Torsten from Pendulum presents Spacewalk, a decentralized bridge connecting Stellar to Polkadot through Pendulum parachain. The bridge uses a novel vault-based architecture with collateralization and a Stellar Oracle to ensure security comparable to Stellar consensus.
Torsten, CTO of Pendulum, explains Spacewalk, a bridge from Stellar to Polkadot designed with three core principles: true decentralization through unlimited permissionless vaults, trust minimization via economic incentives and slashing, and censorship resistance. Unlike traditional multi-signature bridges limited to 20 signers, Spacewalk uses multiple collateralized vaults operated by independent actors. The Stellar Oracle component proves security equivalent to Stellar consensus by forwarding Tier 1 validator messages to Pendulum. Spacewalk is implemented as a Polkadot pallet, making it reusable across parachains. Pendulum itself is a Polkadot parachain launching early next year, built by SatoshiPay (which operates three Tier 1 Stellar validator nodes) to serve as the central stablecoin and DeFi hub on Polkadot.
