Governance Cross-Chain Bridges by Aave

Published on: 27.08.2021

Aave introduced Aave Governance cross-chain bridges, a unique set of tools to enable true cross-chain governance on Ethereum.

An explanation of this new software is below, along with an announcement about the open-sourcing and decentralizing of the Aave user interface, for anybody to contribute and run to access the protocol.

🔸Architecture of the Cross-Chain Bridge

Let’s have a quick dive in the Aave Governance architecture — and how it can be extended to bridge its decisions affecting non-Ethereum based deployment of the protocol.

For any governance proposal, the key components of the Aave Governance architecture are:

The main governance contract, which allows users to create proposals and allows AAVE holders to vote on those proposals; as well as
The executor contracts, which implement and execute any proposal approved by AAVE holders through a time-lock (the time period of which varies based upon the particular proposal) and defines the parameters by which each specific proposal is implemented (if approved).

However, when any instance of the protocol is deployed on a network other than Ethereum, the only way in which a decision taken by the Ethereum-based governance can be applied is through a bridge from Ethereum to that network. Specifically, if Aave Governance’s decisions were to be applied to the Polygon instance of the Aave Protocol, then the community would have to put forth and implement cross-chain proposals. This would occur through a Bridge Executor Contract.

🔸Open Sourcing the Aave Frontend

In addition, today the codebase of one of the front-end interfaces to the Aave Protocol is being open sourced — that means that the code will be available to anyone and may be distributed and modified (subject to the terms of the license, discussed below).

The specific repositories being open sourced are:

Aave UI. Main front-end repository, located here.
UI caching server. Convenience server to optimize interactions with Ethereum nodes’ providers, located here.
Aave UI kit. Visual component used across the Aave UI, located here.

Open sourcing the front end will allow for additional inroads to the already-decentralized Aave Protocol. Such interfaces will augment the more-than-100 integrations that already provide access to the Aave Protocol, by allowing anyone to build an alternative front-end with a different or enhanced user experience. Open sourcing the code also will allow anyone to contribute and improve the current Aave UI.