The road to neuron🧠

neuron🧠 is a cutting-edge cross-chain bridge designed to facilitate the fast and private transfer of Ethereum native assets between various blockchain networks, built by a small group of experienced and passionate web3 developers.

Unlike the more standard native bridges from L1 to the chain in question, neuron🧠 offers higher speed and cost-effectiveness through capital efficiency. Rather than waiting 15 minutes to 7 days for a bridging operation, anyone can now enter and exit a chain in minutes making it an ideal choice for users engaging in activities like arbitrage, airdrop hunting, yield farming, or exploring new opportunities across different chains.

The development and initial launch of neuron🧠 has involved multiple stages of careful planning and execution, considering factors such as security, code audits, trust, UX, liquidity, candidate chains, and finality to name but a few.

Having spent the last few weeks building in stealth, it’s with great excitement that we can start to talk about our plans and roadmap more widely now, first with everyone we met during Eth CC in Paris last week and now more widely.

Our roadmap has three distinct phases, starting building the foundations ultimately leading to testnet launch (we are at this point currently) followed by a soft mainnet launch and then gearing up towards a larger liquidity event to fully collateralise our bridges for our full scale launch later in the year.

Phase 1: Building foundations and testnet launch

When building the initial foundations for the protocol, we were focused on setting up a solid foundation that would work as efficiently whether two chains of hundreds of chains were integrated. Building cross-chain architecture comes with some unique challenges and technical trade-offs between speed, security, trust and user experience.

The neuron🧠 team strongly believe in building the most trust-less solutions utilising the best tech to ensure user funds remain self custodial. In a space with frequent trauma over hacks and malicious platforms, we were very clear we would not compromise security of user funds in any of our design decision making.

For a deeper dive into how neuron works read our docs.

We are now at the first phase of our launch, having built the fast bridging protocol focused on security and throughput we evisaged. To get to this stage we have:

1. Built smart contracts and infrastructure: Smart contracts were developed to handle asset locking, unlocking, and transfer processes securely on different chains.
2. Performed vigorous security audits: The smart contracts and codebase underwent rigorous security audits by reputable firms to identify and issues or vulnerabilities, ensuring a high level of protection for user funds. We are always open to more eyes on our contracts so please see our Bug Bounty program.
3. Deployed on Testnets: neuron🧠 smart contracts have been deployed on several testnets, including Ethereum Goerli, Ethereum Sepolia, Scroll Alpha, Arbitrum Goerli, Taiko Alpha3, and Linea. This allowed early users to test the functionality thoroughly, providing valuable feedback to resolve any issues.

Phase 2: Mainnet soft launch (soon)

We are close to our second phase which marks the controlled mainnet launch of neuron🧠! At this point our bridges will be made available on a select number of chains with reduced liquidity. The primary objectives of this phase are:

1. Testing Mainnet Operations: The mainnet launch allows the neuron🧠team to assess how the bridge performs under real-world conditions with real asset transfers. This phase serves as a critical stress-test to identify any bottlenecks or vulnerabilities in the live environment.
2. Liquidity Testing: By launching with reduced liquidity, the team can observe how the bridge handles asset transfers and whether it meets the expected speed and efficiency benchmarks.
3. Technical and Marketing Efforts: During this phase, technical and marketing efforts are intensified to expand the support for additional chains and tokens. This helps in increasing the bridge’s reach and accessibility to a broader user base.
4. Security Measures: While the testnets already provided insights into security, the mainnet launch allows the team to closely monitor security protocols and make necessary adjustments to ensure the protection of user assets.

Phase 3: Full Launch with Deep Liquidity (late 2023)

The final phase marks the complete launch of neuron🧠, where the bridge is open for widespread use across multiple chains. Key aspects of this phase include:

1. Enhanced Liquidity: neuron🧠 aims to provide deep liquidity across all supported chains. This ensures that users can execute transactions rapidly and seamlessly, without worrying about liquidity constraints.
2. Seamless Cross-Chain Transfers: With the full launch, neuron🧠 aims to offer users a smooth and user-friendly experience, enabling them to move funds between different chains with ease.
3. User Adoption and Expansion: The team will focus more on driving user adoption by promoting neuron🧠’s benefits and unique features. We will also continue to expand support for additional chains and tokens.
4. Security and Continuous Improvement: Even after the full launch, the neuron🧠 team remains committed to ongoing security assessments and iterative improvements to keep the bridge safe, efficient, and up-to-date with the evolving blockchain landscape.

What next?

In the coming days we will be completing a final round of QA, code reviews and audits before moving to Phase 2 : our mainnet soft launch.

You can keep up to date by following us on Twitter and chatting to us on Discord.