Exploring Supra Born with a ‘Halo’, the Cross-Chain Oracle Middleware

Uncovering the Magic of Supra Born A Deeper Look into 'Halo' - the Revolutionary Cross-Chain Oracle Middleware

Compiled by: GaryMa, Wu said blockchain

Recently, Supra, a cross-chain oracle project, has received much attention in the airdrop circle and KYC vendors. One of the main reasons why new users flock to it is its glorious funding background. Supra has completed over $24 million in private fundraising rounds, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Animoca Brands, HashKey, and others.

According to data from CrunchBase, Supra has had nearly 10 funding rounds, with a total funding amount of up to $47.9 million, starting from the end of 2020. However, the official announcement has only been made for the latest $24 million funding round.

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From the perspective of funding background, Supra undoubtedly has its own halo, but it seems that it has been relatively unheard of in the oracle track? With these curiosities and doubts, let’s explore this project together.

Supra Introduction

First of all, Supra is not just a cross-chain oracle product. It proposes a concept of “IntraLayer,” where Supra will act as a middleware network to integrate its series of solutions- oracles, VRFs, and native cross-chain protocols- into a shared security infrastructure, connecting L1 and L2, Web2, and Web3 together.

1. DORA Oracle

For the oracle function, it may be the one that industry users are more familiar with. A common use case is to securely introduce cryptocurrency price data into the blockchain, which is usually regarded as a bridge between on-chain and off-chain data. Currently, Supra’s representative solution in this area is the DORA (Distributed Oracle Agreement) oracle protocol.

When there are multiple information sources that have not signed their data, we need a mechanism to aggregate all this information into a single representative value and put it on the blockchain, while also ensuring a certain Byzantine fault tolerance. Byzantine fault refers to the existence of node failures, either unresponsive or capable of intentionally violating the protocol.

In the absence of any Byzantine faults, it only requires a single node to retrieve information from multiple sources. However, in the case of Byzantine faults, we will need multiple nodes.

When all nodes can provide a value as input, then when some of these nodes are Byzantine nodes, the remaining honest nodes will reach a consensus and choose a single representative value to challenge them. This process is called the DORA (Distributed Oracle Agreement) problem.

Putting aside the technical details, DORA, as an oracle protocol, has the following highlights:

• Takes into account the possibility of Byzantine faults in data sources;
• DORA protocol is resilient to a higher percentage of Byzantine faults (51%), rather than the traditional 33% fault tolerance limit;
• The introduction of randomness in the design greatly limits the attacker’s ability to attack;

2, VRF Random Number

For the functionality of VRFs, it is actually what we commonly refer to as random numbers. Randomness is one of the important factors for achieving security in computing systems, and it is also an indispensable part of any public key cryptography scheme design. For example, generating true random numbers is crucial for successfully implementing encryption methods such as multi-party computation and zero-knowledge proofs. Randomness computation can also be applied to other purposes, such as selecting winners in online lotteries or setting game prizes, providing random experiences in blockchain games, and other types of random selection processes. Currently, Supra’s representative solution in this area is the Distributed Verifiable Random Functions (DVRF) scheme. Although DVRF has a slight disadvantage compared to centralized VRF in terms of computational efficiency, communication costs, and system complexity, its benefits in terms of security significantly outweigh its potential drawbacks. Most importantly, the distributed VRF truly embodies the core of blockchain technology, the spirit of decentralization.

3, HyperNova Cross-Chain Communication Protocol

The most challenging part of a cross-chain oracle is native communication with multiple chains. Native cross-chain communication means using the cryptographic signature algorithms of two chains to enable smart contract verification of the data provided to it. Many chains use different encryption techniques, making this not an easy task.

For this functionality, Supra has built HyperNova – a “bridgeless” cross-chain design based on chain-to-chain cryptographic consensus, making interoperation between blockchains more secure, reliable, and scalable.

As long as Supra can “sense” the active validator set of Ethereum, it can verify most of its consensus protocols. However, to pass this information from Ethereum to Supra, Supra needs to add a relay node that simply forwards events from the source chain (Ethereum) and requires Supra’s validators to explicitly verify the validity of these events. In short, Supra validates Ethereum’s L1 consensus through cryptography.

In the “multi-signature model,” it is necessary to trust that the majority of the bridging nodes in the cross-chain bridge are honest and always do the right thing, while in the “relay model,” there is no need to trust any relay bridge node to ensure the correctness of the relayed information, only to ensure that relevant events on the source chain are not missing, censored, or delayed when transmitted to the target chain. Therefore, the requirement of trusting the majority of honest nodes in the traditional “multi-signature model” is reduced to only requiring one honest node in the “relay model,” which is also referred to as the “bridgeless” model.

In the HyperNova “bridgeless” model, it relies solely on relay nodes to forward data without verifying its correctness. Therefore, only one honest node is needed to ensure liveness and resistance to censorship. Additionally, this can also avoid multi-round consensus, achieving faster execution.

Supra Highlights

1, Ecological Map

Clearly, Supra’s narrative is quite extensive. It is not just a simple oracle protocol. Supra has its own underlying blockchain, DON, a decentralized oracle network. At the same time, it positions itself as an “IntraLayer” middleware layer, locally integrating the three major functions of oracles, random numbers, and cross-chain. This comprehensive design makes Supra’s first-layer blockchain a self-sufficient system where users can engage in most on-chain activities without leaving the system or relying on third-party oracles to obtain real-world application data off-chain. Additionally, Supra can be a powerful interoperability hub, where other blockchain ecosystems serve as radiating nodes connected securely and in a decentralized manner.

2. Research Capability

If you don’t have technical research capability, then even the best theoretical technical solutions are just empty talk. But after some investigation, it is found that Supra has accumulated certain experience and research capability in its field.

In 2017, the team established the Entropy Foundation, headquartered in Switzerland, with the goal of expanding the capabilities of smart contracts and oracles. Supra Oracles is the flagship project of the Entropy Foundation. Its team members consist of professionals with rich experience in cryptography, enterprise integration, IoT solutions, DeFi, innovative consensus modeling, randomization research, and oracle research.

The Chief Research Officer is Dr. Kate, the main author of KZG Commitments (also known as Kate Commitments), a technology that serves as the cornerstone of most ZK Proof systems today and lays the foundation for Ethereum L2 scaling strategies.

It is worth mentioning that Supra is not a new project. Since its inception, it has been nearly 5 years. During this time, the industry has gone through a complete cycle. However, Supra clearly did not rush to launch products or tokens, but chose to focus on research and development.

Supra Progress and Reflection

Supra is currently in the mainnet alpha phase.

Oracle DORA has supported more than 40 testnets and has successfully launched on 13 mainnets. The Oracle now supports 120 price data sources, providing over 1.6 million data updates per day, with a low latency of 5-6 seconds. The optimization goal is 2-4 seconds.

The Deterministic Verifiable Random Function (DVRF) has been deployed on more than 25 testnets and has successfully launched on mainnets such as Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, DFK Chain, Doge Chain, and Klaytn.

As for the cross-chain communication protocol “HyperNova” and the decentralized IFTTT (if-this-then-that) automation service, they will be released soon.

Overall, Supra exudes a sense of “slow and steady wins the race,” and the theoretically impressive network architecture and functional system, along with the IntraLayer narrative, are indeed something to look forward to. Moreover, the recent enthusiasm for the RWA track and the industry’s long-term optimism about this track are incremental demands for the future oracle track. Of course, whether Supra’s high expectations in theory can be realized on the ground, and whether its future ecosystem partners can develop, are the truly important factors. We will wait and see.

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