deBridge Year in Review 2023
If 2021 and 2022 were about laying the foundation for growth, 2023 was about executing and realizing that growth.
From growing volumes exponentially after the launch of DLN to introducing IaaS, a first-of-a-kind subscription service for both EVM and SVM cross-chain interoperability, the year was filled with wins, achievements, and milestones across our whole ecosystem.
Let's start the show!
Table of Contents
- Most Important Highlights
- Analytics
- Testimonials
- Integrations
- Events
- Conclusion
Most Important Highlights
DLN Launch
We announced the launch of DLN (deSwap Liquidity Network), a first-of-a-kind cross-chain intent-based value transfer engine based on a 0-TVL model with low fees, protection from both slippage and MEV, and lightning-fast settlement. A peer-to-peer liquidity network powers DLN, providing near-instant and native bridging without the use of liquidity pools.
By moving away from liquidity pools, we have taken a step in the right direction toward mitigating risks and ensuring a safer environment for cross-chain transactions.
The shift to asynchronous value transfers was a major shift in how the whole deBridge ecosystem is powered, including DLN Trade and deSwap. DLN operates without traditional liquidity pools, avoiding the numerous risks of TVL, and utilizing a high-performance model for transferring assets across blockchains.
Recently, we’ve also partnered with RockawayX and Fordefi on DLN to bring institutional-grade liquidity to the cross-chain space, enabling users across the whole deBridge ecosystem to execute 7-figure transfers virtually instantly.
deBridge IaaS
We introduced deBridge IaaS, the first solution in the market for Interoperability-as-a-Service, during the Solana Breakpoint. IaaS is a turnkey solution for both EVM and SVM blockchain ecosystems, permissionless and permissioned, solving all three pillars of interoperability simultaneously, including:
- Transfers of authenticated messages
- Cross-chain asset custody
- Native high-performance value exchange.
deBridge IaaS is a subscription-based model offering a complete solution for any blockchain or ecosystem, designed to make it easy to open up global interoperability. Our first partner, Neon EVM, will leverage deBridge IaaS for complete bidirectional interoperability between Neon EVM and all other chains supported by deBridge to enable seamless liquidity transfer.
Enabling transfers to/from Solana
Shortly after adding Solana to DLN we began to receive tremendous inflows of volume to Solana from all of our supported chains. This wasn’t due to our effort alone — we partnered with the top players in the ecosystem, including Jupiter, Solflare, MetaMask, and more, to onboard users to Solana. With DLN’s Solana integration, users can trade any liquid asset to or from Solana in seconds from DLN or any dApp integrated with the DLN API.
We also worked on a number of initiatives designed to foster and encourage awareness of Solana for both builders and users. Our thread contest with Superteam helped people explore how DLN offers faster, safer cross-chain trading. We launched our builder’s toolkit in partnership with Helium for all EVM protocols and dApps to tap into Solana's user base. All of this helped us attract more users to Solana, and in December alone, we processed more than $80 million in trade volume to/from Solana.
Support for New Chains
We added support for Base, Linea, and Optimism to DLN, allowing users to perform cross-chain transactions between different chains in seconds. You can also check our “chains flow chart” to visualize the flows between chains across our ecosystem.
Meanwhile, our launch of deBridge OP Horizon helped us drive the usage of Optimism Mainnet while encouraging users and builders to experience a new standard for cross-chain value exchange. The initiative helps users get the best market rates for cross-chain transfers to/from Optimism, where the fees are rebated fortnightly to all eligible customers.
We believe distributing the rewards based on activity or volume generated is more effective compared to indiscriminately airdropping users with tokens.
Exact Output
One of DLN’s newest features, Exact Output, enables builders and users to precisely control and predict cross-chain trade outcomes. All of this is made possible by avoiding liquidity pools and AMMs, to give you the unique ability to specify the amount you want to receive on the destination chain.
In short, it can guarantee you that if you want to receive $2000 of MATIC on Polygon, then you need to trade $X worth of SOL on Solana. We’ve recently published an entire article on this feature that we’d love to share with you: Exact Output.
Batch Unlocks
We introduced Batch Unlocks to bring massive gas cost reductions to cross-chain trades. They help reduce gas costs by up to 80% for even better rates on your cross-chain transactions. How?
DLN enables private market markets to accumulate up to 10 successfully fulfilled orders before unlocking the funds on the source chain by bundling multiple transactions together. Read more about Batch Unlocks in our thread.
Failsafe signature propagation to Arweave
Regardless of the circumstances, cross-chain messages sent on deBridge can be retrieved in any eventuality, thanks to failsafe signature propagation to Arweave. For full transparency, the Arweave signatures can be found on every transaction that is processed in deExplorer.
Analytics – Numbers for all the math wizards 🧙
2023 was a breakthrough year for deBridge, characterized by milestones across numerical growth, integrations, announcements, and analytics. We kicked off the year with less than $100K in daily volume and scaled to processing millions and even tens of millions in transaction volume each day.
A noteworthy observation in our analytics is the recurrent pattern of Fridays serving as record breakers in terms of transaction volume. This trend started taking shape in the month of November and reached its ATH transaction volume of $8.3 million on December 15, 2023.
Another important fact is that in the last three months, we have clocked over 60% of our total transaction volume to date. This surge is a testament to the increasing trust of users in deBridge for lightning-fast cross-chain transactions. Impressively, more than 50% of this volume has flowed toward the Solana ecosystem, making deBridge a go-to cross-chain provider for the Solana blockchain.
