OmniBridge: NEAR’s Universal Solution for Cross-Chain Liquidity

Today the NEAR ecosystem welcomes OmniBridge, next-generation cross-chain infrastructure to enable seamless asset transfers between NEAR and any blockchain. Powered by Chain Signatures—NEAR’s multichain transaction signing  system—OmniBridge eliminates the technical constraints of traditional bridge designs, delivering faster finality, lower costs, and enhanced scalability for cross-chain operations.

Expanding the NEAR Ecosystem

OmniBridge represents a significant expansion of NEAR’s cross-chain capabilities beyond the existing Ethereum-focused Rainbow Bridge. This new infrastructure:

• Establishes NEAR as a unified liquidity hub, enabling tokens to launch on any supported chain with NEAR as the underlying LP token
• Creates canonical pathways for asset flows between NEAR and major ecosystems, including Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Base, and Bitcoin
• Enhances capital efficiency in cross-chain liquidity provision, reducing fragmentation and improving market depth
• Facilitates seamless integration of NEAR-native assets into the broader DeFi ecosystem

Most bridges today rely on light client implementations, or smart contracts that verify data from other blockchains. These systems face inherent limitations with non-smart contract chains like Bitcoin and struggle with delayed transactions due to varying finality periods across chains as well as high computational costs.

To overcome these challenges, NEAR One developed OmniBridge, leveraging NEAR Chain Signatures—a state-of-the-art MPC system that enables secure cross-chain message verification. Built on the battle-tested infrastructure of the Rainbow Bridge, which launched in 2021 and never suffered a single security failure, OmniBridge extends these capabilities to the entire blockchain ecosystem.

Technical Architecture

NEAR OmniBridge operates through three core components:

1. Deterministic Address Derivation: Any NEAR account can mathematically derive a corresponding permanent address on other blockchains, ensuring consistent and secure cross-chain interactions that are easy for users to manage.
2. Bridge Smart Contract: A central contract on the NEAR network manages token locking and coordinates with the MPC network to request signatures for outbound transfers.
3. MPC Service: A decentralized network of nodes collaboratively generates secure signatures for cross-chain transactions without reconstructing a full private key, ensuring robust security thanks to threshold cryptography.

Launch and Integration

The first phase of OmniBridge deployment will integrate NEAR Intents, enabling structured message passing across supported chains. This integration allows for:

• Clear and verifiable cross-chain transaction paths
• Optimized routing for better capital efficiency
• Reduced settlement times across all supported chains
• Better composability for cross-chain DeFi applications

Following the initial launch, OmniBridge will undergo a gradual rollout of additional chain support, prioritizing major ecosystems based on user demand and technical readiness. 

Building on OmniBridge

OmniBridge’s open-source architecture creates new opportunities for developers and projects within the NEAR ecosystem:

• Cross-chain DEX implementations with unified liquidity pools
• Multi-chain stablecoins and yield aggregation platforms
• Chain-agnostic AI agent token use cases
• Interoperable consumer primitives 

Developers can find documentation and integration guides on docs.near.org, with support available via NEAR Chain Abstraction Telegram Group.

The introduction of OmniBridge marks a major milestone in NEAR’s mission to build a more interconnected and efficient blockchain ecosystem. By addressing the core challenges of cross-chain liquidity fragmentation, OmniBridge unlocks new possibilities for the next generation of blockchain applications and services.