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This Issue Is Powered By Polygon 💜. Check out the new hyper-scalable DeFi hub emerging on Polygon zkEVM.

• LI.FI is a developer-focused middleware solution connecting 20 EVM chains & Solana, aggregating liquidity from 15 bridges, 30 DEXs & solver networks. It uses an advanced algorithm to find the best route for swaps and bridging transactions across chains. LI.FI has done $1.9B in volume since inception and its product portfolio features white-label B2B solutions that allow same/cross-chain swapping and contract calls for use cases like liquidity rebalancing, zaps, and NFT purchasing.

• 120+ protocols & enterprises have integrated LI.FI for swaps + cross-chain strategies including Summer.fi, DeFi Saver, payment portals like Gnosis Pay, Superfluid & on-ramps like Kado. has likely found PMF among wallet providers, with ~6M new users from 7/10 top wallets poised to use it soon.

• Jumper.exchange (by LI.FI) helps users swap & bridge assets at best rates. It has done $1.4B+ volume, 1.6M+ txs from 300K+ users in a year. It enables cross-chain swaps by linking bridges (15) with DEXs (30), a feature which is gaining traction – over 30% of LI.FI's monthly txs now include swaps.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Jumper offers a simple UX for bridging by integrating Connext and Stargate’s messaging components (contract calls) to enable one-click cross-chain swaps. Ex: swapping ETH on Ethereum to ARB on Arbitrum via Jumper involves bridging ETH using Connext, passing swap callData and executing the swap on Arbitrum via 1inch, all in one tx. This simplifies what usually takes 3 steps and bridge relays into a quick 27 second interaction – offering a fast and convenient way for users to move across chains.

• Socket is an interoperability protocol which powers seamless asset & data transfers for apps across blockchains. It also provides a bridge aggregator for wallets to move assets across chains. Currently, 375K wallets have moved over $1.36B worth of assets from 1.29M transactions through the socket bridge.

• Usage of Socket's bridge continues to be steady. While the number of transactions and active wallets using Socket's bridge may be declining over time by 14% and 20% WoW, Socket's bridge data this week had enabled a 16% increase compared to last month.

• The chain with the most assets bridged to is Ethereum. 31,000 wallets had enabled $355M worth of assets, followed by Arbitrum ($287M) and Optimism ($245M). Meanwhile, Polygon PoS has the highest number of wallets using the bridge (134k)—more than that of Arbitrum (124k) and Optimism (103k).

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: The highest bridged volume within a single transaction enabled by Socket was made from Ethereum to Polygon on 23rd May 2023. It involved a transfer of $5.74M USDC.

• Across protocol is a cross-chain bridge for L2s and mainnet Ethereum secured by UMA’s optimistic oracle. Across processed $405M in volume over the past 2 months, gaining market share against its competitors (10% to 22%) with zkSync Era being a major driver of Across’ increased bridge volume. Across optimizes for low fees which is slightly more expensive than theoretical minimums while UMA’s oracle allows for <1 minute transfers. This appears to be attracting fee/time-sensitive users.

• Across also commands 78% (ATH) of fast bridge aggregator (e.g. Bungee) volume with Stargate 2nd at 15%. Aggregator volume is one approach to comparing cost & speed in the market on the assumption that users prefer the lowest cost, fastest option.

• Across average fill times by relayers is 48 seconds, which is 20% and 94% lower than Stargate and Hop, respectively. This appears to validate Across relayer incentive approach by a ‘fast fill’ fee to relayers risk their own funds to bridge assets.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: The Across team tested gas consumption of 0.1 ETH bridged to Optimism over several implementations to analyse/compare gas costs. The etherscan transaction shows 66,125 gas was used on the deposit side using Across which was 55% lower than OP Canonical, 49% lower than Hop, and 83% lower than Stargate.

• Axelar is a blockchain interoperability network that relies on PoS consensus. It has facilitated 904k interchain transfers since its inception, connecting over 50 EVM and Cosmos chains. More than 200K unique users have bridged nearly $6.65B across chains using Axelar-powered protocols. Over 383k unique addresses have been involved as deposit and recipient addresses. Axelar began with interchain transfers and then introduced General Message Passing (GMP), unlocking cross-chain messaging.

• With the introduction of GMP, Axelar's usage experienced a significant surge, going from 18K monthly bridges in Jan. to nearly 100K in Aug. Satellite and Squid, which are utilized for interchain swaps, recorded 340K and 475K transactions, respectively, while other dApps that used GMP had fewer than 90K transactions.

