It has quietly raised over 100 million US dollars and is listed on Coinbase for the first time. It aims to build the underlying infrastructure for the next billion people to enter Web3
Is the superstar project @axelarnetwork led by Binance and Coinbase worth ambush?
If you have a lot of U shares and are in a hurry to find a good target, you can stop and take a look. But this article is for reference only and is not an investment advice. Please stay rational.
This article will introduce LayerZero's competitor - Axelar in a simple and easy-to-understand way.
Now click like and read on patiently~
-What is Axelar?
#Axelar is a cross-chain communication protocol with full-stack interoperability. Similar products include the well-known LayerZero.
With the explosive growth of various modular blockchains and L2 public chains, the number and diversity of public chains are rapidly expanding. You must have also participated in some excellent new public chains that carry future narratives.
It is good to let a hundred flowers bloom, but rapid expansion will bring scalability problems to the market: bilateral bridges between N networks require N² bridges. Therefore, a universal network that handles routing, translation, and security in an arbitrary manner between connected blockchains is needed. The market lacks solutions that allow developers to operate between multiple blockchain ecosystems cheaply and efficiently.
Axelar was thus born, using the stack to unlock cross-chain composability and liquidity, securely connecting all blockchain ecosystems, applications, assets, and users. In other words, it enables indirect connections between public chains and Axelar, rather than point-to-point connections, reducing the number and complexity of connections, improving the scalability and interoperability of the number of connections, and solving this market problem.
I said I bought Axelar's token $WAXL (the token is actually $AXL but it is called $WAXL on the exchange). Some group friends asked me why I chose Axelar when I have several cross-chain projects. So in this article today, I will talk about why I chose it.
- Let me first talk about the difference between axelar and similar competitor #LayerZero, so that everyone can have a preliminary understanding
LayerZero is an excellent cross-chain protocol, so we use it for comparison. The core difference between Axelar and LayerZero in cross-chain technology implementation lies in their respective security and verification mechanisms:
Axelar implementation mechanism: Axelar has built a complete system including third-party verification, and the source chain information verification of all cross-chain transactions is carried out on the Axelar chain. This means that the security of cross-chain transactions depends on the security of the Axelar public chain itself.
LayerZero implementation mechanism: LayerZero has verification work completed on the target chain. Part of the block information is transmitted through oracles and repeaters, and the point-to-point communication primitive does not need to rely on third-party credit, that is, the intermediate consensus layer.
Axelar advantages: Trust and security increase over time: As the network runs and historical data accumulates, Axelar's security and credibility increase, with scale effects. A successfully operated public chain can accumulate consensus and attract more Dapps to join its ecosystem. If Axelar can develop its own ecosystem well, then Axelar may have the ability to become the so-called Layer 3. This status is similar to the relay chain in the Polkadot ecosystem. To exaggerate, ETH and BTC may even be called sub-chains of Axelar.
LayerZero advantages: lightweight and low cost. No need to operate its own public chain, consensus is formed instantly for each transaction, which simplifies the process of cross-chain transactions and provides more flexible cross-chain solutions through external services such as oracles and repeaters.
Axelar's challenge: It is necessary to think about how to operate a public chain well, ensure the security of the public chain itself and cross-chain contracts, and prevent attacks caused by contract loopholes. On the other hand, it also involves how to motivate validators - the number of public chain nodes that validators can run is likely to be limited, and as the number of public chains connected to Axelar increases, the demand for validators will continue to increase. Once the public chain is successfully operated, the accumulated consensus will have a scale effect, and it will be easier to establish its own Dapp ecosystem.
LayerZero's challenge: Security depends heavily on the independence and reliability of oracles and relayers, so relying on external services requires guarding against the risk of collusion between the two.
LayerZero, as an infrastructure, does not have its own tokens, but relies on Stargate, which is built on LayerZero, to issue tokens. It does not have a self-circulating economic system, which is effective quickly, but will also cause competition for TVL with other projects in the ecosystem. Axelar has satisfactory performance in terms of security, number of cross-chains, and number of integrated dApps.
Compared to its direct competitor Layerzero, Axelar is far below its primary valuation.
-What exactly can Axelar do for users?
