My thoughts about the @RelayProtocol, one of the most used (and - IMO - bad) protocols for interop and why I think the Ethereum community should make a strong stance against such designs ⚠️⚠️⚠️ 🧵

First of all - why it's so popular ? Simply because it's fast and cheap. It was created literally to optimise fees at the expense of transparency, decentralisation and security. It sits in a very bad spot in the design tradoff matrix, completly against crypto ethos

There's no way for an independent observer to retrieve even basic on-chain data - one need to rely on a trusted offchain API. Emitting events with useful information costs gas, being opauqe is simply cheaper. That's really bad for transparency

The protocol is completely centralized and you need to trust operator with your funds. Not only the operator can steal or seize your funds, they openly admit in the documentation that they will do so if you breach some unspecified "global laws". They apparently do it for your own good

One of the more "interesting" features of the protocol is the ability to generate dynamically the "deposit addresses" - similarly to what CEXes do. They even admit that they may or may not work, as is the case with all trusted off-chain tech

They literally lie in your face in the documentation:

As opposed to equally centralised CEX-es they don't bother with any ToS, any contact info, they seem to be completely anonymous. From the PoV of any regulator they act as a centralised anonymous money transmitter and could be easily seen as an offchain mixer

Alltogether if we were to rate it, it would score the rock-bottom on security and decentralisation. And yet they are promoted by @lifiprotocol , @arbitrum amogst many others. Why ? 😰😰😰