Axelar - Heterogeneous Cross-Chain Communication Network

January 17th, 2022

Hello everyone, I am flames.

The blockchain industry is developing rapidly, and many public chains have also emerged in the crypto world. Due to their own characteristics and advantages, these public chains have attracted a group of users belonging to their own platforms and applications deployed on their chains. However, people in the blockchain involoving different activities are not limited to only one chain, but participate in projects and build ecosystems on multiple public chains. When exploring the world of blockchain, people always feel cross-chain experience is very annoying because we cannot participate in the project of chain B on the Dapp deployed on chain A. In order to move our assets to another chain, we may have to use Anyswap, Polygon Bridges, Fantom Anyswap Bridge or other DAPPs to complete cross-chain asset transfer. At the same time, we will also find that some project parties will redeploy a dapp on another chain in order to replicate their successful business model. In the end, the inconvenience of cross-chain experience is attributed to the inability to "communicate" between chains, and Axelar is a decentralized network built for cross-chain communication to solve this problem.

Axelar Network Introduction

Axelar Network is a decentralized network built to support cross-chain communication of heterogeneous blockchains. Axelar consists of protocol suites, tools and APIs. Network validators provide support for the decentralized network, and participants can use the Axelar network to realize cross-chain communication.

The Axelar network adopts an instant finality Delegated-Proof-of-Stake (DPOS) consensus mechanism, that Axelar blockchain works in a partially synchronous setting and thus requires the fault tolerance is smaller than 1/3, which is similar with the consensus mechanism of Cosmos Hub. The threshold signature scheme adopts distributed n-party protocols T.Keygen, T.Sign to ensure the security and robustness. More details can be found in the whitepaper.

Here we mainly explain the core protocols that Axelar relies on for cross-chain communication, Cross-Chain Gateway Protocol (CGP) and Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CTP), which can help us understand the working principles of Axelar Network.

Cross-Chain Gateway Protocol (CGP)：

This protocol is analogous to Border Gateway Protocol on the Internet. The main working principle is that this protocol can exchange information between different public chains, including asset transfer and state synchronization. After receiving the request, each validator must run the node software of the public chains that need to be interacted with, and the consensus is formed in the Axelar Network, and then the asset or information is passed to another chain. In this process, public chain developers can also easily make cross-chain requests without make any changes to themselves.

Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CTP)：

CTP is an application-level protocol that makes it easy for applications to leverage cross-chain features. The main working principle is that when the user needs to interact between the two public chains, such as deposits, withdrawals and account interoperation, etc., after the user submits the request, the public chain A generates instructions, which are converted into instructions based on the Axelar Network CTP protocol by calling the cross-link port (API), and then connect and transmit to the public chain B, if the public chain B can receive instructions based on the CTP protocol, it means that the user can make cross-chain requests and complete the service. Developers can also make some cross-chain state synchronization updates.

Comparison

Cosmos and Polkadot are also able to conduct cross-chain communication, but there are differences between them, and they are also quite different from Axelar Network.

Cosmos uses a bridge-hub model that connects Tendermint chains. The system can have multiple hubs (the primary being the "Cosmos Hub"), but each hub connects a group of exterior chains, called "zones". Each zone is responsible for securing the chain with a sufficiently staked and decentralized validator set. Zones send messages and tokens to each other via the hub using a protocol called Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC). As zones do not share state, a re-organization of one zone would not re-organize other zones, meaning each message is trust-bound by the recipient's trust in the security of the sender.

The cross-chain communication of Polkadot is achieved through the Cross-Chain-Message-Passing protocol (XCMP).Its relay chain is similar to the Cosmos Hub and the parachains on Polkadot are like the zones connecting to the Cosmos Hub. It should be noted that the security of parachains on Polkadot relies on the relay chain. All validators in Polkadot are on the Relay Chain, while parachains have collators, who construct and propose parachain blocks to validators. By the way, parachains has to rewards contributors who stake their DOT on the crowloans to win the slot, and the release of the slots are decided by the community of Polkadot.

