Compared to the Official Ethereum L2 Cross-chain bridge, are Third-party Bridges cheaper and easier to use?
Third-party cross-chain bridges are usually faster than official bridges, especially when users withdraw from L2 to L1 do not need to wait 7 days, but they need to pay additional costs.
After Optimism and Arbitrum officially opened the mainnet for testing, in addition to the rapid increase in the number of application deployments, how to migrate a large number of assets to the L2 network at a lower cost is also a topic of concern to many people. On the other hand, if users need to quickly transfer L2 assets to L1, the official bridge cannot be implemented, so they can only use other third-party tools.
With the increase in the number of public chains and L2, the demand for cross-chain assets has also grown rapidly, and various cross-chain bridge tools have become one of the necessary tools for users. For special cross-chain scenarios such as L2, a batch of bridges that provide cross-chain services for this specific scenario between L1 and L2 have been born.
On the whole, third-party cross-chain bridge tools are faster than the official bridge cross-chain, especially when users need to withdraw assets from L2 to L1, there is no need to wait 7 days. However, users need to pay extra costs, spending a portion of the cost to the “market maker” or “agreement” that provides asset liquidity across the chain, that is, the time value of funds is discounted, reducing the cost of assets Potential loss.
Different cross-chain bridges use different technologies, such as hash time locks, state channels, or some partial centralized solutions. These asset cross-chain bridges also have different asset support, so we have experienced the currently online cross-chain bridges (connected to Optimism or Arbitrum), Different cross-chain bridges use different technologies, such as hash time locks, state channels, or some partial centralized solutions. These asset cross-chain bridges have different asset support, so we have experienced the currently online cross-chain bridges (connected to Optimism or Arbitrum), including Hop Protocol, cBridge, RenBridge and Anyswap, and sorted these The advantages and disadvantages of the platform and the corresponding cost estimate (according to the recent average gas cost).
Since the Ethereum community’s demand for the three types of assets, ETH, USDC, and USDT, is significantly higher than other assets, the support for these three types of assets is one of the core indicators for cross-chain bridge evaluation.
L2 official cross-chain bridge
The L2 team will provide an official cross-chain bridge. This type of bridge provides the most basic functions and security is also its most important feature. However, due to the expansion technology mechanism adopted by Arbitrum and Optimism, it takes 7 days to return from L2 to L1. time.
Support direction: Ethereum <> L2 network (Arbitrum/Optimism)
Assets: USDC, USDT and ETH have been supported, as well as tokens in the whitelist, and will be gradually opened later
Advantages: Relatively safest, does not limit the size of the transaction
Disadvantages: The withdrawal period takes 7 days
Cross-chain cost: only the normal transaction fee of the network (approximately US$20–30)
Arbitrum bridge link
Optimism bridge link
Hop Protocol
Hop is a cross-chain bridge developed by the former smart contract wallet development team Authoreum. They designed a universal asset bridge in their plan, and through the introduction of the “automatic market maker” (AMM) component and the “connector” (Bonder) role, finally Realize the rapid migration of assets between Layer 2 networks.
When using Hop’s solution, assets need to flow to the Layer 2 network through Hop. For example, the ETH that enters the second layer through Hop’s asset bridge is called Hop ETH (or hETH). hETH and ETH are completely equivalent, at least it can be exchanged through Hop.
However, there is also an “official” version of ETH in the Layer 2 network, which is the ETH version commonly used by more people. The official version of ETH and hETH should also be completely equivalent in theory, but due to liquidity reasons, there may be Some spreads.
So Hop Protocol introduced AMM components and “connectors”. AMM is designed to solve the short-term fluctuations in the price difference between the official version of ETH and hETH, and the “connector” (Bonder) role can be used in advance. The user who releases the liquidity provides liquidity and can also obtain part of the income (because it saves the user a 7-day withdrawal cycle).
Bonder can advance the official version of ETH for the network in advance by observing the transaction data between different Layer 2 networks, and arbitrageurs between different Layer 2 networks will continue to rebalance (to gain revenue) to maintain the price of AMM at a comparison Within a reasonable range.
Support direction: Ethereum <> Arbitrum; Ethereum <> Optimism; Arbitrum <> Optimism
Assets: USDC and USDT are supported, ETH is not supported
Pros: No need to exit 7 days
Disadvantages: the liquidity of assets in the agreement will limit the scale of cross-chain assets
Cross-chain cost: the transaction cost of the network itself (about $30 for transactions on L1) + protocol transaction fees (0.04%), and there is also transaction slippage
cBridge
cBridge is a cross-chain bridge tool developed by the Celer team, based on atomic swap technology.
cBridge stated that it will continue to support more cross-chain and cross-layer transfers of Layer 2 and Layer 1 blockchains in the short term. In addition, anyone will be able to join the cBridge network by running cBridge nodes to provide cross-chain and cross-layer liquidity and obtain the corresponding Fee income.
Celer has just released a 2.0 plan, which can further improve the liquidity of cross-chain assets. For details, please refer to this article: cBridge announces the 2.0 upgrade plan to quickly review the design choices and optimizations of the new version.
Support direction: Ethereum <> Arbitrum; Ethereum <> Optimism; Arbitrum <> Optimism
Assets: ETH, USDC and USDT have been supported
Pros: No need to exit 7 days
Disadvantages: the liquidity of assets in the agreement will limit the scale of cross-chain assets
Cross-chain cost: the transaction cost of the network itself (the transaction on L1 is about $30) + the operating cost paid to the relay node (the node is priced by itself)
RenBridge
RenBridge is a cross-chain bridge developed by Ren Protocol. The main feature is that they focus on cross-chain solutions with other public chains. At present, the core is to support the direct cross-chain between BTC and L2.
Support direction: BTC <> Arbitrum
Assets: Only BTC (and other public chain tokens) are supported, ETH, USDC and USDT are not supported
Advantages: support BTC cross-chain
Disadvantages: only supports cross-chain between Arbitrum and BTC
Cross-chain cost: Since Ethereum L1 is not touched, only Bitcoin miner fee (~3 USD) + Arbitrum transaction fee (~3 USD) + protocol fee (0.15%)
Anyswap
Anyswap is a universal cross-chain protocol. Previously, it focused on the cross-chain technology between public chains. It has just recently added support for the Arbitrum network.
Support direction: ETH <> Arbitrum
Assets: USDC is supported, USDT and ETH are not supported
Pros: No need to exit 7 days
Disadvantages: L2 networks outside of Arbitrum are not supported
Cross-chain cost: transaction fee of the network itself (about 30 USD for transaction on L1) + protocol transaction fee (0.1%)
Follow us on Twitter @TritiumVC .
🌐Office Website here .
📢No Financial Advice
This report does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy in any way. Always do your own research and never invest more than you can afford to lose. Investing in cryptocurrencies is high risk, and you could lose 100% of your investment.
