Recently, I wrote a thread on Twitter detailing how I feel the future of crypto would be. It only got 6 likes (poor me lol), but all 6 people commented pretty much the same thing: "The future is cross-chain, and multiple great platforms will make this happen." While this is partly true, it isn't wholly true. Hear me out.
DeFillama rates the total value of the cross-chain market as almost a billion-dollar market. That's a lot of money, and I know this because I don't have a lot of money lol.
The future IS cross-chain, yes. Bridges, DEXs, services, all going cross chain. We all know and love cross-chain products in these niches. For instance, Zeroswap, a cross-chain zero fee project, or Trust wallet, a cross-chain wallet. These projects are extremely polished and offer cross-chain capabilities, and they have garnered thousands of users.
"But Max, where are you going with this? And if it's so easy for you to post threads where you have no audience, why abandon Publish0x for so long when your articles here are mostly more concise than your threads that no one reads?"
To answer the second question first dear reader, shut up ok! I love tweeting into the void. We all have preferences.
But to answer the first question, I believe that the future is cross-chain, but under ONE platform. Hear me out again.
Say you want to bridge from Cosmos to BSC. You've just gotten your ATOM staking rewards and want to replenish your LP positions on BSC. Your journey will look something like this.
1. You claim your rewards on Cosmos. (platform 1, ~30 seconds)
2. You send your tokens to Binance and swap them to BNB. (platform 2, ~ 1m 30s for the whole process)
3. You withdraw these BNB tokens to your personal wallet (platform 3, ~ 1m accounting for Binance security checks)
4. You then go to Pancakeswap (or wherever you have LP set up) and supply your LP. (platform 4, ~30 seconds)
All in all, that process will take you about 3:30 for the entire process. How do I know this? Because I did it on Thursday and had exactly this result. (yes, I plan my posts lol)
This doesn't seem very "futuristic" to me. While it's 100x faster than sending money cross-border, it's still a long time and a lot of effort. Not to mention that you're exposed to 4 platforms, all with completely different UI and UX experiences. Also, there's a centralized exchange in the centre of it all, completely ruining the Decentralized experience.
Yes, this is a niche situation, but it doesn't have to be so niche for you to see where I'm going. You might want to swap from BSC to another chain and find that you have to deal with clunky UIs and a lot of them for that matter.
I do a lot of transacting cross-chain, and I'm sure I'm not alone on this. We all do! We're not confined to one chain, simply because opportunities exist everywhere. The only thing that would make the cross-chain future amazing is if we can figure out a way to make this a one-way thing. For instance, one bridge to take me from Cosmos to BSC, so I can add my LP instantly and cut out two transactions, and probably 2 minutes of time. And while this might not be a reality for a few more months, this is certainly something that I see happening. This is the future of cross-chain! Rather, this is MY vision of the future being cross-chain.
Please, I really want to hear your thoughts on this. I promise to respond to each and every comment I get, so let me know what YOUR cross-chain future looks like! Thank you so much for reading!
