ONβ231: Bridges π
Coverage on Bridging Flows, Across, LI.FI, & Synapse
May 10, 2024
![ONβ231: Bridges π](https://ournetwork.ghost.io/content/images/2024/05/c4dc466e-1bd9-4661-890e-058f3598ee63_2050x1024.png)
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- Artemis tracks a significant number of bridges across the crypto ecosystem. As crypto sentiment turned and users became more optimistic, bridge volumes have increased since September 2023. Bridge volumes are up ~70% on a weekly basis from $178M in weekly flows to $304M.
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- Looking at bridge volume as a percent of total, Across Protocol has seen impressive growth, going from ~4% of weekly activity to ~20%. Other bridges have fluctuated based on market narratives with Base and Wormhole rising and falling.
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- Calculating net flows across all bridges over the past three months reveals funds have been leaving Ethereum and flowing into L2s like Arbitrum, Optimism and Base. As crypto narratives change, we expect flows to follow.
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- π¦π¬ Tx-Level Alpha: On Apr. 25, Arbitrum saw one of the largest outflows ever in a single transaction involving Ether.Fi. An address bridged EtherFi ETH from Arbitrum to Ethereum in search for additional yield. As restaking continues to attract more attention, we expect large flows like this to continue.
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π₯ Arjun Chand | Website | Dashboard
π LI.FI crosses $7B in all time volume, ~9M txs, 1.8M users β Announces integration with Robinhood.
- LI.FI is a multi-chain liquidity aggregator which provides a single API to Fintech companies and DeFi projects for their bridging and swapping needs. This is achieved by tapping into liquidity from bridges, DEXs, DEX aggregators and solvers. LI.FIβs distribution network is growing, with over 250 projects now integrating LI.FI, including big names like Robinhood, MetaMask, Binance wallet, Phantom, OpenSea, Layer3, and Hyperliquid. To date, LI.FI has processed over $7B in volume and close to 9M txs.
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- LI.FI is experiencing sustained growth, with consistent increases in volume, transaction count, active wallets, and user acquisition. In April 2024, transactions facilitated through LI.FI experienced a significant surge, exceeding 2.5M transactions β a 113% increase from the previous month.
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- Jumper, the flagship app on LI.FI, offers a one-stop interface for swapping and bridging in the multi-chain ecosystem. Demonstrating strong growth over the past six months, Jumper has processed over $3.65B in volume, facilitated 2.57M txs, and attracted 102k new users during this period.
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- π¦π¬ Tx-Level Alpha: LI.FI solves a key problem in the multi-chain ecosystem
β
this is clear from the volume generated via apps that integrate it. Take Spark for exampleβ
in 10 days since integration, the lending platform has done $86M+ in volume. Notably, many of these txs have been for millions. Here, a user on Spark exchanged ~$11M sDAI for DAI on Ethereum using LI.FI. The tx happened with the click of a button and only required $8.34 in gas fees as LI.FI efficiently routed the tx through Odos, which provided the best rate.
- Synapse RFQ is now live on 4 chains: ETH, ARB, OP, and Base. Post 4844, Synapse quotes on whale transactions are significantly better than the competition (with a leading aggregator as the comparison) on all but one route when bridging 100k USDC. The gap varies from a couple of bps from Base -> ETH to several percentage points (thousands of dollars) on other routes (OP -> Base, Base -> ARB).
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- Synapse RFQ launched in early March on a few chains. since then, more asset support has been added, more chains have been integrated, and recently the bridge module surpassed $100m in bridge volume. Synapse RFQ now accounts for nearly 100% of intra L2 volume for Synapse Protocol, with significantly better quotes and speeds than liquidity based bridging.
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- During the first quarter of 2024, Synapse Protocol accrued $3.22M+ fees for the DAO, up nearly 100% from the same period last year. Annualized, this normalizes to ~$15M in organic fees for the protocol. As SynapseRFQ expands its set of chains, The DAO can vote to reduce emissions for liquidity based emissions, leading to long term capital efficiency and reducing reliance on liquidity bridging.
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- π¦π¬ Tx-Level Alpha: This is one of the earliest transactions on Base completed by SynapseRFQ. The user sent $622k to Arbitrum and paid less than $600 (.09%) for the transaction to be finalized in under 10 seconds. SynapseRFQ is cheap, 200x faster than CCTP, and can handle large volumes.
π₯ Owen Fernau | Website | Dashboard
- Across, a cross-chain bridge which uses an intents-based architecture, has had a blistering year going back to May 2023. Daily volume has begun to regularly cross the $30M mark starting in February 2024, a level not reached once in 2023. On May 9, Across generated $29M+ in volume, the highest among bridges, according to DeFi Llama.
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- Users can earn fees on Across by providing liquidity to the bridge. Across also chargers a "relay fee," which is given to the parties βrelayersβ who carry out a users' transfer. Combined, Across has generated over $10M in fees for its LPs and relayers.
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- Across' users have generally been split 50-50 across returning and new users
β
in 2024 as volume as picked up however, "old" users now regularly dwarf new users by a factor of 2-to-1. Overall, Across has generated 4.37M transfers across 1.40M addresses for an average of 3.12 transfers per wallet.
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