Analyst | Edited by Carol | Produced by Tong | PANews
If you look at the development of DeFi, you can see a clearer path. Since the second half of last year, DeFi took the lead in breaking out on Ethereum under the incentive of liquidity mining. However, with the increase in interaction requirements, the high fees of Ethereum have become an important factor restricting the development of the ecosystem, which objectively promotes the arrival of the DeFi multi-chain era. Since the second quarter of this year, many projects have begun to deploy protocols on Layer 2 and other public chains. However, under the multi-chain structure, the DeFi ecology of each chain is still relatively independent.Multi-chain interoperability has become an inevitable need to adapt to development.Under such a background, the cross-chain bridge has become a new outlet to follow the DeFi trend and has attracted market attention.
What is the current status of cross-chain bridge development? To this end, PAData analyzed the on-chain data of 14 major cross-chain bridges, including Arbitrum Bridges, Avalanche Bridge, and Solana Wormhole, and found that:
1. At present, the main cross-chain bridges on the market are mostly two-layer extended cross-chain bridges, and they are mainly built on Ethereum. In addition, there are some chain-specific cross-chain bridges. These cross-chain bridges also mainly aim to realize the interconnection with Ethereum, which may help to drain the DeFi ecology of its original chain.
2. The current 14 cross-chain bridgesThe total locked position has reached about 13.180 billion US dollars, which is currently about 6.26% of the total locked-up amount of DeFi.However, the overall pattern is significantly different, Among them, Polygon Bridges, Fantom Anyswap Bridge, Avalanche Bridge, and Arbitrum Bridges all have locked positions exceeding US$1.5 billion, but other than that, most other cross-chain bridges currently have locked positions of less than US$100 million.
3. The recent development of the cross-chain bridge is very fast.In the last 30 days, the lock-up amount has increased by more than 35%, 8 of which exceeded 100%, and the Arbitrum Bridges with the highest increase reached 1370.32%.
4. At present, the transaction scale of the cross-chain bridge is still small. Dates of 8 cross-chain bridges monitored in the last 3 monthsThe average transaction volume is about 22.4 million US dollars, and the median is only 6.08 million US dollars.And cross-chain bridges with higher average daily transaction volume have stronger daily transaction volume volatility, which means that theseThe average daily transaction volume of cross-chain bridges may be overestimated due to the impact of a single event.
5. 13 cross-chain bridgesThe number of independent addresses in September has soared to 127,600, a month-on-month increase of over 103%.The total number of independent addresses in the first week of October has reached 34,600. It is expected that the user scale for the whole month of October will increase steadily on the basis of September.
6. The number of independent addresses of most cross-chain bridges in the past three months has shown a continuous growth trend. Among them, the independent addresses of Arbitrum Bridges, Optimism Bridges and Near Rainbow Bridge have the largest month-on-month growth in September, reaching 3452.87% and 538.12% respectively % and 181.75%.
7. In the case of a minimum increase of 35% in the lock-up amount of the cross-chain bridge in the last 30 days,The lock-up amount of the original network of each cross-chain bridge has increased and decreased, and the cross-chain bridge has not brought consistent positive effects.first level title
Layer 2 and chain-specific cross-chain bridges account for the majority
What is a cross-chain bridge? In short, it is a tool for free circulation of various assets on different blockchains. Referring to the general classification method, according to the type of cross-chain bridge construction, the cross-chain bridges on the market can be roughly divided into Layer 2-specific (Layer 2-specific), chain-specific (Chain-specific), application-type ( Application-specific) and Generalized.
At present, there are many layer-2 extended cross-chain bridges, and 6 of the 14 cross-chain bridges in the scope of this observation are Layer 2 type cross-chain bridges. Among them, most of them are Layer 2 networks of Ethereum, such as Arbitrum Bridges, Optimism Bridges, Polygon Bridges, etc., and there are also Layer 2 networks of Bitcoin, such as RSK Token Bridges.
In addition, there are many chain-specific cross-chain bridges. There are four in this observation, including Avalanche Bridge, Harmony Bridges, Near Rainbow Bridge and Solana Wormhole. The chain-specific cross-chain bridge can realize the interoperability between two independent Layer1 blockchains, usually one blockchain is constructed for another specific blockchain.
