Axelar Network (AXL)

Axelar is composed of a decentralized network of validators, secure gateway contracts, uniform translation, routing architecture, and a suite of software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable composability between blockchains.

Basics

• Based in:
• Started in / Announced on:
• Testnet release: 2021
• Mainnet release: 11-1-2022

Audits & Exploits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].

Token

Launch

• Full AXL tokenomics can be found here.

Utility

• From Citadel (17-3-2022):

"AXL is the native token of the Axelar network. The AXL token supports the following critical functions:

1. AXL is a medium for transaction fees and any other fees for network usage, paid by users to the validators that run the network.
2. AXL is used by holders and their proxies to stake and exercise governance over proposals (such as a parameter change or protocol upgrade).
3. AXL enables incentives to support the decentralized Proof-of-Stake consensus that secures the network and validates transactions on chain. Validators receive AXL rewards as incentives to continue to secure the network. These incentive rewards are distributed programmatically, per rules encoded in network protocols, and are inflationary, i.e., each protocol reward increases the total token supply.
4. AXL is used to reward ecosystem builders and community contributors."

Technology

• Whitepaper or docs can be found here.
• Code can be viewed [insert here].

Implementations

• Built on:
• Consensus mechanism:
• Algorithm:
• Virtual Machine:
• Development language:

Transaction Details

• Capacity (TPS):
• Latency:

How it works

• From this thread (23-4-2022):

"Axelar is a scalable cross-chain communication platform that allows to plug-in blockchains to all other blockchain ecosystems. Dapp can be hosted on one blockchain and use Axelar’s cross-chain communication to lock/unlock/transfer assets and communicate on any other chain.

Axelar has two decentralized protocols: 1. Cross-chain Gateway Protocol (CGP): which takes care of the cross-chain routing and delivery across blockchains 2. Cross-chain Transfer Protocol (CTP): which enable users to interact with applications on any chain"

• From Citadel (17-3-2022):

"The Axelar SDKs provide a rich suite for developing Web3 applications, ensuring that developers have the tools they need for building. With these tools and APIs, developers can use the Axelar network and its SDKs to write dApps that can be easily deployed across all Axelar-connected ecosystems. In other words, Axelar distills cross-chain interoperability down to a simple set of API requests. This is absolutely central to adoption, as the developer experience around deploying Web3 applications must be like the experience today for Web2 developers, where the underlying networking and ecosystem-specific deployment considerations are largely abstracted away."

Interoperability

• From this thread (23-4-2022):

"Axelar already supports many principal chains such as Avalanche, Ethereum, Fantom, Moonbeam, Polygon and Terra."

Their Other Projects

Satellite

• From Citadel (17-3-2022):

"On January 26th, 2022, the launch of Satellite was announced. Satellite is one of the first ecosystem applications powered by the Axelar Network. It is a decentralized cross-chain asset transfer application, which enables users to transfer assets they hold on a source chain to an address on a different destination chain."

Roadmap

• Can be found [Insert link here].

Team, Funding and Partners

Team

• Full team can be found [here].

• Sergey Gorbunov, CEO and Co-founder. Works on building systems and protocols that protect data and information in untrusted, distributed, and highly adversarial environments. His goal is to enable new types of applications that have built-in trust and security properties and allow users to share, exchange, and compute information without having to trust each other or any third party. Towards this, he designs new cryptographic models, primitives, and systems.
• Georgios Vlachos, Co-Founder. Georgios received his M.Eng. in Computer Science from MIT in 2017, under the supervision of Professor Silvio Micali. He holds a B.S. from MIT, double majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science. In 2011, he was awarded a Gold Medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad (the first Greek student to achieve this distinction). Worked as a Head of Mathematics at Algorand.