Author: Frank, PANews
With the overall recovery of the DeFi boom in the crypto market, on-chain activities have surged simultaneously. In the process of chains communicating cross-chain, the role of cross-chain bridges cannot be ignored. The activities of cross-chain bridges not only reflect the warmth of on-chain activity but also are a true reflection of the diverse demands for activities across different chains. So, how have the leading cross-chain bridges performed this year? PANews conducted a comprehensive review.
Market panorama: Cross-chain transaction volume increases year by year, with stable transaction counts.
In terms of overall data for cross-chain bridges, active periods began in late 2024. The total cross-chain transaction volume in September 2024 was only about $18.6 billion, but by November 2024, this figure rapidly grew to $50 billion, an increase of about 188%. As we enter 2025, it remains at this active level.
Cross-chain trading volume change chart
In July, the highest cross-chain trading volume on-chain reached $56.1 billion, setting a new historical high. However, dissecting the other side of the data, we find that this increase in trading volume is largely due to large transactions. From the perspective of transaction counts, the monthly trading count in May 2024 reached 15.12 million transactions, and by November 2024, the transaction count remained around 14.47 million, without a significant increase despite the surge in transaction amounts. According to PANews calculations, in May 2024, the average single on-chain transaction amount was about $1,051, which grew to $3,489 by November 2024, marking an increase of 231%.
Cross-chain transaction volume change
The main reason behind this shift may be the fluctuations in popularity caused by public chains like Solana, Base, and BSC due to MEME coins, airdrops, etc., from 2024 to early 2025, leading to frequent changes in on-chain small funds. Since April 2025, the heat of these themes has declined, but more well-capitalized mature players have entered the market, causing on-chain activities to gradually shift from high-frequency, small-scale interactions to larger-scale capital deployment and transfer.
Another interesting piece of data is that Starknet's cross-chain activity appears to be quite active. Both inflows and outflows rank second, with a trading volume of about half that of the Ethereum mainnet.
Track landscape: The traffic competition among top protocols and applications
In terms of cross-chain messaging protocols, LayerZero remains the leading project today. In the past month, the cross-chain transaction amount completed through LayerZero reached $4.965 billion, accounting for almost half of the total cross-chain transaction volume for the month. Circle CCTP's transaction volume ranked second in the past month, reaching $3.8 billion, closely related to the growing popularity of USDC. Additionally, the established cross-chain protocol giant Wormhole ranked third, while the emerging Hyperlane ranked fourth.
In terms of cross-chain bridge applications, Hyperliquid has become the most active cross-chain bridge recently, with a monthly trading volume of approximately $4.965 billion. Although Hyperliquid's cross-chain structure is very simple, only facilitating the flow of stablecoins between Hyperliquid and Arbitrum, the current trading heat of Hyperliquid and the absence of a native stablecoin mean that the vast majority of deposits and withdrawals must rely on cross-chain bridges. This has propelled Hyperliquid to capture the leading position in cross-chain bridge applications.
Top cross-chain bridge rankings
Core player review: Differentiated competition among the three major protocols
The cross-chain bridges ranked third to fifth are Across, Stargate, and deBridge. These three cross-chain bridges better represent the market situation of cross-chain bridge protocols.
Across:
From the data perspective, Across has a trading volume of approximately $1.4 billion over the past month, with about 20,000 transactions. Across is a cross-chain bridging protocol based on UMA's Optimistic oracle. In March this year, it completed a $41 million financing round led by Paradigm, with participation from well-known institutions such as Coinbase Ventures, Bain Capital Crypto, and Multicoin Capital.
In May, Across connected to the BSC ecosystem and implemented one-click cross-chain swaps on PancakeSwap and KyberSwap. With the popularity of the BSC chain, its heat has continued to rise. In July, the V4 version upgrade was released, reducing the new chain support time from "weeks to months" to "hours". The current trading volume level is about $46 million per day, approximately double the average level at the beginning of 2024. Across's average single cross-chain transaction size is about $4,718, supporting 19 chains.
From an ecological development perspective, Across's current strategy is to capture leading DEXs (PancakeSwap, KyberSwap) and sink 'cross-chain' into 'a step of swapping coins', using V4 to accelerate 'new chain speed'.
Stargate:
Stargate is a composable liquidity transfer protocol built on the LayerZero messaging layer. Its trading volume in the past month is approximately $990 million.
In 2025, Stargate's focus is on introducing optimization measures and the key Hydra mechanism in the V2 version. Hydra expands liquidity from mature "core" chains to emerging L1/L2 by locking native assets in the core pool and minting fully homogeneous tokens on the target chain. This innovation allows new chains to connect directly to Hydra without having to set up liquidity pools everywhere, receiving liquidity of tokens such as USDC/USDT/ETH from any already connected chain. One of Stargate's biggest advantages is its support for a sufficient number of chains, with its official statement indicating support for 80 chains.
However, Stargate's governance token STG has consistently underperformed, continuously declining from the beginning of 2024 to the present. In August 2025, the LayerZero Foundation proposed an acquisition plan worth approximately $110 million, aimed at acquiring Stargate. The proposal plans to dissolve the Stargate DAO and deactivate the STG token, with all STG holders exchanging their tokens for ZRO at a fixed rate of 1 STG for 0.08634 ZRO.
The public reason for the proposal is to accelerate development, provide more resources for Stargate, and create a unified technical stack for the LayerZero ecosystem. Given that Stargate was initially developed by LayerZero Labs, this move is seen as "bringing the bridge home". However, as of now, there are many opposing voices within the STG community, with many believing that this offer seriously undervalues Stargate's considerable revenue stream (expected annual revenue exceeding $1.4 million) and its historical transaction volume of over $70 billion. This proposal requires a 70% absolute majority vote to pass, and LayerZero insiders holding STG will abstain from voting. The voting for this proposal is expected to be completed by August 21.
Overall, maintaining 'multi-chain coverage' remains Stargate's current main goal.
deBridge:
deBridge is a universal messaging protocol, whose security is guaranteed by an independent, elected validator network that operates nodes for all supported chains. deBridge's trading volume in the past month is approximately $814 million, with over $13.4 billion in settled transaction volume.
deBridge is one of the most profitable cross-chain bridges, with revenue of $2.96 million in the first quarter of 2025 and $2.06 million in the second quarter. The annualized expected fee exceeds $19 million. On July 24, 2025, the deBridge Foundation announced the launch of a reserve fund that would use 100% of the protocol's revenue to repurchase its native token DBR on the open market. After this news was released, DBR experienced significant market stimulation, with several rapid increases of 50% in a short period, and the price nearly doubled within a few days. However, such news stimulation did not stabilize the market, as there was a quick drop after each surge.
Overall, the cross-chain bridge market in 2025 presents a complex situation of 'macro heat, micro differentiation'.
On the one hand, under the transformation of larger-scale capital deployment and transfer, the overall cross-chain transaction volume has reached a historical high, with Ethereum undoubtedly becoming the largest capital hub due to its strong consensus and liquidity. However, the other side of the data reveals that this prosperity is driven more by large transactions rather than a widespread increase in user numbers, indicating that cross-chain activities are shifting from retail speculation to deeper capital flows.
On the other hand, competition among cross-chain protocols has transcended mere trading volume contests. Applications like Hyperliquid and USDT0 rank high on the list, but the data behind them reflects more specific business needs or statistical criteria, and cannot fully represent the true market landscape of general cross-chain bridges. The real focus has shifted to core protocols such as Across, Stargate, and deBridge, which are engaged in an all-encompassing battle over technological architecture, ecosystem integration, and economic models.
