Nervos launches Ethereum bridge it says devs can use right out of the box

Chinese public blockchain project Nervos has announced the launch of a cross-chain bridge between it and Ethereum.

The launch of Nervos’ Force Bridge was revealed on Dec. 17, with the bridge boasting native support for ERC-20 tokens and frictionless transfers between Ethereum and Nervos’ CKB chain.

The team claims its bridge was inspired by the “Force Staff” tool from the popular game Dota 2, which allows users to force the movements of objects across its virtual world.

Nervos claims its trustless architecture simplifies the steps needed to execute cross-chain transfers, describing other bridges as needing the deployment of “a new asset on the target chain, registering the address on Ethereum, and specifying the relationship between transferring assets” to achieve inter-chain functionality.

By contrast, developers do not need to make any integrations to access Force Bridge, as Nervos’ bridge requires users only to deploy the ERC-20 to initiate asset transfers — with CKB’s native support for ERC-20 smart contracts requiring no further steps for contract execution. Nervos co-founder, Kevin Wang, said:

“Interoperability has been and continues to be a main focus of the Nervos team as we develop our infrastructure to support next generation DeFi applications.”

Ethereum users can access Force Bridge directly from their wallet. The team hopes Ethereum developers will look to the Nervos network to expand their DApp ecosystem and user base. 

Ethereum’s surging success amid the third-quarter DeFi boom and December launch of the Eth2 beacon chain has inspired many prominent blockchain projects to unveil bridges between their own networks and Ethereum.

On Nov. 24, Ava Labs unveiled its Avalanche-Ethereum bridge, which was developed by ChainSafe as part of its Avalanche-X grants program. In August, PureStake received a grant from the Web3 Foundation to develop cross-chain functionality between Ethereum and Substrate-based smart contracts parachain Moonbeam.

Many projects are seeking to establish cross-chain architecture beyond Ethereum also, Chorus One securing a grant to build a bridge between Celo and Cosmos in November.