Router Nitro: Now Live on Mainnet

5 min readJan 25, 2024

The Power of Modular Interoperability unlocking a world of possibilities from cross-chain intent adaptors to an ecosystem of cross-chain dApps; notwithstanding the proposition of the most efficient bridge in the cryptosphere for the consumers

Our much-anticipated flagship dApp, Router Nitro, is now up and running on the mainnet–https://app.routernitro.com/swap. For the next seven days, transactions to any chain (except Ethereum) can be done at Zero bridge fees on Router Nitro

The bridge has been on tesnet for the past few weeks and has received immense love from the community. Following several rounds of stress testing, fine-tuning and optimisation, we’re finally taking the leap with our Cross-chain Intent-based modular Bridge. Here’s why you should be excited -

Cost-Efficiency: Router Nitro slashes transaction costs by about 60% over the incumbent bridge. That’s a huge saving for any project, especially in the blockchain space where gas costs are typically more than the transaction.
High-Speed & Secure: It is one of the fastest asset transfer bridges, offering subminute transaction finality while being highly secure.
Expanding Reach: Right now, it supports nine EVM and non-EVM chains. In the next 3–4 weeks, we’re doubling down by adding nine more chains to this list!
More Than Just Asset Transfer: Router Nitro goes beyond the basics by enabling instruction transfers along with assets. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for the DeFi space.
Underlying Technology: At its core, Router Nitro is built on an application-specific bridging construct powered by the Router Chain, bringing chain-level security to a Bridge.
Seamless UI/UX Experience: We’ve put a significant focus on making Router Nitro not just powerful but also incredibly user-friendly. The interface ensures a smooth and seamless experience, making complex cross-chain transactions feel effortless.

Discover More About Our Journey

Router Protocol has evolved from a cross-chain liquidity protocol to an aspiring standard for cross-chain interoperability. We’ve decentralised our solutions, especially with the development of Router Chain, a PoS-based blockchain for secure inter-blockchain communications.

The launch of Router Nitro is expected to expand ecosystem DApps, introduce intent-based adapters at scale, and deploy middleware contracts to enhance transaction speed. The future also holds exciting prospects with the integration of new blockchains and a focus on the evolving landscape of Layer-1 and Layer-2 solutions.

For more details, we invite you to check out our recent blog post, which covers Router’s overall journey and outlines our roadmap for the future.

The Dawn of Nitro is a tribute to the sunsetting Voyager

Voyager started as a cross-chain Proof of Authority (POA) bridge in our 2022 alpha mainnet, focusing initially on connecting just Polygon and Ethereum. But with the input and support of our community, we quickly expanded to support 12 chains.

In fact, after a few months of the release, it facilitated transactions worth close to $200 million. Voyager was released with various tools and a cross-chain widget that easily plugged into most DEXes, giving their users instant access to go to or come from multiple chains.

Voyager showcased the potential of cross-chain dApp that could be built with Router’s infrastructure. It laid the foundation for what we have now achieved with Router Nitro — a system that takes our successes to the next level, ensuring a more connected and efficient blockchain ecosystem.

Zooming Into the Future with a Nitro boost

The web3 landscape is dotted with an array of cross-chain bridges. These bridges, ranging from optimistic bridges to light client nodes, aim to address the persistent issue of liquidity fragmentation. However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that these solutions are grappling with their own set of challenges. High total value locked (TVL), latency, and gas prices are just a few of the hurdles that undermine their effectiveness. We’ve discussed these issues in more detail in this article for those interested in a deeper dive.

Amidst this backdrop, Nitro emerges as an ultra-low latency, trustless swapping engine. What sets Nitro apart is its trustless methodology for handling cross-chain asset transfers. This approach is secure and finely tuned for reduced latency and cost, especially when it comes to smart contract operations. If you’re curious about the nuts and bolts of this approach, we’ve covered it extensively here.

Moreover, with Nitro, we’ve integrated two additional safeguards to reinforce the ecosystem’s integrity. The first is a Price Oracle for Depeg Monitoring, ensuring real-time vigilance over asset value fluctuations. The second is the Community Pause Feature, empowering our user community to act swiftly in safeguarding the network.

A Catalyst to the Cross-chain Intent Framework

Router Cross-chain Intent Framework is a framework designed to simplify complex cross-chain workflows like staking. It converts ambiguous user intents into explicit, programmable intents, breaks down complex interactions into manageable sub-interactions, and provides a standard interface for dApps.

Nitro is the first CCIF-based dApp offering one-click swapping, any chain to any token–solving the inefficiencies and complexities of manual processes in executing blockchain intents. Nitro is also emerging as a powerful tool enhancing cross-chain capabilities.

For example, the pathfinder of StakeEase, a cross-chain (re)staking aggregator, is an extension of Nitro’s pathfinder algorithm, which enables the aggregator to find the best paths for bridging or swapping the user’s tokens. Following this, StakeEase employs a custom algorithm specifically designed to identify the most suitable restaking platforms for users, thereby optimising their overall experience.

Community Participation and Engagement

This is just the beginning of simplifying blockchain interactions, improving DeFi accessibility, and aiding in the development of new apps. The integration of Router Nitro as a bridging layer opens up a world of possibilities for dApps. It enhances their capabilities and aligns them with the future of blockchain technology, where seamless cross-chain interactions are the norm.

We encourage all our readers and community members to be amongst the first to try out Router Nitro. We will be very shortly announcing programs that will grant future ecosystem privileges not just at the Router but also to the ecosystem projects and partners

You can read more about Router Nitro in our whitepaper.