Altcoin Roundup: Cross-chain bridge tokens moon as crypto shifts toward interoperability

cointelegraph.com:

Interoperability is shaping up to be one of the main themes for the cryptocurrency market in 2022 as projects across the ecosystem unveil integrations that make their networks Ethereum (ETH) Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible.

While this has been one of the long-term goals of the ecosystem as a step on the path to an interconnected network of protocols, it has also created a new decentralized finance (DeFi) market for multi-chain bridges and decentralized finance.

Here are three of the top volume cross-chain bridges that the cryptocurrency community uses to transfer assets between blockchain networks.

Multichain (MULTI), formerly known as Anyswap, is a cross-chain router protocol that aims to become the go-to router for the emerging Web3 ecosystem.

According to data from Defi Llama, Multichain is the top-ranked cross-chain swap protocol by total value locked, with $8.95 billion currently locked on the platform.

One of the main reasons for the high TVL on Multichain is the large number of blockchain networks supported by the protocol. Currently, 30 different chainscan be accessed on the network.

According to data provided by Multichain, the protocol has processed a total of $53.15 billion worth of volume since launching, with $19.08 billion of that being transacted in the past 30 days alone. There are currently 485,399 users that have interacted with the Multichain protocol, amounting to nearly 2.256 million transactions.

Users who deposit tokens into one of the pools supported by Multichain receive a sare of the transaction fees generated by the pool in question.

The protocol's native MULTI token is used to vote and participate in the governance of the Multichain ecosystem and has a circulating supply of 18.64 million tokens