Hedera opens a draft proposal for a bridgeless cross-ledger protocol to public review

A Bridgeless Path Between Ledgers

@hedera has opened a draft proposal for its Cross-Ledger Protocol, or CLPR (pronounced "clipper"), to public review, marking a significant step in the project's governance process. The draft was filed to the Hiero GitHub on August 19 by Hashgraph's Richard Bair and Edward Wertz, alongside Hedera co-founder Leemon Baird, before @hedera issued a public call for community feedback on Tuesday.

CLPR is designed to enable cryptographically secured communication and token transfers between independent blockchain networks, all without bridges, pooled liquidity, or intermediary validator networks. Under the proposal, a Hiero network would verify proofs of another ledger's state directly, meaning no wrapped tokens and no bridge validator set would sit in between the two chains.

Traditional bridges introduce intermediary trust points whose compromise can result in total loss of funds. CLPR instead establishes trust directly ledger-to-ledger using state proofs. Because it eliminates single points of failure and preserves each chain's native consensus model, security assumptions are not weakened, and transfers complete as fast as the underlying networks reach consensus.

Known Risks and the Road to Approval

The authors are candid about what remains unresolved. The proposal names verifier compromise as the primary systemic risk and flags an outstanding queue-flooding vulnerability that must be addressed before any production deployment.

The protocol is designed to be chain-agnostic. On the public blockchain side, CLPR is being built to first support major networks, including Ethereum and other widely adopted public chains. Its initial deployment targets interoperability between HashSphere private enterprise networks and the Hedera public network, covering both Sphere-to-Sphere and Sphere-to-Hedera transfers.

Before CLPR can reach the hedera-hashgraph native network, the proposal must clear two governance hurdles: approval from the Hiero Technical Steering Committee and formal acceptance by Hedera. Hiero is an open-source distributed ledger project under the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust. That governance structure means the community review now underway is not ceremonial. Substantive feedback from the public comment period could shape the final specification before it advances.

Sources:
Hashgraph: CLPR, a new bridgeless standard for cross-ledger communication
PR Newswire: Hashgraph unveils three major announcements at HederaCon in Miami
Hiero Improvement Proposals on GitHub