Wormhole is a leading interoperability platform that facilitates seamless communication, including the exchange of data or value between different blockchain networks. At the heart of this platform’s security and enabling its versatile functionality stand the Guardians. As a critical component of the ecosystem, they ensure the reliability and integrity of cross-chain interactions processed on Wormhole’s interoperability infrastructure. In this article, we will explore why the Guardians matter, what they do, and who they actually are.
Why Do Guardians Matter?
Guardians play a key role in verifying messages across different blockchains. For instance, when an event occurs on Chain A, Chain B needs to know about it to unlock and process the corresponding cross-chain action or transaction on the destination chain. This is where the Guardians come in. They observe the event on the source chain (messages published to Wormhole core contracts and emitted to Guardian network), sign the payload, and combine their signatures to create a Verified Action Approval (VAA), which acts as proof that the event has been observed and agreed upon by a majority of the Wormhole network. For a more comprehensive, technical overview, check the visual below.
Think of VAAs as a group of trusted experts that are credibly capable of checking and verifying an event independently and that can be trusted to only communicate proven statements. Once a majority agrees, their collective approval ensures the event's authenticity and allows it to be recognized across chains. This process underpins the multichain interoperability that Wormhole’s various products provide, ensuring secure and reliable cross-chain communication.
Who Are the Guardians?
In line with the metaphor of “trusted experts” above, the Guardians are reputable and well-known entities within the blockchain space, consisting of leading validator companies. These entities are responsible for monitoring blockchain states and ensuring the integrity of cross-chain transactions, which they are credibly capable of doing, while also being trusted to be honest actors. The current set of Guardians can be seen on the Wormhole Dashboard (or below), and they include some of the most trusted names in the industry.
Each Guardian operates independently, observing and signing messages before combining their signatures with others. This decentralized approach ensures that no single point of failure exists, enhancing the overall security and robustness of the Wormhole network.
The Guardian Network
The Guardian Network as the collective of Guardians serves as Wormhole's oracle component and forms the backbone of the entire ecosystem. It operates based on five key design considerations:
- Decentralization: Control is distributed among multiple parties, preventing any single point of failure.
- Modularity: Different components like the oracle network (Guardians), relayers, and applications are kept separate, allowing independent upgrades and modifications, ensuring the Wormhole stack is future-proof and versatile.
- Chain Agnosticism: Supports various ecosystems including EVM, Solana, Algorand and more. It can support any chain, regardless of consensus mechanism, virtual machine, or even supported programming languages.
- Scalability: Capable of handling large transaction volumes and securing significant value at scale and without suffering throughput bottlenecks on the message verification layer.
- Upgradeability: Wormhole is built to adapt to the rapidly changing Web3 landscape, enabling updates to stack components without disrupting existing integrations.
The Guardian network is the key infrastructure layer of the Wormhole stack as it powers cross-chain message verification, as well as the verification of cross-chain queries and asset bridging across the Wormhole product suite, including Wormhole Messaging, Queries and Connect. The Guardians also act as the validators of Wormhole Gateway, a Cosmos SDK-based blockchain that connects the Wormhole ecosystem to the IBC universe.
Get Involved with Wormhole
The Wormhole ecosystem is a vibrant, fast growing community of builders and users that are shaping the future of Web3 together and you can be a part of it.
If this sounds intriguing, join the Wormhole Discord and engage with the community, it’s the easiest way to get started!
If you want to learn more about interoperability and Wormhole’s technology, check out our Documentation here!
About Wormhole
Wormhole is the leading interoperability platform that powers multichain applications and bridges at scale. Wormhole provides developers access to liquidity and users on over 30 of the leading blockchain networks, enabling use cases that span DeFi, NFTs, governance, and more.
The wider Wormhole network is trusted and used by teams like Circle and Uniswap. To date, the platform has facilitated the transfer of over 40 billion dollars through over 1 billion cross-chain messages. To learn more about Wormhole, Twitter, Discord, or (blog)[https://wormhole.com/blog/].