In fact, the strength of Axelar's technology is more deeply felt by developers. Because of its powerful technology, it has strong sustainable development potential. With development potential, there is support from large institutions. With the support of large institutions, there is money to do marketing. With money to do marketing, there is traffic. Finally, with traffic and money to pull the market, ordinary users will benefit and call it awesome.
For DAPP developers who want to quickly build cross-chain capabilities
You can deploy your DAPP anywhere
Through Axelar, assets and information can be transferred across any chain without permission. Axelar provides a cross-chain development platform that is easily accessible through a decentralized validator network, secure gateway contracts, unified translation, routing architecture, and a set of software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs). With these tools and APIs, developers can use the Axelar network and its SDK to write dApps that can be easily deployed in all Axelar-connected ecosystems. In other words, Axelar refines cross-chain interoperability into a set of simple API requests. This is absolutely the core of its adoption. Designing these development tools into plug-and-play integrated solutions not only reduces the difficulty of use and improves development efficiency, but also provides developers with secure cross-chain interaction capabilities. It is worth mentioning that Layerzero's introduction of Axelar and CCIP as DVN Adapters is also a proof of Axelar's security. Security is the top priority of cross-chain.
Axelar works as shown below:
For Users
You can interact with all blockchain ecosystem DAPPs directly from your wallet
-Axelar team composition and financing situation
It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the technology, let’s take a look at its team and investment strength. The founding team of Axelar has rich academic background and blockchain development experience. Co-founder @sergey_nog received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Toronto, conducted cryptography research at MIT, and has been an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo since 2016. He also worked at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center for a period of time.
Another co-founder, Georgios Vlachos @yorgosv_, completed his bachelor's and master's degrees at MIT and won the gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2011, becoming the first Greek student to do so. He has also invested in #berchain.
These backgrounds provide a solid technical and theoretical foundation for the Axelar project.
Financing:
2020.11.13 Seed round, financing amount is US$3.75 million 2021.7.16 A round, financing amount is US$25 million 2022.2.15 B round, financing amount is US$35 million
In addition, about 50 million US dollars of comprehensive token financing was raised through token financing. The total financing amount of Axelar Network exceeded 100 million US dollars, and the current valuation of Axelar has exceeded 1 billion US dollars. The participating investors are all well-known institutions, including Polychain, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs, Dragonfly, Blockchange, Collab+Currency (Pixels also invested), Galaxy Digital, etc. And Coinbase was the first to issue it, which reflects the market's recognition of Axelar's technology and future development potential.
Axelar Token Economy
Axelar has currently connected 55 blockchains, including Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, Scroll and a variety of Cosmos-based chains. These chains can be connected through IBC within the Cosmos ecosystem, and do not require additional special support from validators, and there is no token reward; on other chains, validators will receive 1% of the issuance incentive for each chain in the first year.
Regarding whether the Axelar token economy is a positive cycle of deflation and inflation mechanism, as well as unlocking information, please refer to their official website documents
Axelar's future speculation
The cross-chain track has strong demand and high certainty, and the problem Axelar solves is the most basic universal cross-chain, without the restrictions of specific public chains or assets. As an independent blockchain, it can build its own Dapp ecology and economic system. In addition, the team has a solid academic and technical background and relatively sufficient funds. It has a lot of room for imagination, and it depends on how to do it. With Axelar and LayerZero as representatives, we can clearly see the rise of universal cross-chain infrastructure.
Axelar is the most competitive cross-chain solution in terms of security, universal messaging, and ecosystem growth. Axelar's security has also been recognized by Uniswap, which believes that it "has a complete crypto-economic mechanism to ensure the security of the protocol." The current market value of the token is $850 million, with a valuation of $1 billion. Similar product LayerZero is valued at $3 billion. With the support of strong backgrounds, AXelar still has room for imagination.
AXelar is the product of the last bull market in September 2020. The price has only increased five times from the bottom to now. With time for space, combined with technology and financing, its growth should be steadily rising. I set this target as a long-term fixed investment. Don't buy it if you don't have patience. In the bear market, I will only choose ambush coins with a market value of less than 100-300 million US dollars, but now it is the beginning of the bull market, so under the strong background, I will [appropriately] relax my selection criteria for high-quality projects and go with the trend.
I am a little dizzy because I see too much data, so if there is anything wrong, please correct me. The above are just some of my views from my perspective. You are welcome to add to it. It is not easy to write an article. I hope you can like and collect it to give me some motivation.