There are 4 application-specific cross-chain bridges within the scope of this observation, but they can actually be classified into 2, namely Anaswap Bridge and Optics Bridge. An application-type cross-chain bridge can provide interoperability for more than two blockchains, but users can only access all other blockchains connected to the cross-chain bridge in the application. Anaswap’s official website says it currently supports 20 chains, while Optics has just been launched for less than a month. It is currently only deployed on Celo, Ethereum and Ploygon, but according to the official introduction, it will also be deployed on Polkadot, Kadena, Solana, Near and Cosmos in the future .
The general-purpose cross-chain bridge is similar to the application-type cross-chain bridge, that is, it can realize the interoperability of two or more blockchains, but the difference is that the general-purpose cross-chain bridge does not need a specific application as the interface, but Integrated in the form of modules, etc., the typical representative is the IBC protocol of Cosmos. Although the general-purpose cross-chain bridge is not included in the scope of this observation, its subtype—asset-specific cross-chain bridge has long been widely used, and its main mechanism is to encapsulate (Wrapped) assets so that they can be Flow in a specific network, such as WETH, WBTC, etc.
The type of cross-chain bridge has determined the network it connects to a certain extent.For example, the two-layer extended cross-chain bridge is mainly constructed to solve the efficiency problem of the Layer1 network, so it is generally only used for interaction with Layer1. For example, the Layer2 cross-chain bridge of Ethereum usually communicates with Ethereum, but the exception is RSK Token Bridge, as a side chain of Bitcoin, also communicates with Ethereum.
With the development of the Ethereum DeFi ecology one step ahead, other public chains, especiallyMost of the emerging public chain-building special-purpose cross-chain bridges are aimed at realizing the interconnection with Ethereum, which is helpful for the drainage of its own DeFi ecology,first level title
The total lock-up amount of the cross-chain bridge exceeds 13.1 billion US dollars, and the daily average number of independent addresses in October is about 344
According to the monitoring of Dune Analytics, as of October 8,The total locked positions of the 14 cross-chain bridges have reached about 13.18 billion US dollars,At present, it is about 6.26% of the total lock-up amount of DeFi. Among them, the currentThe highest locked position is Polygon Bridges, which reached 4.632 billion US dollars.Secondly, the current locked positions of Fantom Anyswap Bridge, Avalanche Bridge, and Arbitrum Bridges have also exceeded US$1.5 billion, which are approximately US$3.134 billion, US$2.911 billion, and US$1.636 billion, respectively, forming the "second echelon". But other than that,Most of the current locked positions of other cross-chain bridges are less than 100 million US dollars.The overall pattern of differentiation is very obvious.
However, it should be noted that although most of the cross-chain bridges currently have low total locked positions, their recent developments have been rapid. The total locked positions of the 14 cross-chain bridges have increased by 62.23% in the last 30 days. From the perspective of a single cross-chain bridge, except that the Optics Bridge has been online for less than a month and the statistics are excluded, the otherThe lock-up amount of 13 cross-chain bridges has a minimum increase of more than 35% in the last 30 days, and 8 of them have an increase of more than 100%.Among them, Arbitrum Bridges has the largest increase in locked positions, with an increase of 1370.32% in the last 30 days. The locked positions of Fantom Anyswap Bridge and Moonriver Anyswap Bridge have also increased significantly, reaching 591.33% and 306.27% respectively in the last 30 days.
From the perspective of transaction volume, the most monitored cross-chain bridges (combined counts of the two entrances of Arbitrum)The average daily trading volume in the past 3 months is about 22.4 million US dollars.However, this is affected by Avalache Bridge and Fantom Anyswap Bridge. The average daily transaction volume of the two in the past three months has reached 120 million US dollars and 52.73 million US dollars respectively, which is much higher than other cross-chain bridges. If you look at the median value that can better represent the average level, the average daily transaction volume of the eight cross-chain bridges in the past three months is actually only about 6.08 million US dollars. And it is worth noting that the cross-chain bridge with higher average daily transaction volume has larger standard deviation of daily transaction volume, that is, the stronger the volatility, which means that theseThe high average daily transaction volume of cross-chain bridges is likely to be overestimated due to the extremely high transaction volume on certain days.For example, during the first mining period of a new project, new funds will be attracted to enter through the cross-chain bridge. On the whole, the current transaction scale of the cross-chain bridge is still small.