• Squid recently surpassed a bridged value of $500M. The volume of bridges and users saw growth from May to September, with a slight decline in October. However, it still shows promising signs, with the daily new-to-recurring user ratio increasing and a growing trend in the average and median bridge sizes.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Axelar connects EVM to Cosmos. As this transaction shows, a user transferred nearly 500 wstETH (over $1 million) from Ethereum to Neutron through Squid. We can see more similar transactions from and to EVM and Cosmos chains.

• Synapse is a widely used cross chain bridge & interchain network. Since inception, its 1.87M users (defined as addresses) have done $42B in volume and bridged 2.8M NFTs. Projects like GMX and DeFi Kingdoms use Synapse's inter-chain network to make their tokens, NFTs & apps interchain.

• Unique monthly addresses using Synapse has 4xed from 50k/month in Q1 of 2023 to 200k/month last month. Key drivers have been partnership growth(GMX, DeFi Kingdoms, etc) and new chains like Base.

• One notable trend in the Synapse ecosystem as of late: L2s overtaking alt-L1 EVM chains. L2 volume has increase from 46% in August to 61% In October, marking the first time L2s did more bridge volume then alt-L1s. This shift was driven by Arbitrum growth and the launch of Base.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Synapse X, allows users to bridge tokens even if Synapse doesn't incentivize pools with the token. In this transaction, the user bridged sUSD, on the backend Synapse X finds the cheapest route(bridge & swaps included). The cheapest route was swapping sUSD to nUSD and then bridging it for the user.

• Hop Protocol has created an L2 bridge experience that has helped 1+ million wallets onboard more than $4 billion into the L2 ecosystem & has accounted for 2.5+ million transfers across all chains. Hop has supported many of the L2 ecosystems on the day of their launches. The protocol has consistently enabled users to send cross-chain transfers every month, in times of high market stress & times of low volatility, as shown by the monthly breakdown chart and the cumulative total.

• Hop's Sybil detection system processed 500 submissions from 50+ individuals, eliminating 10k+ sybil attackers from its airdrop & saving over $5M in other projects' airdrops. The example sybil cluster submission below identified 97 sybil addresses linked to a central account, removing them from airdrops.

• Hop protocol and its users have paid 595 ETH in fees paid directly to L2 sequencers, helping create a more robust, secure, and efficient cross-chain ecosystem.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Hop protocol has facilitated a number of cross-chain transfers that exceed a million dollars each. Here is a $2.5 million cross-chain transfer from Polygon to Ethereum that can be highlighted among them.

• Chainlink Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) addresses the interoperability challenge among different blockchain networks, enabling seamless communication and asset transfer across networks. There were 4,048 CCIP TXs in October, down 52% M/M. 44% of TXs are initiated on Ethereum, while 37% are on EVM-compatible blockchains (15% on Polygon, 14% on Avalanche, and 8% on BNB), and 19% on are Ethereum L2s (13% on Optimism, 3% on Base, and 3% on Arbitrum).

• Monthly CCIP Revenue was $14,062 in Oct. 2023, down 59% M/M. CCIP TXs initiated on Ethereum account for 4% of revenue, while EVM-compatible blockchains account for 55% (Avalanche 25%, Polygon 25%, BNB 5%) and Ethereum L2s account for 41% (Optimism 29%, Base 5%, Arbitrum 6%).

• Synthetix's share of CCIP TXs and Revenue is down from 100% in July and August 2023 to 83% and 91%, respectively, in Oct. 2023. Looking at the complete history of CCIP, Synthetix accounts for 19018 of 20700 CCIP TXs (92%) and $99,912 of $110,335 CCIP Revenue (91%).

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: On Sept. 15, 2023, Chainlink Labs moved 6,949,999 LINK from a noncirculating supply wallet to its Binance: Deposit address. The funds were moved to Binance 14 shortly thereafter, which seems to indicate a sale of the LINK. To date, Chainlink Labs' Binance: Deposit address has received 71.80M LINK ($444.35M), which represents 34.73% of the 206.76M LINK moved by Chainlink Labs into circulation.

• Activity has been heating up across all of the L2s, with Arbitrum cross the 3M ETH bridged mark. Close behind, zkSync has also passed 2.2M ETH bridged over. Optimism has 632k ETH bridged over.

• On unique wallets, over 1 million Starkware wallets have bridged, while 2.5 million wallets have bridged over to zkSync. In the last week alone, 37,585 wallets deposited over to zkSync.

• Scroll in its past three weeks has seen $14M in value bridged over to its chain. Finally, for more details on L2 bridge activity, check out this thread we recently published on the subject.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Jaredfromsubway.eth's MEV bots are bringing in more than 100 ETH in profit per day.