Welcome to Axelar, the Universal Overlay Network!

• Axelar is a decentralized network run by a permissionless set of validators that power cross-chain interoperablity requests, as explained in their introduction video their goal is to be an Universal Overlay Network, connecting all blockchain ecosystems, applications, assets and users.

• This means that users or developers can:

  • Users: Have the convenience and ability to transact from a single universal wallet instead of needing one for every network or type of assets, they can swap assets through a decentralized exchange (DEX) directly from their wallet, and the NFTs purchased on one chain become portable, traveling with owners on other blockchains.
  • Developers: Built on the best blockchain (Such as Polygon, Ethereum, etc) for their particular use, and allow their users to interact with another assets/users or Dapps on any other blockchain.

In a nutshell, Axelar will help users and developers to interact in the web3 (All Blockchains supported by Axelar), using their decentralized network in one click.

Which Networks are connected to Axelar?

• As explained in their whitepaper (Page 4 at: 3 Axelar Network), there are stand-alone blockchains such as:
  • Bitcoin, Stellar, Terra, Algorand.
• And interoperability hubs such as solutions like:
  • Cosmos, Avalanche, Ethereum and Polkadot.
• These are some of the Blockchains connected but Axelar is bringing more Blockchains to their Universal Network.

AXL Token

• AXL is the native utility token from Axelar and is the key to make decentralization possible, from this article AXL will help Axelar Network to achieve 4 outcomes as a universal connector of blockchains.
  • Security: Providing incentives to encourage validator to participate.
  • Decentralization: Wide distribution among token holders, delegating to validators and participating in network governance decisions.
  • Longevity: incentives that encourage maintenance of the network.
  • Ecosystem growth: incentives for developers to use Axelar SDKs and APIs to build cross-chain capabilities into their applications.

What’s the deal with FTX?

• After an article from coindesk regarding Alameda balance sheet, besides that the highest amount in the report was from FTT, the token from FTX Exchange, their “sister company” there was a question which wasn’t answered:

  • Where is the source of the company’s 8 billion dollar loan?.

• Caroline, the CEO of alameda published a twitter regarding this article, but wasn’t enough and Binance CEO starts tweeting about liquidate their FTT.

  • The answer from both CEO’s of Alameda and FTX was that they were going to buy that FTT.

• The main reason for the actions of Binance CEO was to avoid another Luna incident, and because of these tweets, and the fear from another Luna Crash, people starts to withdraw their funds, which led to Alameda and FTX crashing into the ground.

  • FTT token value plummeted down, which led to FTX to sold their SOL plummeting down their price.
  • All the cryptoworld was suffering a big downtrend in prices during the fall of FTX and a lot of investors start to leave.

• In the end FTX declares their bankruptcy in November 11, and their CEO Sam Bankman-Fried steps out.

  What Happened now then?

• In November 12 FTX wallets suffer a hack, ETH and SOL was transfer to new accounts created in Ethereum and Solana, it seems that this wasn’t an external attack and more that some from the inside stole the remaining customers money that were in the wallets

• There was a lot of activity for the new accounts and a lot of Meme tokens where moving to the heist wallets and the FTX wallets.

• FTX Group has established Kroll as its claims agents.

  There is a lot of articles about what happened but you can read here the interview to SBF, in the end it doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong, the damage is already done, and we hope that blockchains can regain the people trust again, after all the incidents from this year.

How this Dashboard works?

• I used DoD Growth ratio charts to measure some data, that means the growth between one day and the day before.

• My goal is to answer how satellite bridges were affected by FTX.

• Now with that aside:

• Axelar - Satellite Bridge Metrics

  • Users Metrics with DoD Growth Ratio
  • Transaction Metrics with DoD Growth Ratio
  • Volume Metrics with DoD Growth Ratio

• Bridge Metrics by Tokens and Blockchains

  • User, transaction and volume metrics by Blockchain
  • User, transaction and volume metrics by Tokens

• FTX Outflows into Ethereum

  • Inflow, Outflow and Netflow from FTX
  • Outflow Metrics with DoD Growth Ratio
  • Outflow Metrics by wallets
    • Individual wallets
    • Wallets group by Label

• FTX Outflow into Satellite Bridge

  • Here i explained how i tried to find these data and my result.

Flipside Question

• In wake of the issues surrounding FTX, the old adage "not your keys, not your crypto" reinforces itself. Let's see how this played out during the fallout.
• Did bridge activity spike over the last 7 days? If so, to what ecosystems?
• At a more granular level, track net outflows from FTX onto Ethereum. Did any of these outflows flow across Satellite to another destination chain?

Axelar - Satellite Bridge Metrics

“Satellite is a web application built on top of the Axelar Network. It provides an easy to use interface which enables users to transfer their crypto assets from one chain to another.” - Satellite Docs

November 8 have the biggest DoD Growth Ratio with 262% more USD volume than November 7.

November 9 have the biggest daily USD Volume (19M)

During the these days and November 10, the daily average volume correlates really well with the daily total tolume

After the incident the daily USD volume goes back to regular numbers over the rest of the days

Binance CEO CZ & Former FTX CEO SBF

Satellite Bridgers

The events of FTX raises the number of users. In November 8, left chart DoD growth ratio spikes with an increase of 91% of users in comparison with the users on the previous day, after that day the total number of users reach a spike (584 users) in november 9.

In general the number of bridgers seems to be really high during the FTX crash.

In the right chart we can see that most bridgers are new, that means these users weren’t bridging before (In november at least), and only 2 to 4 users are doing bridges in more than 1 day (the invisible Existing_users), the new_user_percentage was over 99%

So most users were doing 1 Bridge only during the FTX incident

Like the users, FTX crash also increases the number of total bridges.

