About Holograph

Holograph is a digital asset composability protocol that enables asset issuers to mint Holographic assets, which are fungible and non-fungible tokens that exist natively on multiple blockchains. Creators, collectors, and developers use Holograph to mint holographic assets because it is the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to deploy and distribute value across the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Since launching in January 2023, Holograph has been used to mint millions of holographic assets, making it the most widely used protocol for natively multichain digital asset production and distribution.

The multichain thesis has become a realiy, with the recent surge in new L2s as proof. As this trend continues, one could imagine a thriving modular blockchain ecosystem consisting of thousands of execution enviroments, each one optimized to fit the needs of its users. One could also imagine that onchain interactions are minimized to simple one-click experiences, with more complex actions abstracted away from the user. Just as users should not have to care where their data is stored in the cloud, neither should users have to care on which network they are transacting.

However, the current approach to going multichain is broken for a number of reasons. For example, many apps simply redeploy an their contracts on another network. This approach is problematic as it fails to account for how assets to move between networks. Without native interoperability, assets remain trapped on the issuing network. This limits a users freedom to transact by locking them in to a specific ecosystem. Moreover, this approach requires developers to monitor not one, but multiple networks. This exponentially expands technical debt and complexity costs, increasing the likelihood of an exploit due to the need to index, update, and secure multiple app instances.

To solve this problem and achieve a fully modular and composable multichain reality, value needs to move natively between networks. Without this critical infrastructure, assets will remain fractured, a problem that only gets worse as more and more networks come onchain. It is for these reasons that Holograph was built.

Holograph rethinks cross-chain assets from first principles. Traditional "lock and mint" bridging methods are fundamentally flawed, resulting in the creation of risky synthetic assets that have been exploited for billions of dollars in stolen value.

Holograph employs a different approach that takes control of asset issuance away from risky bridges and gives it to individual users. Holograph achieves this by decoupling the value layer from the application and messaging layers, allowing assets to move freely between networks. This makes holographic assets unique from other interchain token standards in that they do not rely on any single security model. By taking a modular approach, security dependencies are minimized on account of Holograph’s ability to leverage any messaging protocol, forcing competition on security, not asset lock-in.

Holographic assets are the only interchain token standard that maintains data across networks. For example, fungible tokens (hFTs) minted with Holograph maintain the same contract address on all EVM environments, providing a clear and concise method for auditing locked liquidity. Non-fungible tokens (hNFTs) minted with Holograph maintain the same contract address and token ID on all EVM environments, enabling them to move between networks with perfect provenance.

Owing to this innovation, there is no need to pool liquidity, because only one instance of the asset can exist on any one network at a time. This is because Holograph leverages a reciprocal burn and mint mechanism, which can only be executed by the individual asset holder, as opposed to a risky bridge. The value add is paramount in terms of security, unifying liquidity, eliminating slippage, and preserving fungibility. No other interchain token standard achieves this level of cross-chain composability.

Holograph also supports the wrapping of existing fungible and non-fungible tokens (e.g., hETH, hAVAX, hMATIC, etc.). After wrapping, existing assets inherit all of the properties of holographic assets. Although wrapping existing assets is not as “pure” as natively minting them, holographically wrapped assets are still far superior to traditionally bridged assets by virtue of their native composability across any variety of EVM-compatible execution environment.

In addition to introducing a new crypto primitive, Holograph provides tools for asset issuers, which includes a command line interface, instant deployment infrastructure, and cross-chain asset indexing. Holograph's developer modules eliminate the need to build complex systems for every new project, enabling teams to focus on delivering the most value for their customers without having to manage and maintain elaborate multichain infrastructure.

Ultimately, the atomic nature of holographic assets make them the most composable method for secure cross-chain value transfer, allowing the multichain ecosystem to thrive at scale.