Axelar has been integrated into Celestia and will provide underlying interoperability for the Celestia and Rollkit ecosystems

On May 22, Axelar announced that it will deeply integrate with the Celestia ecosystem, in which Axelar's interoperability solution Interchain Amplifier will be integrated with Celestia's first sovereign Rollup Rollkit to simplify the creation process of interoperable Rollups, making the creation of new Rollups as simple as developing smart contracts.

 

At the same time, through Axelar's growing interconnected chain network and its interoperability toolkit, newly created Rollups will also be able to easily connect to other blockchain networks such as EVM, Cosmos, Bitcoin, Polkadot, etc.

 

“Opportunities in new ecosystems are emerging rapidly, and the next quarter of transactions will be cross-chain. The future is here and it is just around the corner,” said Georgios Vlachos, co-founder and director of the Axelar Foundation.

 

Rollkit integrates Axelar to liberate liquidity

 

Ethereum’s modular expansion roadmap has significant advantages in speeding up transactions and reducing transaction costs by adopting a Rollups-like execution layer and a dedicated data availability layer architecture.

 

However, there are also some problems, especially the extremely fragmented user experience.

 

This fragmentation dilemma is particularly evident on new or undersized Rollups, which cannot establish dedicated connections with CEX or other deposit channels. For example, if a user wants to move funds from Arbitrum to Manta Pacific, they need to use a cross-chain bridge like Rhino.Fi, which not only adds an extra step, but also introduces a short-lived requirement to trust a new central counterparty.

 

Another option is to use a native cross-chain bridge back to the Ethereum mainnet, but this can be time-consuming and costly.

 

So while it is easy to deploy a new chain now, there is still transaction friction and additional risk to acquire users and liquidity elsewhere, especially on the Ethereum mainnet and other major EVM chains.

 

But this situation is being addressed.

 

Rollkit, which was spun off from Celestia last year, is the first sovereign Rollup framework, which radically simplifies the process of launching a new chain by taking charge of data availability (DA) by Celestia, which applies to Rollups in the Optimiums or Validiums class (i.e. OP or Proof of Validity Rollups that use off-chain DA).

 

However, you can also start a new Rollup chain directly on Celestia, but this will bring additional challenges. Georgios Vlachos, co-founder and director of the Axelar Foundation, said, "If you build it directly on Celestia, users can't even access it from the Ethereum mainnet."

 

Therefore, Vlachos said, "But Axelar will allow users to transfer their assets to the new Rollup chain. Although this is a seemingly boring use case, it is a real pain point. After all, without such a function, new users cannot use this chain."

 

Rollkit will integrate Axelar's Interchain Amplifier, which can automatically route various tokens between all chains connected to Axelar. It currently covers more than 60 chains and will support the access of more chains in the future.

 

What are the advantages of Axelar?

 

Axelar is not the only solution for cross-chain interoperability, but compared to many other cross-chain bridges, Axelar is more secure in terms of underlying architecture due to its decentralized nature (with 75 permissionless verification nodes).

 

After all, a single encrypted private key can be easily compromised, resulting in millions of dollars in losses, and we have witnessed too many security incidents involving cross-chain bridges. Vlachos said, "For Axelar, it is very difficult for attackers to actually steal funds because they need to steal the private keys of most of the 75 nodes."

 

Overall, Rollkit's "hub-and-spoke structure" is a boon to newly built chains using Rollkit, because it will allow them to directly connect to all other chains in the network, and Axelar itself is also a smart contract platform that supports multi-chain virtual machines.  

 

In addition, it is crucial for new chains to obtain liquidity on other chains, including stablecoins, because they usually lack native assets.

 

Vlachos pointed out that "for many new chains, USDC will not be launched on the first day of launch. For example, from the data, USDC currently only covers more than 10 chains, but new Rollups all need stablecoins on the first day."

 

This is the fact that USDC is natively issued on 16 chains, but only 8 of them can be cross-chain minted and burned through their CCTP.

 

So when it comes to asset issuance, Axelar’s Interchain Amplifier can leverage the Interchain Token Service (ITS), a cross-chain application built on top of the Amplifier layer that allows anyone to create a cross-chain version of any token connected to Axelar.

 

Vlachos added, “Unfortunately, each chain ends up doing its own thing, but fortunately, there are always people in the Web3 industry who stand up to standardize some of these things.”

 

This kind of problem also arises with wallet service providers, who previously tended to focus on a specific ecosystem. For example, Phantom was initially launched on Solana, but recently multi-chain wallets have become mainstream, and Phantom is also working to support other ecosystems.

 

“Axelar provides chain abstraction services, and in the long run, the market also needs wallet developers to integrate these technologies and provide unified wallet services on many different chains,” said Vlachos.

 

In addition, Lido has also made some progress in token standardization, especially by working with Axelar and Wormhole to launch a standardized version of stETH on many chains.

 

Vlachos seems to have his sights set on a more distant future: a future where users can focus on applications and assets rather than the technology behind them that facilitates the operations they need.

 

"Axelar's ultimate vision is that any application that is isolated and distributed across blockchains today, whether it's a decentralized exchange, a lending market, or an NFT market, developers should be able to build a consistent user experience across different blockchain networks in the future."