📌 Introduction

❔ What is Axelar

Axelar is a decentralized blockchain optimized for secure cross_chain communications on Web3. What does it mean?

Imagine you want to build a complex Web3 product which involves many assets from various networks; with Axelar, you are able to build this product as simple that a regular can engage seamlessly. As Web3 world become bigger with much more adoption everyday, more complex ideas emerge to answer the needs of users. But not any idea can come to life if there isn’t a powerful tool to make an easy production possible.

Axelar lives on top of Cosmos network which is famous for Inter-blockchain capabilities, and it definitely leverages this potential to the highest possible levels.

📝 Methodology

🗒 Methodological Notes

🟠 To render this analysis I’ve used FlipsideCrypto free Database and application for Axelar network

🟠 I would like to thank 0xHaM☰d#8391for his brilliant dashboard which helped me a lot during the writing of my analysis

🟠 According to Axelar documentations bridge fees can be paid by the native token or any other supported token. Beside from the utmost difficulty of finding and calculating these fees, we should consider that these are relayer fees and are subject to change. To address this problem, I assumed that all fees are being paid with USDC or axlUSDC since in cases that fees are paid with native or alternative tokens, the USD value of fee remains constant in periods.

🟠 Also this method can not be fully satisfying, but serves our purpose well enough. Anyway, you should consider the fact that these numbers can be wrong and misleading

🟠 I use the term “Network Path” to refer to transferring from one network to the other ( Network is mostly synonym with blockchain)

🟠 I also use the term “Bridge Route” to distinguish between many chains within a network

💻 SQL

To Filter Satellite Bridge Transactions information I used:

attribute_key = 'sender'

attribute_key = 'sourceChain'

attribute_key = 'destinationAddress'

attribute_key = 'destinationChain'

msg_type = 'coin_spent' and attribute_index = 1

from

axelar.core.fact_msg_attributes

I set the transaction status to:

TX_SUCCEEDED = 'TRUE'

And used crosschain.core.fact_hourly_prices for price feed of bridged tokens

🤓 Data & Analysis

🔍What are we looking for in this dashboard?

Satellite is the gateway through Axelar. It’s a bridge that shows the true power of Axelar as a cross-communication layer. It bridges various tokens from various chains and renders unique features.

While Satellite charges zero fees for bridge actions, but it collects and generate fees needed for relayers to execute the transactions.

We want to know how much fee Axelar generated Through Satellite and how has that changed over time for each bridge route and network path.

We’ll Cover:

🟢 Total bridge Transactions, Volume, Unique Senders and Receivers

🟢 Weekly Bridge Volume and Transactions count by Route and Network Path

🟢 Top 10 Bridge Routes by Volume and Transactions count

🟢 Top Bridged Assets by Volume and Transactions count

🟢 Senders, Receivers and Transactions Count for each Bridge Route

🟢 Weekly unique senders and receivers count

🟢Top 10 Destinations By Volume

🟢 Total & Weekly Generated Fee by Bridge Routes and Network Paths

🟢 Top Addresses with most Generated Fees

🔷 While Total Weekly volume and transactions count do not show any significant uptrend or downtrend, there are many sub-trends which belong to particular routes. Like Axelar to Ethereum which constantly increased in volume and count, or Axelar to Kujira which decreased in both metrics

🔷 Axelar is by far the most popular source chain in Volume and Count

🔷 The only Non-Axelar popular route is Ethereum to Osmosis

🔷 USDC is the asset with the most Bridged Volume while more users are interested in Bridging AXL

🔶 Bridge Transactions are far more than than Unique senders and receivers which indicates some constant flow of action by same users are happening. In other words, average bridge count for each user is high.

🔶 Starting from September 19th, the number of receiver addresses have become more than senders which suggests users are splitting their funds in different network and can be interpreted as a Cosmos growth sign

🔶 3 out of 5 popular destinations are EVMs

Use this table to find exact information of specific Bridge Routes. It is ordered by the USD Bridged amount

💸 Fees

🟨 Satellite has a special structure for charging fees:

• 10 USDC for involving Ethereum either on source or destination
• 1 USDC for involving other EVMs either on source or destination
• 0.5 for involving Cosmos chains either on source or destination

For Example, bridging from Ethereum to Osmosis charges 10.5 while transferring from Binance chain to cosmos charges 1.5 USDC

🟨 Ethereum and Axelar generate the most fees on satellite

🟨 Satellite is popular to bridge in and out of Ethereum and Cosmos since there are few rivals; But as you can see bridging between Ethereum and other EVMs doesn’t generate much fees because users prefer other protocols with much lower fees

🟨 Cosmos to EVMs in general and Axelar to Avalanche in particular are suffering from a decreasing volume