XCMP is a protocol for communication among homogeneous parachains under Polkadot’s consensus. And IBC is a standard for communication among Cosmos SDK chains (different trust models). Compared with Axelar Network, IBC protocol and XCMP protocol only support cross-chain communication of homogeneous chains, and since Cosmos Hub and the relay chain of Polkadot do not support EVM natively, their zones or parachains may have to support EVM compatibility by extending themselves , and there is currently no feasible way to realize their cross-chain communication with Ethereum.

Features

Axelar Network will bring a big difference to the blockchain world. First, blockchain builders can easily connect to other networks through Axelar Network. Second, the developers of dapps can deploy contracts on a chain, and they can use the CTP API to interact with other chains and hence can enjoy the ecosystem benefits of other public chains. Finally, for users, people can realize cross-chain asset transfer and cross-chain application interaction in a wallet or a dapp.

Team & Backers

The co-founders of Axelar Network's team, Sergey Gorbunov and Georgios Vlachos, both from MIT, are also founding team members at Algorand. In addition, there are several well-known developers and PhDs with many years of experience to build this project.

Excellent projects are bound to win the favor of investors. Polychain Capital, Dargonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Divergence Ventures, DCVC Data Collective, Binance, Hypersphere and Crypto.com Capital, these well-known top investment institutions, have became the backers of Axelar Network.

Roadmap

Let's review what great achievements the Axelar Network has accomplished.

Jul 1, 2021 — Integration with the Moonbeam Network.

Jul 1, 2021 — Registration for its incentivized testnet.

Aug 5, 2021 — Integration with Polygon Network.

Aug 12, 2021 — Partnership with Keplr Wallet and Integration with Cosmos Ecosystem.

Sept 8, 2021 — Partnership with Pangolin(DEX for Avalanche and Ethereum).

Sept 16, 2021 — Partnership with Cosmostation to unlock cross-chain liquidity.

Nov 4, 2021 — Introduce Citadel.one as an official validator partner.

Nov 4, 2021 — The launch of of exclusive community NFTs.

Nov 17, 2021 — Cooperation with Metrika to bring operational intelligence tools.

Dec 6, 2021 — The launch of the Incentivized Quantum Community Program.

Dec 17, 2021 — Introduce Citadel.one as an Official Validator Partner.

February 2022 — Rollout of public mainnet launch bringing decentralized interoperability to Ethereum, Avalanche, Terra, Moonbeam and others.

According to the official announcement, within 2 hours of releasing the testnet registration announcement, their submission forms had received over 1500 applications from participants from all over the world. Within 2 weeks the submissions had skyrocketed to over 6500. On January 11, 2022, Axelar Network announced that the Rollout of Public Mainnet Launch will begin in February, and will continue to update at this stage. When the rollout phase is complete and the open, permissionless network is launched, Axelar Network will enable asset transfers and message passing between leading blockchain networks including Ethereum, Cosmos, Terra, Moonbeam, Fantom, and Avalanche. Developers will be able to use the new API and Axelar SDK to build cross-chain interactive applications on the Axelar network. And Satellite, Axelar’s first open-source sample application, will allow retail users to transfer assets between integrated blockchain networks.

Community

Axelar Network has launched Axelar Academy, a community driven and curated educational hub. On the one hand Axelar Academy will build an open source accessible platform, on the other hand Axelar Academy will present top submissions from the Quantum Community Program.

Axelar started its Incentivized Quantum Community Program on December 6, 2021, which allows non-technical people to participate in the building of the community. Community members can help to explain Axelar Network to the public by writing articles or making videos, or translating whitepaper and articles to help people in non-English speaking countries understand the project.

As of now, Axelar Network has 27,000 followers on Twitter, while 27,000 people have joined the Discord community, and these numbers are still growing.

Summary

Whether it is the IBC protocol, the XCMP protocol or the Axelar Network, they are all committed to building a multi-chain world and improving the interactive environment for users and the development environment for developers. Many well-known figures in the cryptocurrency industry have also said hundreds of times that the huge ecosystem in the future will not be built on just one chain, but on multiple chains to realize cross-chain asset transfer and communication. We all look forward to that future.