Cross-Consensus Message Format (XCM)

What started as an approach to cross-chain communication, has evolved into a format for Cross-Consensus Communication that is not only conducted between chains, but also smart contracts, pallets, bridges, and even sharded enclaves like SPREE.

Overview of XCM: A Format, Not a Protocol​

XCM is related to cross-chain in the same way that REST is related RESTful. XCM cannot actually send messages between systems. It is a format for how message transfer should be performed, similar to how RESTful services use REST as an architectural style of deployment.

XCM aims to be a language communicating ideas between consensus systems, hence, "Cross-Consensus" with the following properties:

  • Generic and extensible for use with fee-free and gas-metered smart contract platforms, community parachains, trusted interactions between system parachains and their relay chain, and more.

  • Interacting with a system whose transaction format is unknown.

    • XCM is well-versioned, abstract and general and can be used as a means of providing a long-lasting transaction format for wallets to use to create many common transactions. It is extensible and, in turn, future-proof and forwards-compatible.

  • Highly efficient to operate in a tightly constrained and metered environment, as is the case with many chains.

INFO

XCM is not designed in that every system supporting the format is expected to be able to interpret any possible XCM message. Practically speaking, one can imagine that some messages will not have reasonable interpretations under some systems or will be intentionally unsupported.

Example Use-Cases​

  • Request for specific operations to occur on the recipient system.

  • Optionally include payment of fees on a target network for requested operation.

  • Provide methods for various token transfer models:

    • Remote Transfers: control an account on a remote chain, allowing the local chain to have an address on the remote chain for receiving funds and to eventually transfer those funds it controls into other accounts on that remote chain.

    • Teleporting: movement of an asset happens by destroying it on one side and creating a clone on the other side.

    • Reverse-Based Transfer: there may be two chains that want to nominate a third chain, where one includes a native asset that can be used as a reserve for that asset. Then, the derivative form of the asset on each of those chains would be fully backed, allowing the derivative asset to be exchanged for the underlying asset on the reserve chain backing it.

XCM Tech Stack

XCM can be used to express the meaning of the messages over each of these three communication channels.

Cross-Consensus Protocols​

With the XCM format established, common patterns for protocols these messages are needed. Polkadot implements two for acting on XCM messages between its constituent parachains.

VMP (Vertical Message Passing)​

There are two kinds of vertical message-passing transport protocols:

  • UMP (Upward Message Passing): allows parachains to send messages to their relay chain.

  • DMP (Downward Message Passing): allows the relay chain to pass messages down to one of their parachains.

Messages that are passed via DMP may originate from a parachain. In which case, first UMP is used to communicate the message to the Relay Chain and DMP is used to move it down to another parachain.

XCMP (Cross-Chain Message Passing)​

XCMP allows the parachains to exchange messages with other parachains on the same Relay Chain.

Cross-chain transactions are resolved using a simple queuing mechanism based around a Merkle tree to ensure fidelity. It is the task of the Relay Chain validators to move transactions on the output queue of one parachain into the input queue of the destination parachain. However, only the associated metadata is stored as a hash in the Relay Chain storage.

The input and output queue are sometimes referred to in the Polkadot codebase and associated documentation as ingress and egress messages, respectively.

XCMP-Lite (HRMP)​

While XCMP is still being implemented, a stop-gap protocol (see definition below) known as Horizontal Relay-routed Message Passing (HRMP) exists in its place. HRMP has the same interface and functionality as XCMP but is much more demanding on resources since it stores all messages in the Relay Chain storage. When XCMP has been implemented, HRMP is planned to be deprecated and phased out in favor of it.

NOTE

A stop-gap protocol is a temporary substitute for the functionality that is not fully complete. While XCMP proper is still in development, HRMP is a working replacement.

XCMP Design​

XCMP IS CURRENTLY UNDER DEVELOPMENT AND THE DETAILS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

However, this overall architecture and design decisions are more stable:

  • Cross-chain messages will not be delivered to the Relay Chain.

  • Cross-chain messages will be constrained to a maximum size in bytes.

  • Parachains are allowed to block messages from other parachains, in which case the dispatching parachain would be aware of this block.

  • Collator nodes are responsible for routing messages between chains.

  • Collators produce a list of egress messages and will receive the ingress messages from other parachains.

  • On each block, parachains are expected to route messages from some subset of all other parachains.

  • When a collator produces a new block to hand off to a validator, it will collect the latest ingress queue information and process it.

  • Validators will check the proof that the new candidate for the next parachain block includes the processing of the expected ingress messages to that parachain.

XCMP queues must be initiated by first opening a channel between two parachains. The channel is identified by both the sender and recipient parachains, meaning that it's a one-way channel. A pair of parachains can have at most two channels between them, one for sending messages to the other chain and another for receiving messages. The channel will require a deposit in DOT to be opened, which will get returned when the channel is closed.

XCMP Message Format​

For an updated and complete description of the XCMP message format please see the xcm-format repository on GitHub.

The Anatomy of an XCMP Interaction​

A smart contract that exists on parachain A will route a message to parachain B in which another smart contract is called that makes a transfer of some assets within that chain.

Charlie executes the smart contract on parachain A, which initiates a new cross-chain message for the destination of a smart contract on parachain B.

The collator node of parachain A will place this new cross-chain message into its outbound messages queue, along with a destination and a timestamp.

The collator node of parachain B routinely pings all other collator nodes asking for new messages (filtering by the destination field). When the collator of parachain B makes its next ping, it will see this new message on parachain A and add it into its own inbound queue for processing into the next block.

Validators for parachain A will also read the outbound queue and know the message. Validators for parachain B will do the same. This is so that they will be able to verify the message transmission happened.

When the collator of parachain B is building the next block in its chain, it will process the new message in its inbound queue as well as any other messages it may have found/received.

During processing, the message will execute the smart contract on parachain B and complete the asset transfer as intended.

The collator now hands this block to the validator, which itself will verify that this message was processed. If the message was processed and all other aspects of the block are valid, the validator will include this block for parachain B into the Relay Chain.

Check out our animated video below that explores how XCMP

https://storage.googleapis.com/w3f-tech-ed-contents/XCMP.mp4

XCVM (Cross-Consensus Virtual Machine)​

An ultra-high level non-Turing-complete computer whose instructions are designed in a way to be roughly at the same level as transactions.

A message in XCM is simply just a programme that runs on the XCVM: in other words, one or more XCM instructions. To learn more about the XCVM and the XCM Format, see the latest blog post by Dr. Gavin Wood.

How To Make Cross-Chain Transfers​

A tutorial on downward, upward, and lateral transfers can be found here.

Resources​

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