Introduction
The Relay Protocol is a cross-chain payments system that connects users to relayers willing to perform onchain actions on their behalf. Relay’s design minimizes gas costs, enables rapid chain expansion, and maximizes capital efficiency all while remaining open and trustless. Such a system is particularly well-suited for low-value, high frequency cross-chain actions such as those expected in a world of chain abstraction.Background: Cross-Chain Relaying
In its current state, the Relay API is similar to other “intent-based” protocols like Across, where liquidity providers known as Relayers use their own capital to “fast fill” user requests to move between chains, and then rebalance using slow, expensive bridges under the hood. This design has two key advantages over typical bridging:- Speed - Because relayers are fronting their own capital, they can take on confirmation risk and fill optimistically, without waiting for global consensus
- Cost - Because rebalancing is done infrequently and in batches, the security cost of using bridges is amortized across many users
- User escrows funds on the origin chain
- Relayer fills the order on the destination chain
- Relayer later settles the order on the origin, to claim payment

- Instead of proving every fill with an oracle or cross-chain message, settlement is done optimistically, by assuming it is correct, and having a challenge period
- Settlement is done in large batches across the whole protocol, every 4 hours