HyperService is the first platform for building and executing decentralized applications (i.e. dApps) across heterogeneous blockchains. At the very high level, HyperService is powered by two innovative designs: a developer-facing programming framework for writing cross-chain dApps, and the blockchain-facing cryptography protocol that securely realizes those dApps on underlying blockchains. Within the programming framework, we propose Unified State Model (USM), a blockchain-neutral and extensible model to describe cross-chain dApps, and the HSL, a high-level programming language to write cross-chain dApps under the USM programming model. dApps written in HSL are further compiled into HyperService executables which shall be executed by the underlying cryptography protocol.

UIP (short for universal inter-blockchain protocol) is the cryptography protocol that handles the complexity of actual cross-chain execution. UIP is (i) generic, operating on any blockchain with a public transaction ledger, (ii) secure, the executions of dApps either finish with verifiable correctness or abort due to security violations, where misbehaving parities are held accountable, and (iii) financially atomic, meaning all involved parities experience almost zero financial losses, regardless of the execution status of dApps. UIP is fully trustless, assuming no trusted entities.

HyperService Architecture