Rahul Sethuram: Optimistic Bridges, Cross Chain Communication, & Engineering at Connext
Today, we have Rahul Sethuram, CTO & cofounder of Connext: a trust-minimized cross chain communication protocol that makes blockchains composable. We discuss optimistic bridge design, Connext’s engineering & design process, Rahul’s favorite non-EVM tech, & deep dive how complex cross chain operations work on Connext.
On the Devs Do Something podcast, we bring you technical discussions with some of the best and brightest engineers in all of web3. Today, we have Rahul Sethuram - CTO & cofounder of Connext.
Connext is building the first fully trust-minimized Crosschain Communication protocol to make blockchains composable.
Rahul has been in the space for the better part of 5 years - he started his career at tesla and worked in various startups business before getting into crypto. In this episode, you’ll hear more about his journey through the proverbial idea maze as he iterated his way into building Connext, and you’ll also get an inside look into the technical side of building cross chain infrastructure.
In this episode, we hit on a ton of fascinating technical topics: you’ll hear us walk through optimistic bridge design, Connext’s engineering & design process (including how they navigated multiple re-writes), Rahul’s favorite non-EVM tech in the space, & we’ll even walk through the full lifecycle of a cross chain operation on Connext.
If you’re a web3 engineer or work alongside engineers, we think you’ll get a lot of value from this one.
00:00 Intro
3:13 How Rahul got into Web3
6:18 Connext origin story
9:00 The interoperability trilemma
10:29 Optimistic bridges
14:40 Walking through the lifecycle of a cross chain transaction using Connext
22:42 Cross chain callbacks and “asynchronous” solidity
27:14 Design patterns that Rahul is proud of (including a cool custom errors implementation)
29:46 Behind the scenes insight on how Connext iterated from their initial state channels implementation to their current model
34:49 How Connext handles development cycles
36:10 The Connext approach to managing security and protocol maintenance
39:12 Upgradable contracts vs full immutability
40:43 Beyond the EVM
45:28 Issues with validity proofs in cross chain infrastructure
48:53 Web3 tech that Rahul is excited about
50:41 Cross chain MEV and arbitrage opportunities
52:43 Rahul’s long term vision for the industry
Links
Connext: https://www.connext.network/
Rahul: https://twitter.com/rhlsthrm
The Interoperability Trilemma: https://blog.connext.network/the-interoperability-trilemma-657c2cf69f17
Optimistic Bridges: https://blog.connext.network/optimistic-bridges-fb800dc7b0e0
Problems with Validity Proofs When Used in Bridging: https://blog.connext.network/validity-proofs-are-not-effective-for-bridging-blockchains-85b5e3b22a35
