Teleporting Assets
One of the main properties that Polkadot and Kusama bring to the ecosystems is decentralized blockchain interoperability. This interoperability allows for asset teleportation: the process of moving assets, such as coins, tokens, or NFTs, between chains (parachains) to use them as you would any other asset native to that chain. Interoperability is possible through XCM and SPREE modules, which together ensure that assets are not lost or duplicated across multiple chain.
WALK-THROUGH VIDEO TUTORIAL ABOUT TELEPORTING ASSETS
See this technical explainer video to learn how to teleport assets from Kusama to the Asset Hub. The same procedure applies to teleporting between Polkadot and the Polkadot Asset Hub, or between any other parachain.
How Teleports work
As you can see from the diagram above, there are only 2 actors within this model: the source and the destination. The way in which we transfer assets between the source and the destination are briefly summarized in the numbered labels on the diagram, and are explained in more detail below:
Initiate Teleport
The source gathers the assets to be teleported from the sending account and takes them out from the circulating supply, taking note of the total amount of assets that was taken out.
Receive Teleported Assets
The source then creates an XCM instruction called ReceiveTeleportedAssets containing as parameters a) the receiving account and b) the amount of assets taken out from circulation. It then sends this instruction over to the destination, where it gets processed and new assets are put back into the circulating supply.
Deposit Asset
The destination deposits the assets to the receiving account. The actions of taking out from the circulating supply and putting back into the circulating supply show the great flexibility that an XCM executor has in regulating the flow of an asset without changing its circulating supply. Assets are transferred to an inaccessible account in order to take them out from circulation. Likewise, for putting assets back into circulation, assets are released from a pre-filled and inaccessible treasury, or perform a mint of the assets. This process requires mutual trust between the source and destination. The destination must trust the source of having appropriately removed the sent assets from the circulating supply, and the source must trust the destination of having put the received assets back into circulation. The result of an asset teleportation should result in the same circulating supply of the asset, and failing to uphold this condition will result in a change in the asset's total issuance (in the case of fungible tokens) or a complete loss/duplication of an NFT.
Teleporting Tokens using the Polkadot-JS UI
Troubleshooting
If you do not see "Accounts > Teleport" in [Polkadot-JS UI], the source chain that you have selected does not support teleportation yet.
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