Recursive

Overview

There are multiple significant flaws to direct connections which increase latency and cost, and make intent-based filling impossible. Recursive connections dramatically increase the capabilities of a connection.

Statelenses

With direct connections, two connected chains verify each other’s consensus and use membership proofs to verify each other’s packets. For routing, a hub chain can leverage packet-forward middleware to do multihop routing. PFM has many technical limitations. Statelenses are a better alternative to PFM, initially described by Union’s R&D team here.

Using statelenses, ClientUpdates leverages a recursive storage proof to fetch the client state held by another chain.

This allows chain B to accept storage proofs over chain A without needing to dispatch packets to Union, reducing query latency.

Advantages

• Theoretical subsecond latency.
• Netting of packets and acknowledgments to minimize membership proofs.
• Intent-based filling.