At this point, we’d like to acknowledge the trust of our users, our valued partners, and our unwavering commitment to everyone who uses our products and infrastructure. Your collective support is what drives us to keep building.
A sneak peek into our Protocol Stats in 2023
- Transaction Volume: $232M+
- Fees generated: $258K+
- Transactions: 111K+
- Unique users: 48K+
- Assets bridged: 200 assets bridged
Testimonials
We believe that building in public is the best thing anyone can do for their business. Each piece of public feedback serves as a powerful testament to the impact our products have on users, protocols, and dApps — knowing that our solutions have made a positive difference encourages us to strive for even greater heights.
Testimonials not only validate the products but also provide insights that shape our ongoing development. We are immensely grateful for the honest testimonials we've received on platforms like Twitter, where your voices contribute to the collective narrative of deBridge. This quick collage below is evidence of the love we feel from our community!
Integrations
We take pride in the trust that various protocols and decentralized applications (dApps) within the DeFi space have placed in us. They’ve put in the work to integrate our range of products, including the DLN API, deBridge messaging, DLN Widget, and IaaS to innovate and ultimately provide the best cross-chain experience to their users. Here are a few examples of companies using our high-performance interoperability products:
- DLN API: Swing, Dexfin Wallet, ChainZap, DPEX, Birdeye, Burrito Wallet, Moongate, Solflare Wallet, MetaMask, Jupiter, Fordefi
- DLN Widget: GiveStation, Ten Finance, Prohibition Art, Perpetual Protocol, Extra Finance
- IaaS: Neon
We’d like to extend our gratitude to all of our partners for using our offerings and being with us throughout the journey. Let’s build even better cross-chain experiences in 2024!
Events and Twitter Spaces
If you want to participate in a constructive conversation and voice your opinion, Twitter Spaces is the place to go. Here is a list of all of the Twitter spaces that we have hosted throughout the course of this year:
January 24: Beyond bridges: A deep-dive into cross-chain interoperability
- We dove into cross-chain interoperability, security assumptions, and the cross-chain future with L2BEAT and 0xJim.
February 8: Beyond bridges: DeFi's battle for bridge-agnosticism
- A must-listen space to find answers to DeFi’s battle for bridge-agnosticism.
May 11: DLN API Twitter Spaces
- We spoke about the DLN API launch and why it can power hyper-efficient cross-chain dApps.
June 16: DLN Public Launch with Polygon and Arrington Capital
- We spoke about the DLN Public Launch with Polygon and Arrington Capital.
June 30: deBridge Solana Spaces with Hubble and Kamino
- Our spaces with Hubble and Kamino highlight the future of cross-chain interoperability and trading in the Solana ecosystem.
August 7: Beyond Bridges: The potential for Solana-EVM super dApps
- We invited Jupiter Exchange to discuss the potential for Solana-EVM super dApps.
August 25: Beyond Bridges: Fueling Optimism’s Explosion in Growth
- We invited Pendle and Extra Finance to talk about everything about Optimism and what’s behind the recent growth in the Optimism ecosystem.
November 3: Powering a new generation of globally composable DeFi applications
- Our co-founder, Alex Smirnov, shared his thoughts on a panel discussion at Breakpoint.
November 16: Solana Summer: Onboarding the next 1M users into Solana DeFi
- We invited Zeta Markets and Squads Protocol to share updates on everything happening on Solana.
December 7: Building for Uncharted Growth on Solana
- We invited Jito, Hxro Network, and Kamino Finance to Twitter Spaces to share updates on everything happening on Solana.
Events
Our team is highly active when it comes to attending events and showcasing how deBridge is changing the landscape of cross-chain interoperability. We believe these events provide valuable feedback to craft the best product for the users while giving us a chance to meet like-minded builders. Here is a list of the events we attended in 2023:
April 12 NFT NYC : We were at the NFT NYC meeting with the NFT and gaming community. We shared insights on the cross-chain space and dug into everything we’re working on.
April 26 Consensus 2023 : We showcased DLN at Consensus to demonstrate how asynchronous cross-chain liquidity transfers can achieve breakthroughs in performance.
May 5 Avalanche Summit : Our co-founder and CEO, Alex Smirnov, shared insights about interoperability and the future of cross-chain with the Avalanche community.
July 6 Solana Hacker House Tel-Aviv : We met some amazing teams building on Solana and presented deBridge and DLN to the Solana family.
July 17 EthCC Paris : We attended interesting events during ETHCC. Our co-founder, Alex Smirnov, also presented his talk on the future of cross-chain DeFi.
November 1 Solana Breakpoint : Our co-founder and Head of BD delivered talks highlighting how we perform near-instant cross-chain settlements to Solana.
Protocol treasury earnings > Outpaced costs
After an exceptional year, we are thrilled to share that deBridge has officially become the first cross-chain bridge to reach a break-even on monthly costs.
Sustainability and efficiency are key goals for our team, and it is fantastic to enter our next stage of growth with monthly protocol earnings exceeding costs. We extend our sincere thanks to each member of our community for contributing to the success of deBridge.
Conclusion
Our vision to deliver high-performance interoperability to every builder in DeFi is taking shape, and we couldn’t be happier with our progress in 2023. We hope you share this excitement!
In just one year, we’ve had exponential growth across all major growth metrics, released multiple products, including DLN and IaaS, as well as numerous features, such as batch unlocks and exact output for lower fees and better UX.
For 2024, our goal is to 10x our growth while improving the user experience with innovative protocol upgrades and even new products! We thank you for being on this ride with us.