Axelar (AXL) launches cross-chain token service, enabling one-click deployment of cross-chain tokens.

2024-02-08 11:22

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Addressing the needs of project teams for deploying tokens across multiple chains, easily managing the token deployment process.

Source: Axelar

In order to attract more users and liquidity, every project team hopes to cover more blockchain networks. Therefore, how to smoothly pass the process of "cross-chain deployment of tokens" is a problem that project teams need to consider. Generally speaking, the visions of fast deployment, easy management, and good user experience cannot all be met at the same time. However, Axelar's Interchain Token Service (ITS) may be a choice worth considering. Blockworks, a foreign media, has also made a related report on this.

Axelar can be seen as a "universal overlay network", which is a PoS network developed using the Cosmos SDK and serves as a communication layer between Ethereum EVM - EVM and EVM - Cosmos. With Axelar, developers can build the best blockchain network for their specific use cases.

Interchain Token Service (ITS) is a service launched by Axelar to address the needs of project teams when deploying tokens on multiple chains. Its automated deployment and maintenance services make it easy for teams to manage the token deployment process. On February 6th, after accumulating enough practical experience, ITS officially went live on the Axelar mainnet.

Through ITS, ERC-20 tokens can maintain interchangeability and properties on 15 EVM-compatible blockchains supported by Axelar, achieving cross-chain free flow of tokens. For project parties, based on ITS, token deployment can be completed in just a few steps, and the standardized version of the token can share the same EVM address. In addition, the team can also customize special functions for the token and synchronize them to multiple deployed chains with one click. Axelar has already released a tutorial on deploying tokens on YouTube, "Interchain Token Service - Creating a New Token", which demonstrates the process of building a new ERC-20 compatible token using Axelar's ITS tool and making it cross any number of chains like a native token.

Compared to existing solutions in the industry (such as LayerZero OFT), Axelar's advantage is that the use of ITS does not require a license, and the token enjoys the safest bridging mechanism through the "minting and burning" process. According to Jason Ma, Axelar's DeFi leader, "Based on feedback from developers, other solutions are not 'no-code solutions', and the implementation process may take anywhere from a week to several months."

ITS not only allows for the one-step deployment of new tokens across multiple chains, but also includes a "token manager" function that can unify native tokens already deployed on multiple chains. This is similar to Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), which is used to bridge native USDC across chains, but Circle is more centralized. In this regard, ITS can be seen as a decentralized open-source CCTP that any protocol can use and deploy on its own.

Additionally, token managers can be used by project teams to link the deployment of native tokens and meet diverse needs. For example, for chains such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum that are strategically significant and have sufficient liquidity, project teams often choose to deploy tokens locally. On other networks, project teams can deploy Axelar versions of tokens directly using ITS tools, which can still have full interoperability with locally deployed tokens.

It is foreseeable that ITS can also help project parties attract more developers to join. Currently, dozens of projects are already using ITS to build. L2 Fraxtal, launched by decentralized protocol Frax Finance, is one of the earliest projects to use Axelar ITS. Nader Ghazvini, co-founder of Fraxtal, said, "Integrating Interchain Token Service from the beginning allows Fraxtal's Layer-2 to provide seamless no-code interoperability for many builders who join at the underlying level."

Overall, Axelar has solved the costly, complex, and user experience compromising problem of extending Web3 applications to multiple blockchains with its cross-chain programmability. The Interchain Token Service (ITS) is just one manifestation of this feature. Although ITS currently only supports EVM chains, project teams can expect ITS services on Cosmos chains later this year.