With the exception of Circle’s CCTP, which is used exclusively for USDC transfers, no single bridge accounts for more than 20% of total traffic, with most bridges accounting for between 10% and 20%.
Author: OurNetwork
Compiled by: TechFlow
Bridges
Synapse | deBridge | Across | zkBridge
The Barto | Dashboard
Approximately $2 billion in weekly bridge traffic, up more than 60% year-over-year
According to Artemis data, the weekly bridge activity traffic has exceeded $2 billion. The traffic distribution between the bridges is relatively balanced - in most cases, except for Circle's CCTP dedicated to USDC transfers, no single bridge accounts for more than 20% of the total traffic, and most bridges account for between 10% and 20%.
Artemis
The number of daily active addresses on the bridge has dropped by over 70% as users who previously participated in ZK-rollups, StarkNet, and zkSync airdrops have stopped activity after the launch of these tokens. Across Network remains the leading unofficial bridge with around 7,000 addresses participating daily.
Artemis
Unofficial bridges — bridges used for general cross-chain transactions, rather than in-house solutions designed to connect two blockchains — have seen explosive growth this year. Circle’s CCTP is seeing around $400 million in weekly transactions, up nearly 10 times from last year.
Artemis
Synapse
Moses | Website | Dashboard
Synapse’s total transaction volume approaches $55 billion, with 2.5 million users
Synapse Protocol is a decentralized cross-chain network that allows developers and users to read and write data between different blockchains. So far, more than 2 million users have completed $50 billion in transactions through the bridge and generated more than $30 million in fees. In the past 6 months, Synapse has launched SynapseRFQ, an intent-based bridge that provides zero slippage and fast confirmation. Since its launch, bridge times have been reduced by 60-80%, and on some routes, confirmation times can even be completed in sub-seconds, making it one of the fastest bridges.
explorer.synapseprotocol.com
In an analysis of Synapse, Across, and Stargate, covering various combinations of routes between Ethereum and major L2s, the Synapse team found that Synapse provided the best offer in 82% of the routes. In addition, when Synapse provided the best offer, transaction fees were 85-95% lower, meaning users saved 85-90% on fees.
Twitter - @SynapseProtocol
Since its launch in late March 2024, SynapseRFQ has quickly become the preferred way for users to bridge over the Synapse protocol. With increased liquidity, more relayers joining, and more competitive pricing, almost 95% of Synapse order flow is routed through SynapseRFQ.
explorer.synapseprotocol.com
Transaction Highlights: The $700,000 transaction was completed in less than two seconds. Such a fast bridge, combined with instant and reliable settlement, enables applications to build functionality that hides the complexity of the blockchain from users. Sufficient liquidity and fast confirmation speeds are the final pieces of the puzzle to enable true cross-chain applications.
deBridge
Jonnie Emsley | Website | Dashboard
deBridge becomes the largest bridge economy, with $12.5 million in fees and no TVL
Historically, bridges have typically built economies through TVL incentives, but this incentive often exceeds the fees collected, leading to questions about long-term sustainability. However, deBridge has become the largest bridge economy since launching its 0-TVL design in early 2023. It generates $100,000 to $180,000 in fees per day, and the total fees collected exceed the sum of Stargate, Hop, Connext, Synapse, and other providers.
Token Terminal
deBridge has become the preferred bridge platform for Solana, with over 117,000 active users bridging over $2 billion on and off Solana. Of these, over 30,000 users come from Jupiter, a trading aggregator built on Solana that has integrated with deBridge.
deExplorer
Thanks to deBridge’s peer-to-peer bridging engine, users are able to transfer over $1 million between blockchains with guaranteed exchange rates and tight spreads. For example, one user successfully bridged $1.65 million at a spread of 8 basis points.
deExplorer
Transaction Highlights: In this transaction, a user successfully completed a cross-chain OTC transaction of bsdETH from Base to WBTC on Ethereum, worth $920,000, using the peer-to-peer functionality of deBridge, the world’s first cross-chain OTC platform. This is the first known large-scale OTC transaction conducted on a cross-chain scale.
Across
Mansi | Website | Dashboard
The Across Protocol’s daily trading volume peaked at $65 million in August 2024, and cumulative trading volume is approaching $12 billion!
As one of the leading intent-based cross-chain bridges, Across has experienced significant growth in 2024, almost tripling since December 2023. March to June is a critical period for Across, with bridge volumes exceeding $1 billion each month, with volumes peaking in May 2024 in particular. However, activity continued to decline after the second quarter. While Across led the bridging industry until mid-year, it now ranks 4th on DefiLlama. This is likely due to the growing popularity of Stargate V2, which significantly reduced costs by introducing transaction batching functionality to aggregate multiple transactions through "Stargate Buses".
Dune - @mansi_19
Over 2 million users have completed 8.1 million transfers through Across, with an average of 4 transactions per wallet. The number of new and returning users was almost even until the second quarter of 2024. Since then, "old" users have gradually outnumbered new users, and the current daily average ratio of old users to new users is about 2.5 to 1.
Dune - @mansi_19
Across charges two main fees: "liquidity provider fees" and "relay fees". Relay fees are used to incentivize relayers to pass on users' transactions, similar to gas fees in the Ethereum ecosystem. Liquidity provider fees are distributed to users who provide liquidity. The protocol generated more than $11.5 million in revenue for its liquidity providers and relayers during this period.
Dune - @mansi_19
zkBridge by Polyhedra
Eric Vreeland | Website | Dashboard
zkBridge monthly transaction volume exceeds $320 million
As new blockchains continue to come online and attract liquidity through incentive mechanisms, bridge transaction volume has increased significantly year-on-year. 24-hour bridge transaction volume reached $434 million on September 19, 2024, a significant increase from $142 million during the same period last year. The two days with the highest bridge volume were March 11, 2023, when Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $71,000, and August 5, 2024, when Bitcoin began a 30% selloff — during these periods of extreme volatility From time to time, savvy Web3 users are quickly taking advantage of bridging to find return on investment opportunities.
DeFiLlama
zkBridge is consistently ranked among the top ten bridges by transaction volume, despite having fewer transactions than other bridges. In the past 24 hours, the average transfer amount for IBC was $722, while the average transfer amount for zkBridge was $1,591. Due to its stronger security and fewer trust assumptions, zkBridge is often the first choice for high-value transfers.
DeFiLlama
Due to frequent collaboration with Binance and high community overlap with the BNB ecosystem, zkBridge is the largest bridge on BNB Chain with over $100 million in monthly trading volume. zkBridge is also the official bridge for Binance’s opBNB, the exchange’s Layer 2 solution.
DeFiLlama