Comparison
Tesseract vs Across Protocol
Optimistic relayer races vs. atomic settlement.
Across is an intent-based bridge that uses competitive relayers to fill user requests on the destination chain, then settles those fills back to relayers using UMA optimistic oracle on a slower cadence. Fast UX, but the security model is optimistic, not atomic.
Tesseract is a focused atomic-swap protocol for Ethereum L2s. Seven small Vyper contracts, one Rust relayer, no off-chain trust quorum. Commit-reveal MEV protection and a 2-block resolution delay are in the base layer.
Where Tesseract is structurally different.
5 concrete, technical reasons — not marketing one-liners.
- 01
Across relies on UMA's optimistic oracle dispute window (~2 hours) for relayer reimbursement. If UMA is compromised or stalls, relayer-funded liquidity is at risk. Tesseract has no optimistic phase — resolution is binary and on-chain.
- 02
Across is a one-way fast bridge: A → B. Tesseract is an atomic group: A ↔ B ↔ C in one settlement. Multi-hop routes that would require chaining multiple Across transactions are a single atomic operation in Tesseract.
- 03
Tesseract's commit-reveal protects users from MEV. Across fills are public intents the moment they're posted, which is exactly the surface relayer-MEV bots target.
- 04
Tesseract has no centralized hub chain. Across uses Ethereum as the settlement hub, so every cross-chain transfer ultimately pays L1 gas. Tesseract's coordination overhead is negligible — costs scale with the chains you actually touched.
- 05
Tesseract supports order-book style swaps with partial fills, not just bridge transfers. Across is a bridge; Tesseract is a multi-rollup DEX primitive that happens to span chains.
Ready to compare in code, not slides?
Clone the repo and run the 135-test suite. Both protocols are MIT/permissive; both invite scrutiny.