Supra, a cross-chain oracle project, has recently gained attention in the world of airdrop hunters and KYC providers. One of the reasons behind this surge in interest is Supra’s “Countdown to Blast Off,” a gamified Learn To Earn event that allows new users to learn about Supra’s latest features while earning SUPRA tokens in the process.

However, the project’s success isn’t solely attributed to its airdrop activities. Supra has secured over $24 million in a private fundraising round with contributions from prominent investors such as Coinbase Ventures, Animoca Brands, and HashKey. According to data from CrunchBase, Supra has undergone nearly ten funding rounds, amassing a total of $47.9 million, with the most recent round officially announced at $24 million.

While Supra’s financial backing is substantial, its presence in the oracle space has been relatively low-key. With curiosity and questions surrounding the project’s accomplishments, let’s dive deeper into Supra.

Introduction to Supra

Supra isn’t merely a cross-chain oracle product; it introduces the concept of an “IntraLayer.” Positioned as middleware, Supra integrates a suite of solutions, including oracles, Verifiable Random Functions (VRFs), and native cross-chain protocols, into a shared security infrastructure that bridges L1 and L2, Web2 and Web3.

1、 DORA Oracle

As for the oracle function, it may be more familiar to industry users at present. The common use case is to securely introduce cryptocurrency price data onto the chain, which is usually considered as a bridge to connect data on and off the chain. The representative solution for Supra in this area is DORA (Distributed ORacle Agreement).

When there are multiple sources of information that have not signed their data, we need a mechanism to aggregate all this information into a single representative value that can be put into the blockchain, while giving it some Byzantine fault tolerance. A Byzantine error is when a node is faulty and is either unresponsive or can maliciously violate a protocol.

In the absence of any Byzantine error, only a single node is needed to obtain information from multiple sources; But in the Byzantine error case, we will need multiple nodes.

When all nodes can provide a value as input, then when some of them are Byzantine nodes, the remaining honest nodes will agree and choose a single representative value to challenge it, a process known as DORA (Distributed Oracle Protocol) problem.

Technical details aside, the overall DORA oracle protocol has the following highlights:

● The possibility of Byzantine failures in data sources is taken into account;

● The DORA protocol is resilient to a higher percentage of Byzantine failures (51%), instead of the traditional 33% fault tolerance limit.

● The introduction of randomness in the design greatly limits the attack ability of attackers;

2、VRF — Verifiable Random Functions

VRFs are essentially random number generators. Randomness is a critical component in computational systems, especially in public key cryptography, and is indispensable for various cryptographic applications. Supra’s notable solution in this domain is DVRF (Distributed Verifiable Random Functions), a distributed verifiable random number scheme. While it may have slight disadvantages in computational efficiency, communication costs, and system complexity when compared to centralized VRFs, its cryptographic benefits significantly outweigh these limitations. Distributed VRF genuinely embodies the core principle of decentralization in blockchain technology.

3、HyperNova Cross-Chain Communication Protocol

The most difficult part of a cross-chain oracle is native communication with multiple chains. Native cross-chain communication means communicating using cryptograph signature algorithms of both chains to allow the smart contract to validate the data presented to it. Many chains use different encryption technologies — so it won’t be easy.

For this cross-chain capability, Supra built HyperNova, a “bridgeless” cross-chain design based on chain-to-chain crypto consensus that makes interoperability between blockchains more secure, reliable, and scalable.

As long as Supra is “aware” of Ethereum’s set of active validators, it can verify most of its consensus protocols. However, in order to pass this information from Ethereum to Supra, Supra needs to add a relay node that will simply forward the events of the source chain (Ethereum) while asking the validators of Supra to explicitly verify the validity of these events. In short, Supra cryptographically verifies Ethereum’s L1 consensus.

In the “multi-sign model,” the majority of the cross-chain bridge nodes need to be trusted to be honest and always do the right thing, while in the “relay model,” no relay bridge node needs to be trusted to ensure the correctness of the relay information, just to ensure that the relevant events on the source chain are not missing, censored, or delayed when they are passed to the destination chain. Therefore, the requirement to trust most honest nodes in the traditional “multi-sign model” is reduced to only one honest node in the “relay model”, also known as the “bridgeless” model.

Similarly, in the HyperNova “bridgeless” model, only the relay nodes are relied upon to forward the data rather than verify the correctness of the data. Therefore, only one honest node is required to ensure activity and censorship resistance. In addition, this can also avoid multiple rounds of consensus, resulting in faster execution.

Key Highlights of Supra

1、Compelling Narrative and Extensive Scope

Supra’s narrative is expansive and goes beyond being a mere oracle protocol. It positions itself as an IntraLayer, offering native vertical integration of oracles, randomness, and cross-chain functionalities. This comprehensive design makes Supra’s L1 blockchain a self-sufficient system, allowing users to perform most on-chain activities within the Supra ecosystem without the need to leave or rely on third-party oracles for real-world application data. Furthermore, Supra can function as a potent interoperability hub, connecting other blockchain ecosystems securely and in a decentralized manner.

2、Strong Research Capabilities and Commitment to Development

Supra has accumulated significant research experience and capabilities. The team established the Entropy Foundation in 2017, headquartered in Switzerland, with the goal of expanding smart contract and oracle capabilities. Supra Oracles is the flagship project of the Entropy Foundation. The team comprises professionals with extensive expertise in cryptography, enterprise integration, IoT solutions, DeFi, innovative consensus modeling, randomness research, and oracle research. Dr. Kate, Supra’s Chief Research Officer, is a key contributor to the KZG Commitments, a fundamental technology for many ZK Proof systems, which laid the foundation for Ethereum’s L2 scaling strategies. Notably, Supra isn’t a new project; it has been under development for nearly five years, demonstrating a commitment to research and development.

Supra’s Progress and Future Considerations

Supra is currently in the Mainnet Alpha phase. The DORA oracle is supported on more than 40 testnets and has been successfully deployed on 13 mainnets. The DORA oracle supports 120 price data sources, providing over 1.6 million data updates daily, with latency as low as 5–6 seconds, aiming for optimization at 2–4 seconds. The Verifiable Random Functions (DVRF) have been deployed on more than 25 testnets and are live on mainnets like Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, DFK Chain, Doge Chain, and Klaytn. The “HyperNova” cross-chain communication protocol and decentralized IFTTT automation service are upcoming releases.

In conclusion, Supra projects an image of accumulated knowledge and substantial potential. Its impressive network architecture and functional system, combined with the IntraLayer narrative, create anticipation for what it can achieve. The current enthusiasm for RWA and the long-term industry optimism for this segment contribute to the increased demand in the oracle space. Ultimately, the practical execution of Supra’s high theoretical expectations and the growth of its ecosystem partners will be crucial to watch for in the future.

References:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/2Zymq20kQgr-JA-VV9tQUg

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/j4yL8NfoG5WL-KTKUxreIw

https://www.odaily.news/post/5190166

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