• November 8 have the biggest spike in DoD groth ratio with 67% of more transactions than November 7.
• November 9 have the spike in total transactions with 5097 Bridges.
• There is a larger amount of transactions during the FTX crash, specifically from November 8 to 11.
• Although Most days present a DoD growth negative, the days with positive growth presents a bigger number in growth ratio.

Satellite Bridges

Satellite Volume

Summary

• Satellite Bridge received an influx of users, transactions and volume, days after the FTX Crash.
  • FTX Crash was during November 6 and 7 (because here most of the outflow volume is concetrated).
  • But after November 7 the price tokens starts to be really down, which trigger users to swap their assets.
  • November 8 have the highest DoD growth ratio in all (tx/users/volume) for Satellite Bridge.
  • November 9 was the day which these numbers reach their highest spike (total tx, users and volume).
  • Most of the users (99%) were bridging for their first time during that time period, there were 2 to 4 users being active daily .
• Most of the USD Volume Bridged in Satellite was:
  • Ethereum with 81% of the total Volume and average of 13k USD volume per user.
  • USDC token with 91% of the total Volume and average of 18k USD volume per user.
• FTX Outflow was really high during the crash, and after some days the Total Outflow Volume starts to decrease, but then in November 12 there is the biggest DoD growth ratio thanks to the FTX Hack where FTX loses 19500 ETH.
  • During the Crash Alameda and Binance were the destinations which received most volume.
• It’s seems that no wallet receiving FTX Outflow were using Satellite Bridge days after.

Bridge Metrics by Tokens and Blockchains

Satellite Bridges

by Blockchains

←Users

Transactions→

↙Total Volume

Average Volume↘

Ethereum Bridges are the highest in all metrics, and their total USD volume was over 81%. #1

Users from Ethereum were bridging more than 21k in USD Volume

Osmosis Bridges are the second in total bridges, and Volume. #2

Users from Osmosis were bridging more than 3k in USD Volume

Polygon Bridges are the second in users and third in Volume. #3

Users from Polygon were bridging more than 2k in USD Volume

Kujira, Avalanche, and Terra-2 Bridges are the last that have more than 1M in USD Volume

After that the percentage of USD Volume becomes lower than 1% for the following blockchains:

• Crescent, Evmos, Juno, Axelarnet, Fantom, cosmoshub, Moonbeam, stargaze

Satellite Bridges

by Tokens

←Users

Transactions→

↙Total Volume

Average Volume↘

FTX Outflows to Ethereum

USDC is the bridged Asset with most Volume, with more than 91% of the total Volume (74M).

Although USDC is second place in numbers of users, they were bridging a lot of USDC, an average of 18k.

Axelar was the most bridged Asset, But with a low volume (an average of 146 USD).

Ethereum was the second in most volume (7% with 6M), and the third in users and bridges, with an average of 17k.

• There are some users which were bridging other assets too, but overall their total volume is expected to be less than 1%.

It’s seems that after November 13, the Volume flow from FTX stops, that means there isn’t a match in the inner join between Inflow and Outflow because,the inflows of FTX have a higher amount of MEME Coins(days after the hack), and assets that lost their value after the crash in FTX.

In november 6 the Netflow was at their lowest.

In november 6 there is an increase of 180% in FTX outflow Volume, and the total reach their spike in November 7.

November 12 has the highest DoD growth ratio day when FTX wallets were hacked and lost 19k of ETH.

• 0x9c9065a994e2c9dfb21c9c853ea9cf6b7b1829a8bd2258058d80161847f8000e - 10k ETH from FTX_US
• 0x6580bf69c1ee28a1d8a4dec9b949272a449b1c58d91e6692ef34d9ea40fd9653 - 9500k ETH from FTX Exchange

Did any of these outflows flow across Satellite to another destination chain?

Alameda was the wallet which received more Outflow Volume, although their address was related to binance, leading to Binance being the destination which received more USD Volume.

In general Alameda, Binance, Coinbase, bitfinex where the destination with most outflow volume from FTX.

There are a lot of unlabed wallets which were probably individual investors which also were the destination for a high volume of FTX Outflow

Outflows by Destination

←Volume By Label

Total % By Label→

↙Volume by Wallet

Total % by Wallet↘

To look for this first i used my tx (from my axelar hunt) which brings this other tx, during my investigation i reached the conclusion that because most of Ethereum wallets aren’t found in the axelar tables, my best shot was looking in Ethereum for transactions similar to mine.

That means looking for transaction where the axelar deployer are involved.

• 0xa57adce1d2fe72949e4308867d894cd7e7de0ef2 - Axelar Deployer
• 0x19e34d09c2664d4f0829b1431ea73dac1b2bea93 - Axelar Deployer 1

Then using the list of addresses which received FTX outflow, i look to bridges during November 7 onwards, using the events table and looking at the event_inputs:to = axelar address.

Unfortunately i didn’t found a match, so that means nobody which received the FTX outflow was using satellite.

Methodology

• Using Flipside data tables:

  • axelar.core.fact_msg_attributes: To get info about the bridges using the attribute keys.

  • ethereum.core.dim_labels: To label the Addresses receiving FTX Outflow and filter the FTX Addresses.

  • ethereum.core.ez_token_transfers &

    ethereum.core.ez_eth_transfers : To get info about the FTX Outflows

  • ethereum.core.fact_event_logs: To get info about addresses using the satellite bridge in ethereum.

• I used Info from my previous dashboard to complement the introduction (about Axelar and FTX)
• Credits in their respective SQL