After the large-scale airdrop of Connext tokens, what other potential opportunities are there in the cross-chain communication track?
Cross-chain communication protocols have a larger narrative space than simple cross-chain bridge applications.Author: flowie, ChainCatcher
With the launch of the token and the initiation of a large-scale airdrop by the cross-chain communication protocol Connext, the latest shifts and potential opportunities in this sector have garnered significant attention.
According to the crypto data platform RootData, cross-chain communication projects have been among the top trending projects in the past week, and there has been no shortage of well-known investment institutions betting on the cross-chain communication track recently. It is particularly important to emphasize that cross-chain communication protocols have broader use cases and more composability than simple cross-chain bridge applications. Therefore, they also have greater narrative space in the crypto market.
For instance, the cross-chain protocol Socket Protocol recently announced a $5 million financing round with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Framework Ventures. Around August, the full-chain interoperable Layer 1 network ZetaChain announced the completion of a $27 million equity financing round with participation from Blockchain.com, Human Capital, VY Capital, and Yunjiu Capital; the Web3 operating protocol dappOS, incubated by Binance Labs, announced the completion of a seed round financing led by IDG Capital and Sequoia China, with participation from many well-known investment institutions including OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, KuCoin Ventures, and Gate Labs.
The cross-chain track has always been highly competitive. In such a competitive environment, which cross-chain projects have gained the favor of investors this year? What are their latest developments and airdrop plans? This article provides a brief overview.
Socket Protocol was established in 2021 as an interoperability protocol for secure and efficient data and asset transfer across chains, allowing developers to build interoperable applications using Socket. The interoperability stack of Socket includes two key components: the Socket Liquidity Layer (SocketLL) and the Socket Data Layer (SocketDL). SocketLL supports efficient asset transfers across chains, while SocketDL supports secure data transmission across chains.
Since its establishment, Socket has processed $3.5 billion in transaction volume, with a total of over 2.5 million transactions. Socket primarily serves projects in the wallet and DeFi sectors, such as One Key, Synthetix, Premia, Swapr, dHedge, and Rubicon Finance. Socket has disclosed three rounds of financing, raising a total of $12 million, with investors including Coinbase Ventures, Framework Ventures, and Folius Ventures.
Recently, Socket also launched the cross-chain aggregator Bungee, aimed at addressing the demand for frequent token cross-chain transfers by users. Bungee currently supports asset cross-chain transfers and exchanges on Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Fantom, and Polygon zkEVM. However, Socket has not yet released its token economic model and issuance plan.
ZetaChain was established in 2021, with core contributors from Cosmos, Consensys, Coinbase, and Buzzfeed. It is an L1 blockchain compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), built using the Cosmos SDK, and utilizes the Tendermint consensus mechanism, allowing developers to create interoperable decentralized applications (dApps) that can span any chain, including Bitcoin.
According to its official website, ZetaChain currently has nearly 150 contributors from around the world and has deployed over 27,000 dApp contracts. Its testnet has seen over 1.9 million users complete more than 14 million transactions on the network. Additionally, ZetaChain completed a $27 million equity financing round in August with participation from Blockchain.com, Human Capital, VY Capital, and Yunjiu Capital. In April of this year, ZetaChain launched a $5 million developer grant program to incentivize ecosystem development. ZetaChain has not yet released its token issuance and airdrop plans.
DappOS was established in 2022 as a Web3 operating protocol aimed at reducing the interoperability challenges of crypto infrastructure.
This week, the day after Connext's release, dappOS launched the V2 testnet version and partnered with the decentralized perpetual contract protocol Perpetual Protocol. dappOS provides a CeFi-like user experience while being fully decentralized, featuring unified accounts, task dependencies, and a new bidding system. This move has been interpreted by many crypto users as a hint of an imminent airdrop.
Notably, dappOS has a strong lineup of investors. It was selected for Binance's fifth incubation program in November 2022 and received Pre-Seed round investment from Binance Labs in June 2023, completing a seed round financing at a $50 million valuation by the end of July this year, led by IDG Capital and Sequoia China, with participation from OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, KuCoin Ventures, TronDao Ventures, Gate Labs, Taihill Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Foresight Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, Mirana Ventures, and Leland Ventures. Additionally, dappOS is related to the popular concepts of account abstraction, chain abstraction, and intent this year.
Recommended Reading: “How will dappOS achieve the transition from account abstraction to chain abstraction, led by Sequoia and IDG?”
