Chainlink, the leading decentralized oracle network for smart contracts on the blockchain, has announced today that their Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) has entered the Mainnet Early Access phase on a number of networks, including Ethereum and Optimism.

Chainlink’s CCIP is the next step in the project’s roadmap, and helps users to transfer assets and information across multiple blockchains, allowing for deeper collaborations, and more diverse blockchain ecosystems, especially for cross-chain applications.

With the multitude of cross-chain exploits happening over the past few years, Chainlink has taken a security-first approach in building out their CCIP, highlighting that bridges and other services for the transfer of digital assets are one of the most obvious weak points of Web3.

“If a dApp already relies on Chainlink for Price Feeds, then relying on CCIP for cross-chain interactions is an obvious choice. CCIP also features additional safety mechanisms that go above and beyond other cross-chain solutions, such as customizable rate limits on token transfers and a separate Active Risk Management (ARM) Network that monitors the validity of all cross-chain transactions.”

-Chainlink

The ability to send not only digital assets, but also arbitrary data, or information, across blockchains will also improve the feasibility of cross-chain decentralized finance applications, such as lending, rebalancing indexes, yield farming, and other complex multi-step, multi-chain tasks.

Established DeFi protocols Synthetix and Aave will be the first to trial the service, with full testnet access being made available to developers from July 20th onwards.

Also Read: Why I Think Vitalik Buterin Is Wrong: We Need a Cross-Chain Future

[Editor’s Note: This article does not represent financial advice. Please do your research before investing.]

Featured Image Credit: ChainDebrief