also,
also,The current main trading assets on the cross-chain bridge also include a variety of stable coins,For example, USDT, USDC, DAI, etc., the total locked positions exceeded 2.2 billion US dollars, 1.1 billion US dollars and 70 million US dollars respectively, accounting for 17.25%, 9.03% and 5.74% respectively. Another major trading asset is the governance tokens of various DeFi applications, such as AAVE and SNX, etc., whose total locked positions reached 180 million US dollars and 146 million US dollars, accounting for about 1.37% and 1.10% respectively. In addition, affected by the vigorous development of the DeFi ecosystem on Polygon and the extensive demand for cross-chain oracles, the total amount of locked positions of MATIC and LINK on the cross-chain bridge is also relatively high.
From the perspective of user scale, the recent increase in the number of independent addresses of cross-chain bridges is also very significant. The total number of independent addresses of the 13 cross-chain bridges in July was about 47,100, and that in August was about 62,800.September has soared to 127,600,The total number of independent addresses in the first week of October has reached 34,600. If estimated based on the current user scale, the number of independent addresses in October will be slightly higher than that in September, reaching about 148,200. If the number of independent addresses in September is 103% The same month-on-month growth estimate, the number of independent addresses in October may exceed 250,000.
The number of independent addresses of most cross-chain bridges in the past three months has shown a continuous growth trend.Among them, the independent addresses of Arbitrum Bridges, Optimism Bridges and Near Rainbow Bridge in September increased the most month-on-month, reaching 3452.87%, 538.12% and 181.75% respectively, and the total number of independent addresses of Optimism Bridges in September was also the largest, reaching 55,000 . In addition, the total number of independent addresses of Avalanche Bridges in September was second only to Optimism, reaching 31,500, and achieved a relatively large increase of 39.15% month-on-month, showing a good momentum of development.
first level title
Arbitrum’s DeFi lock-up volume has surged recently, and the lock-up repetition rate of multiple cross-chain bridge infrastructure networks has decreased
The construction of cross-chain bridges has theoretically increased the liquidity of various assets. Then, with the rise of cross-chain bridges, has DeFi achieved scale expansion?
According to the DeFi lock-up amount and changes in the original network of the cross-chain bridge, it can be seen that in the case of a minimum increase of 35% in the lock-up amount of the cross-chain bridge in the last 30 days,The lock-up amount of each original network has increased and decreased, and the cross-chain bridge has not brought consistent positive effects.
Among them, Arbitrum and Moonriver’s DeFi lockups in the last 30 days have both increased by more than 4000%, currently standing at US$1.31 billion and US$210 million respectively, and the lockups of cross-chain bridges during the same period have increased by about 1370% and 306%, respectively. The development of the cross-chain bridge may have promoted the ecological prosperity of the original network. But Polygon and BSC are the opposite. The DeFi lock-up amount in the last 30 days has decreased by 10.72% and 5.39% respectively, and is currently US$4.58 billion and US$17.38 billion respectively. About 42%, the development of the cross-chain bridge may not have brought too many changes to the ecology of the original network, and there is even the possibility of funds fleeing and overflowing through the cross-chain bridge.
If we take into account the repetition rate of locked assets, we can find that when the locked amount of the cross-chain bridge and the total locked amount of the ecology both increase,The effectiveness of the growth of the total locked-up amount of DeFi in each original network is not completely the same.Among them, the repetition rate of Avalanche’s lockup amount in the last 30 days has increased by 145.38%, and is currently about 22.33%, which means that the actual growth efficiency of its recent total lockup amount may be lower than that of other public chains. In addition, for Fantom, Optics, Optimism, and xDAI with statistical data, the repetition rate of locked positions in the last 30 days has all declined, and Fantom and xDAI have dropped by more than 20%, which means that their recent total locked positions have actually increased. higher efficiency.
The repetition rate of locked-up assets is related to the combination of DeFi. The more combinations, the higher the repetition rate, and the lower the net lock-up efficiency of assets. On the contrary, the lower the repetition rate, the higher the net lock-up efficiency of assets , only in this case, the growth of cross-chain bridge lockup may mean that the funds actually introduced are more effective.
