Blockchain ecosystems face a significant issue with liquidity fragmentation, as applications and assets are distributed across many public chains with each only accessible by subset of users. Cross-chain communication was designed to address this by allowing chains to interoperate, but existing solutions limit communication to directly connected chains or route traffic through hubs that create bottlenecks and centralization risks. In this paper, we introduce xRoute, a cross-chain routing and message-delivery framework inspired by traditional networks. Our design brings routing, name resolution, and policy-based delivery to the blockchain setting. It allows applications to specify routing policies, enables destination chains to verify that selected routes satisfy security requirements, and uses a decentralized relayer network to compute routes and deliver messages without introducing a trusted hub. Experiments on the chains supporting the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol show that our approach improves connectivity, decentralization, and scalability compared to hub-based designs, particularly under heavy load.

翻译：区块链生态系统中普遍存在流动性碎片化问题，各类应用与资产分散部署于多条公有链上，每条链仅能被部分用户访问。跨链通信技术旨在通过实现链间互操作性解决该问题，但现有方案将通信限制为直接相连的链，或通过枢纽节点进行流量转发，从而产生性能瓶颈与中心化风险。本文提出xRoute——一种受传统网络启发的跨链路由与消息传递框架。该设计将路由寻址、名称解析及策略驱动传递机制引入区块链场景：允许应用指定路由策略，使目标链可验证所选路径是否满足安全需求，并通过去中心化中继器网络完成路由计算与消息传递，无需引入受信枢纽。基于支持区块链间通信协议的链上实验表明，相较于枢纽型架构，本方法在高负载条件下显著提升了连通性、去中心化程度与可扩展性。