Skip to main content
A normal payout carries both chains’ Merkle roots inside the parties’ co-signature, so the roots are vouched for by the two traders. Some paths have no co-signature: a cancel, a forfeit, recording that a trade settled. For those, each chain needs another way to know the other chain’s root. That’s what the RootAnchor contract holds.

​
What an anchor is

The anchor service reads each chain’s latest finalized MMR root and publishes it to the RootAnchor contract on the other chain. A published root becomes usable only after the route’s anchor delay: 5 minutes on soak. The delay gives time to spot and revoke a wrong anchor before any contract relies on it.

​
What uses anchors

Normal settlement never uses an anchor.

​
If the anchor service is unavailable

Settlement carries on as normal. The paths in the table wait: if the anchor service is unavailable, refunds on the order chain wait until it returns, because the order chain has no clock of its own and only follows the ad chain’s proven outcome.

​
Checking an anchor yourself

An anchored root is the root the source chain’s own MerkleManager reports. You can rebuild it from the chain’s events with proofbridge-mmr and compare.