Multichain has been a multi-chain industry pioneer and has devoted itself to delivering industry-leading cross-chain services to users since its inception. Anyswap started as a DEX protocol in July 2020. As cross-chain interoperability technologies improved, we realized that Anyswap could deliver more to its community by addressing the growing demand for protocols specializing in cross-chain interaction.
To solidify our commitment to delivering the community’s needs, we officially rebranded to Multichain on this day last year. Since then, we have been the leading driver of the cross-chain economy. With over $90 billion on TVL across 3000+ bridges, we are proud to reach this milestone and incredibly thankful to you for supporting us along the way. So, for our first anniversary as Multichain, let’s look back at what we accomplished in the past year and what lies ahead for us and the multi-chain industry.
A look back at Multichain
Q1 – Our numbers proliferated
The Multichain ecosystem expanded rapidly in Q1. We did a 700% increase in TVL and incorporated about 600 new bridges spanning 39 public blockchains. In addition, we perfected our bridges to improve their conversion logic and transaction time and upgraded our router contracts to improve the developer experience.
We also introduced two new services, an upgradedNFT router – enabled the cross-chain transfer of NFTs via anyCall, and Co-mint – Which addressed liquidity fragmentation in Defi by allowing multiple bridges to mint the same asset, like stablecoins pegged to a common underlying.
Q2 – We pioneered generic cross-chain messaging
Even when the crypto community was hawkish with the bear market in full swing, it didn’t stop us from innovating and growing. For example, Multichain serviced $83.3 billion in cross-chain bridge requests, which accounted for about 40% of the total third-parge market share.
Q2 also marked the official launch of one of our most revered projects – anyCall, an infrastructure of generic cross-chain communication. anyCall enabled seamless cross-chain composability of smart contracts. Curve finance was one of the first protocols to adopt anyCall. In addition, Multichain also launched the fastMPC testnet in Q2, which opened the Multichain MPC network for open participation, further decentralizing the network.
Q3 – We transcended into a DAO
By Q3, Multichain had grown to support about 2891 bridges serving 739,000+ active users. Together, the Multichain community accounted for 49% of all cross-chain activity in Defi. We further perfected the anyCall protocol to V7, which introduced a fallback function to support innovative Dapps. Q3 also witnessed the mainnet launch of the fastMPC network for the public. Then, Multichain also transcended into the MultiDAO, an open community of contributors who could participate in governance and steer the direction of the community towards growth.
Q4 – We made many optimizations
Q4 was all about optimization and focusing on the fine details. We continued being one of the leading cross-chain solutions in demand in Web3. We realized the demands of our valued users and optimized our bridge fee policy. We also lowered the bridge fees charged for mainstream tokens and networks.
What sets us apart
- Competitive pricing and a robust ecosystem
Multichain charges one of the lowest cross-chain fees among leading interoperability protocols. Furthermore, the Multichain network is one of the fastest cross-chain protocols in the market, without any compromise in security.
- Extensive non-Evm network
Many cross-chain interoperability protocols connect EVM-EVM blockchains, but few (if any) expand across a wide range of non-EVM environments like Multichain, which connects Bitcoin, Near, OnXRP, Aptos, Mintme mainnets, and working on Cardano, Stellar, Flow, Solana testnets already.
Industry trends to look out for in ’23
This year was the age of layer-2s; projects like Arbitrum and Optimism saw a surge in demand and innovation, which stems from the fact that the growing crypto adoption has rendered layer-1s very expensive for standalone transactions. This trend is likely to follow next year as well, and we might see Ethereum being used more as a settlement layer for other blockchains, where high throughput execution is achievable.
Another trend that took off this year was the rising popularity of appchains and blockchain sovereignty. Appchains are blockchains built for one specific use case. Sovereign blockchains build on ecosystem protocols like Cosmos and Polkadot, which take up base layer overheads and help steer innovations toward execution and application.
Regardless of appchains or layer-2s taking the forefront next year, the undeniable fact is that both these paths lead to more demand for cross-chain sharing of information and resources. Therefore, the coming years will require cross-chain protocols to be more flexible with adopting new blockchain environments and decentralized applications.
What will we work on for ’23
Multichain is dedicated to addressing the needs of the cross-chain industry and understands the technological shifts it needs to adopt to deliver them. Therefore, we have some exciting innovations for the cross-chain community for the following year.
Let us share one such innovation. We call it Omni-Blockchain Interaction (OBI). OBI is a blockchain-agnostic cross-chain communication solution stack that appchain developers can use as a base infrastructure to seamlessly build customized cross-chain connection channels without the hassle of implementing trust and verification mechanisms from scratch.
The OBI stack includes –
- Dapp layer – It will house the cross-chain NFT/token bridges and routers.
- Data layer – It comprises anyCall, which can communicate arbitrary information across blockchains.
- The underlying trust layer – A decentralized protocol for cross-chain public trust mechanism, which verifies and authenticates data based on MPC and ZK technologies, the base infrastructure that third-party developers can build upon.
Multichain realizes the potential of novel technologies like zk-proofs in delivering scalable and secure performance. We believe that the concept of zero knowledge also has applications in the cross-chain economy. In ’23, we will work on zk-proofs-based routers, more information will soon follow.
Lastly, one of our primary initiatives for the coming year will be to collaborate with partners and other Web3 communities to educate the users in the industry about the benefits and potential of cross-chain communication.
Thank you for the support
Like any other decentralized project in Web3, Multichain’s success is credited to the continuous love and support we have received during difficult and good times. We thank the Multichain community for having confidence in us since our inception; it inspires us to deliver more in the times to come.
