Bridges are notoriously some of the most vulnerable pain points in all of Crypto. Whether its been a private key leak (Ronin 2022 for $600m), a logic vulnerability (PolyNetwork 2021 for $600m), or even more recently the arrest of Multichain’s CEO Zhaojun He (which arguably was the final nail in the coffin for the Fantom Network), bridging just plain sucks and their vulnerabilities are just one of the major hurdles that are keeping true crypto-adoption from taking the next step forward.
Today we’re going to do a bit of a deep-dive on one of them, Across, which is one of the cheapest and most secured bridges and how it’s using features such as oSnap, Single-LPs, and a Single Interest Fee model — all which have helped prime Across to be the best “Bridge Ethereum Deserves.”
Across + oSNAP = Security
Last month I did a writeup about UMA and how it provides secured on-chain governance towards voting, and although there’s many different protocols/DAOs that are starting to integrate oSnap (UMA’s optimistic oracle), Across is the only bridging protocol (so far) that’s been using oSNAP, and they’ve been using it for a greater part of the year. oSnap is a governance tool that enhances security by ensuring the right data is being validated, and more importantly that it’s being validated correctly. Here’s a quick run-through how this works:
- $ACX (the native token of Across) holders vote on a proposal via Snapshot:
2. Transaction data from the vote is submitted to UMA where it is manually voted upon by its stakers in order to check validity:
This voting system gives a hUMAn component towards record keeping, where rewards are paid out to the stakers who vote correctly, thus reinforcing people to choose the most optimal resolution on disputes or queries. The voting is done off-chain, which means that it’s also gasless, which improves upon the Across’ overall efficiency. That leads us to our next section.
Capital Efficiency (a.k.a. Cheapness)
In addition to its use of UMA’s gasless voting and Optimistic roll-ups, Across’ simply has the cheapest gas fees. From Q2, this year, it’s been found to be one of the cheapest, especially when going from a Layer 2 to Ethereum Mainnet:
How is this achieved? Across uses a single liquidity pool with an interest rate fee model where it keeps the majority of the liquidity on Ethereum mainnet (as opposed to fragmenting it across multiple pools), resulting in very consistent pricing that equates to lower fees.
How is liquidity for the LP incentivized? Users can essentially stake $WETH-LP which is currently incentivized by a pool APY of 4.5% APY plus an additional multiplier APY depending on how long you have staked:
The longer you stake your $WETH, the better multiplier you get, with the maximum allowed 3x for 100-day stake. The rewards for your stake are paid out via $ACX, which for an altcoin doesn’t seem to know that we’re in a bear market:
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/across-protocol/
One of the most likely reasons why we don’t see a massive bleed-out like we do with other governance tokens is because on Across, LP stakers lose their multiplier effect the moment that they claim their $ACX rewards — a good incentive not to claim on a regular basis.
Conclusion
With more than a hundred crypto bridges out there, Across has proven to be consistently one of the most secure, most efficient, and cheapest places to bridge your assets between Ethereum and its L2s. And apart from the security and low gas fees, until an entirely new method exists (perhaps one without bridging altogether) I believe that it will be only a matter of time before other bridges like Across find ways to continue to optimize and secure their users transactions.
Interested in learning more about Across? I highly recommend you check out their latest articles on medium to get a deeper dive on how they’re able to achieve such speeds and low gas fees.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and be sure to follow me on twitter (https://twitter.com/CryptosWith) to get all my latest updates. Also, looking for a gift for your Crypto-loving/hating friend? Give them a REKT journal to cheer them up!
Disclaimer: And as a final reminder, this is not financial advice and this is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please as always, do your own research and find what investments are best for you. Cheers everyone!
