The fast messenger chain

Paloma is a fast, permissionless, Cosmos-SDK blockchain that moves messages securely, between any other blockchains. Paloma is designed for developers who wish to manage bi-directional messages between chains in a scalable and secure manner. Smart contracts cannot self-execute state change on the blockchains on which they are deployed. As such, they require that state changes, and the accompanying computation of new logic, be sent to the smart contract from another state. Today these state changes are commonly run by centralized, custom-designed, closed-source programs, human-multisignature key arrangements, or low-end, multi-party computation circuits. The complexity and richness of these approaches is limited by the lack of engineering resources and developer-friendly environments that encourage sophisticated state and logic-call development.

To solve this problem, Paloma aims to bring multichain, gas-optimized, and scheduled, messages managed by a permissionless validator set that manages both chain security and message security. In the Paloma protocol, validators fulfill two crucial roles. They secure the network through the Proof of Stake mechanism and also act as Pigeons (Relayers) who relay bi-directional, scheduled messages between Paloma and any other supported blockchain. In Paloma, validators are not able to opt-out of message-relay work, without exiting the active-set.

Since every active validator is also an active Pigeon, all messages are secured through consensus and the validators' stake. Validators must run nodes on every Paloma target chain and have the infrastructure and available funds to send messages on every chain. If these requirements are not met, validators will be jailed and their stake unbonded. Builders on Paloma can rest assured that their messages are secure and will always arrive on schedule to the target chain.

Paloma aims to make blockchain messaging ubiquitous and extremely easy for developers. Paloma messages are bi-directional and may be repeated or scheduled. Developers can write smart contracts in any language accepted by their target blockchain. Developers can control state change logic execution with Paloma's Cosmwasm language. Paloma's gas price oracle is unique. Paloma aims to be a decentralized and global gas price oracle. Pigeons observe gas prices and provide quotes for message delivery. These quotes include a query or message relay fee for the Pigeon Relayers who will execute the message. Pigeons will price in the gas price risks, so developers will have dependable message delivery costs analysis for any target chain and any message size.