposit and withdrawal channels of major assets was handed over to the little-known TxFusion. Why？ How to interpret this matter?

In general, auxiliary product functions such as ecological data analysis services and browsers are generally provided by community builders, for example, mainstream public chain projects such as Etherscan behind Ethereum are all from community builders. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that zkSync handed over ecological DApp data analysis and ranking and browser presentation to Dappradar, l2s can and other well-known technical teams.

In this way, win-win complements each other's advantages, and Matter labs can focus on technology development and the promotion of ZK Stack technology architecture, including: sharing Sequencer, sharing zkPorter and other technical components. It's good for the community or the team.

Because the blockchain community has many teams that do data analysis services, such as dune analytics, 0x scope, nansen, etc., their biggest pain point is the business model. The charging model of to C is difficult to cover high operating costs, to B services, most project parties are accustomed to doing it themselves, unwilling to give it over, which makes a large number of data service companies have a hard time. If a large number of project parties follow zkSync, this will give new life to such technical service companies. (But that's too much.)

However, the "official cross-chain bridge" is such a technical component for the security of layer 2 assets, and zkSync handed over a new Starup, TxFusion. I looked up a lot of information and didn't dig out why this TxFusion is sacred? But I found a few interesting points:**

1. TxFusion's earliest blog was published on February 21 this year, without disclosing the investor, and the team is relatively vague, but the opening article is to cooperate with zkSync, which seems to be specially designed for zkSync.

2. Ines Isliami, founder of TxFusion, has had data-related experience in blockchain collective, HyperGrowth, Shard Labs and other blockchain-related companies since 2020, but not for a long time;

3. Ines Isliam, founder of TxFusion, has a video interview with a similar accent to zkSync founder Alex, presumably Russian.

I've been seeing these messages right now, so it's puzzling why zkSync would give the cross-chain bridge to TxFusion. However, as a blogger who has been following zkSync dynamics for a long time, I personally understand the motivation behind it, and briefly share it:**

**The kernel is that zkSyn is not willing or willing to recognize the existence of an "official cross-chain bridge". **

On the one hand, because cross-chain bridges are L2 safety lifelines. Simply understood, any assets circulating in L2 are mapped assets in the form of Wrap, and all assets circulating in L2 are restricted circulating assets as long as they are hacked or Rugpull as long as they can withdraw assets back to the main chain before "hackers" withdraw them back to the main chain.

The Rollup mainnet contract can block the flow of suspected L2 assets back to the mainnet through the form of an update, thereby realizing the control of sudden abnormal conditions. Now mainstream layer 2 presupposes the Security Council, and the main responsibility of the multi-signature committee behind it is to decide whether to upgrade the contract to control the suspect asset in times of crisis.

However, the upgradeable feature reserved by the Rollup contract has been criticized for centralization and has not been able to be put on the table. Alex said in an interview that even if the multisig committee has authority, it can only suspend assets, and the decision on assets is left to the DAO community. But this explanation can only be heard, because once layer 2 suffers a huge asset attack, such as a contract being issued several trillion assets out of thin air, it seems feasible to buy out Layer 2 assets and do a DAO governance vote.

On the other hand, Alex published an article exploring the use of the Supreme Court's layered governance mechanism to manage layer 2, but that proposal would eventually touch the possibility of a hard fork of the mainnet. Impossible, the current layer 2 cannot have the authority to decide whether the mainnet forks or not, this can only stay in the assumption stage.

**It can be seen that Alex has been anxious about security and decentralization for a long time. **

This layout sounds reasonable, but it is only a stopgap measure, after all, even if it is a third-party cross-chain bridge, as long as the liquidity control reaches a certain scale, there will be hidden dangers of centralization. How exactly TxFusion does cross-chain bridges, I hope that there will be official disclosure of technical details. For example, if TxFusion's Portal and Bridge have similar security crises in the future, how will zkSync respond? This question is not answered now, just wait and see.

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