Bridging and interoperability is one of the biggest problems in the space. The need for scalability increases the amount of teams taking a crack at this issue, resulting in more chains. Now we are seeing more appchains, and social layer chains, protocols that don’t really warrant their own blockchain on a technical level but opt to go this route for sovereignty or social cohesion reasons. As more new chains emerge, whether standalone or L2/L3s, liquidity is fragmented, strengthening the demand and need for bridging services.
The interoperability problem is definitely complex, with different attitudes toward solving it seen when analyzing distinct protocols’ own approaches. Following Wormhole’s $W airdrop, there’s some increased attention and scrutiny on bridges right now, especially around their valuations relative to $W.
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Background on Across
Across Protocol is an interoperability protocol powered by intents. Across is built/incubated by UMA, an optimistic oracle protocol used to verify blockchain data, currently securing some ~$779M. Across was originally planned to be an L2, before pivoting to become a bridge to make better use of the UMA oracle’s offerings.
When it comes to restaking, UMA Oracles aligns with AVS today with plans to support more volume by allowing more frequent repayments, which would improve capital efficiency for relays. Nick, CTO at Across, recognizes the potential for accessing restaked $ETH to increase economic collateral. This could lead to faster repayments, and peak the team’s interest in exploring the use of TVL behind the EigenLayer for bridges.
Potential restaking opportunities aside, Across is actively shipping on multiple fronts. Just a couple of days ago, a new partnership with UniswapX was announced. Of course, the most relevant news circulating around Uniswap right now is the wells notice that they were issued by the SEC, but that will have little, if any, impact in this context. The collaboration aims to share fillers across protocols, leverage their advantage in auctions and intents, and settle those intents on Aross, where they have a bridging advantage.
Across has also received a lot of support in their most recent proposal to receive 1M ARB as a part of the Arbitrum LTIP. This proposal will end on April 16th, with an overwhelming ‘For’ vote tally as of now. In the month of March, Across Protocol saw ATH bridging volumes, at ~$1.14B+. Volume isn’t the only metric that is elevated on Across, users are pushing a lot of transactions through, with a record high ~24k intents-filled transactions going through on April 4th.
Background on Connext
Connext is a modular protocol for securely passing funds and data between chains. Over time, the protocol has evolved towards scalability and interoperability, pioneering the use of intents to simplify the UX across chains.
Currently, the team’s goal is to reignite growth by solving problems for projects wanting to abstract away the chain experience, a pain point often mentioned by users and builders. Connext has found success in becoming the largest protocol by bridge TVL from Ethereum and one of the largest by volume, viewing it as validation for their long-term vision.
An important offering of Connext is xERC-20s, an open token standard on Etheruem. It blends fungiblity, liquidity, and sovereignty, all while being natively crosschain. The team believes it would be optimal for more and more protocols to adopt this standard, as its strength grows along with the number of protocols and chains using it.
Background on Hyperlane
Hyperlane is a permissionless interoperability layer built for the modular blockchain stack. Hyperlane is an open framework for interoperability, aiming to increase the scalability and demand for crypto, emphasizing the importance of addressing scalability issues for crypto’s future success. According to the protocol’s Co-Founder, Jon Kol, the motivation for building Hyperlane was to unify all chains seamlessly through a permissionless system.
When it comes to security, Hyperlane opts for a model where an external provider ensures security for message passing. Hyperlane allows for the integration of various state attestation or proof modules to adapt to the latest security standards. Thorough review and security-conscious development practices are applied by the team.
The team outlines some key upcoming developments for Hyperlane, including new forms of economic security, efforts to make the protocol easier to deploy on new chains, andr various applications building with Hyperlane. The team has recently hinted at upcoming launches but refrains from revealing too much to avoid spoiling marketing plans. One notable partnership already under Hyperlane’s sleeve is their integration with Mitosis, a modular and multichain liquidity protocol. The two protocols aim to join forces to provide ‘Scalable Cross-chain Liquidity’.
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