“Chain Abstraction and dappOS: An Intent-Centric Operating Protocol”
Catalyst was established in 2022, aiming to provide permissionless cross-chain liquidity infrastructure through simple design. It transmits the cross-chain needs of the original chain to the target chain via cross-chain messaging, enabling token cross-chain transfers. This week, Catalyst launched a testnet task incentive program and announced on Twitter that a major update will be released in September.
It is reported that Catalyst completed a $4.2 million seed round financing in April this year, led by Spartan Group, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Robot Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, HashKey Capital, Circle Ventures, and Temasek's web3 fund Superscrypt.
Recommended Reading: “The Infrastructure for Interconnecting Ten Thousand Chains: A Brief Overview of the Modular Blockchain Cross-Chain Protocol Catalyst”
In April this year, the cross-chain bridge LayerZero raised $120 million in Series B funding at a valuation of $3 billion. After this round of financing, LayerZero has raised a total of $315 million. Subsequently, due to crypto users' expectations for its airdrop, interaction data surged significantly, but at the same time, its security has faced repeated scrutiny, with the official Stargate being criticized as a "cross-chain assassin."
As of now, LayerZero supports over 30 public chains, including leading Layer 2 chains like Arb and Optimism, as well as emerging Layer 2 chains like Base and Linea. Although there is a high demand for LayerZero's token issuance and airdrop, nearly six months later, LayerZero still has not released any specific plans.
LI.FI was established in 2021 as a bridging aggregation protocol with DEX connectivity and cross-chain data messaging capabilities. All its functionalities will be available at the API/contract level and can be directly integrated as widgets into other developers' products. In March this year, it raised $17.5 million in Series A financing, with participation from CoinFund, Temasek's web3 fund Superscrypt, and Circle Ventures. Last July, LI.FI secured $5.5 million in strategic financing with investments from 1kx, Dragonfly, and Coinbase Ventures.
Recently, the cross-chain trading aggregator LI.FI officially announced the launch of a customized solution called Loyalty Pass for users participating in the LI.FI ecosystem.
TeleportDAO was established in 2022 as a trustless universal interoperability protocol, providing infrastructure for developers to build cross-chain applications. With TeleportDAO, users can move any data between blockchains, such as contract calls and messages, or assets like tokens and NFTs. In March this year, TeleportDAO completed a $2.5 million seed round financing at a valuation of $20 million, with investors including DefinanceX, Quantstamp, CoinList, and Gate Labs.
TeleportDAO disclosed its economic model plan in its white paper, with an initial token supply cap of 1,000,000,000 TDT, 20% allocated to the early TeleportDAO team, 5% to core contributors, and 4.10% to a group of early supporters, with a 2-year unlocking schedule, an initial 6-month lock-up, and a 12-month transfer restriction; 50.90% of the funds are allocated to the network fund to stimulate ecosystem development.
Conclusion
In addition to the aforementioned cross-chain communication projects that secured financing this year, several projects such as Orbiter Finance, Hyperlane, and Multievent also received investments from well-known institutions at the end of last year, with ongoing rumors about their token issuance and airdrops. For example, Orbiter Finance completed a $3.2 million seed round financing at a valuation of $40 million last year, with investments from Tiger Global, Matrixport Ventures, A&T Capital, StarkWare, Loopring, Amber Group, imToken Ventures, Mask Network, Zonff Partners, CatcherVC, and GGV Capital.
According to the official Orbiter Medium introduction, Orbiter aims not only to be an L2 cross-chain bridge but also to serve as infrastructure for Ethereum scaling, expanding into cross-chain communication, implementing zero-knowledge algorithms, EIP-4337 (account abstraction), recursive proofs, and message synchronization to enhance the overall usability and adoption of the Ethereum network. Although rumors about Orbiter's token issuance and airdrop continue, Orbiter has not yet issued its native token, and the official team has not disclosed any information regarding token issuance.
Hyperlane was established in 2022, and in September last year, it announced the completion of $18.5 million in financing, led by Crypto Investor Variant, with participation from Galaxy Digital, CoinFund, Circle, Figment, Blockdaemon, Kraken Ventures, and NFX. Recently, Hyperlane announced that it will launch the V3 mainnet list in mid-September, but it has also not released any plans for token issuance and airdrops. Established in 2022, Multievent received investment from Binance Labs in October last year. However, its official website and Twitter updates are sparse, and it has not released a white paper, with team details remaining unclear.
