SuperEx Educational Series: Understanding Hub-and-Zone Model

Today’s topic continues the exploration of the “multi-chain” ecosystem. As blockchain evolves from the “single-chain era” to the “multi-chain era,” a core set of issues is becoming increasingly prominent:

How do we scale without sacrificing security?
How do we enable interoperability without creating chaos?

As the number of chains increases and cross-chain demands surge, traditional point-to-point connection models are revealing serious flaws. In response, a more structured multi-chain architecture has gradually become mainstream — the Hub-and-Zone model.

Today, we’ll systematically explain what it is, why it matters, and how it’s reshaping the way the multi-chain world operates.

What Is the Hub-and-Zone Model?

The Hub-and-Zone model is a multi-chain network architecture whose core logic is straightforward:

One central chain (Hub) + multiple independent chains (Zones) → all Zones connect to the Hub, and communication between Zones happens through the Hub.

In other words, chains no longer connect directly to each other. Instead, they communicate through an intermediate coordination layer.

You can think of it like an airline hub system: cities don’t need direct flights to every other city; they just fly to the hub airport and transfer from there.

This creates a more structured and efficient connection system.

Looking deeper, this design solves the problem of “connection chaos” in the multi-chain era. If every chain connects directly to every other chain, the number of connections grows rapidly with the number of chains — driving up maintenance costs and security risks.

In the Hub-and-Zone model, each Zone only needs to maintain a single connection with the Hub. All cross-chain messages, asset transfers, and state verifications are centrally coordinated and routed through the Hub.

The Hub handles cross-chain communication verification and forwarding, while Zones focus on their own business logic and application development. This retains the independence and customizability of each chain, while enabling efficient interoperability through the central coordination layer.

From an architectural perspective, Hub-and-Zone is not just an upgraded version of a cross-chain bridge. It’s a more systematic approach to organizing network structure, offering a more scalable and structured operational framework for multi-chain ecosystems.

Before This Architecture, the Multi-Chain World Faced Two Major Issues

1. Security Architecture Was Highly Fragmented

Every new chain had to independently establish:

Its own validator set
Its own consensus mechanism
Its own economic security (via token market cap)

This meant every chain was reinventing the wheel. To launch a new public chain, you needed to write code, deploy nodes, attract enough validators to stake, and maintain a high enough token value to secure the network.

This resulted in:

Extremely high launch costs
Weak security for small chains
High risk of 51% attacks
Duplicated infrastructure and inefficiency

A more fundamental issue: security thresholds are dictated by capital scale.

High market cap chains are inherently more secure, while low market cap chains are inherently vulnerable. Many innovative chains don’t fail due to bad tech, but because they can’t afford the cost of securing their network, and eventually get eliminated.

The outcome: security becomes fragmented and inefficient. The ecosystem consumes a massive amount of redundant resources without achieving real shared security.

The Hub-and-Zone model directly addresses this: making security “centralized in provision,” rather than “independently built”.

2. Cross-Chain Connection Complexity Grows Exponentially

Now, let’s look at the second issue — cross-chain connections.

With 10 chains and point-to-point connections: 45 independent bridges needed.
With 20 chains? 190 connections.
With 100 chains? 4,950 connections.

The more chains there are, the faster the number of required connections explodes.

This leads to:

Engineering complexity
Huge number of deployed contracts
Version mismatch between cross-chain protocols
A wider attack surface
Cross-chain bridges becoming high-risk vulnerabilities

In fact, over the past few years, most major security incidents have involved cross-chain bridges. The reason is simple: the more connections, the more potential vulnerabilities.

Point-to-point models can work with a small number of chains, but when multi-chain becomes the norm, this model becomes unsustainable fast.

Hub-and-Zone Does Something Very Smart

It prevents every chain from connecting to every other chain. Instead, all chains connect to a single security and routing core:

Zone A → Hub
Zone B → Hub
Zone C → Hub

Communication between Zones is verified and forwarded by the Hub.

The result: each chain only needs to build one connection. Cross-chain complexity is reduced from exponential to linear. The security logic becomes centralized and clear.

This is an architectural optimization, not a simple feature upgrade.

If you look deeper, this design changes not just “how connections are made,” but the entire organizational structure of the multi-chain network.

In a point-to-point model, each new chain must establish communication with every existing one. Connection count grows quadratically, and the system becomes increasingly complex and hard to maintain.

In the Hub-and-Zone model, each new Zone only needs to connect to the Hub. The network maintains a star topology, no matter how large it grows.

The first change this brings is that scalability is redefined.

The growth of network scale no longer leads to structural chaos, but simply adds one more access point. Developers can focus on innovation within their own chain’s business logic, without having to divert energy to massive cross-chain adaptation work.

The second change is that the security model becomes more unified.

As the security core, the Hub can centrally verify cross-chain messages, asset states, and consensus proofs. Security logic is no longer scattered across dozens of bridge contracts, but instead unified within a core layer that is auditable and upgradeable. This not only reduces the attack surface, but also improves the consistency of security strategies.

The third change is that system governance becomes clearer.

When cross-chain validation, routing rules, and fee mechanisms are all concentrated at the Hub layer, the governance structure becomes easier to design and adjust. Parameter changes no longer require coordination chain by chain, but instead take effect uniformly at the core layer.

In essence, Hub-and-Zone is not about “adding one more central chain,” but about introducing a “network operating system.” Zones focus on applications and use cases, while the Hub focuses on security and communication. The division of labor is clear, and the boundaries are well defined.

This is a structural upgrade. It turns multi-chain from a loosely stitched collection into an organized, hierarchical, rule-based network system.

It enables:

Security to be shared
Connections to be simplified
Expansion to grow linearly
Systemic risk to be controlled

At a time when multi-chain is becoming the trend, the emergence of the Hub-and-Zone model is, in fact, inevitable. Because when the number of chains begins to grow explosively, only structured network design can support true long-term evolution.