Stargate V2

Stargate V2: The Cheapest Bridge

Stargate V2 is now live on 16 chains and holds over $200M in Total Value Locked (TVL). Building on the foundation of V1, Stargate V2 introduces enhancements to reduce bridging costs, accelerate chain expansion, and optimize capital efficiency. With the implementation of transaction batching, Hydra, and the AI-driven Planning Module (AIPM), Stargate V2 offers the most efficient, scalable, and seamless cross-chain experience in DeFi.

Here are the highlights of Stargate V2.

Cheaper Bridging (Economy and Fast)

Stargate is the cheapest bridge in crypto, achieved by transaction batching and optimized contracts that are 90% more gas-efficient. The Stargate Bus is now the cheapest bridge in DeFi.

• Economy (Stargate Bus): V2 introduces transaction batching, significantly reducing costs by aggregating multiple transactions. The “Stargate Bus” distributes messaging costs among users, reducing per-transaction costs by over 90%. The “AIPM” configures the bus capacity and latency per pathway, ensuring an optimal balance between cost and speed. Additionally, users can speed up the bus transaction by paying for the full bus, providing flexibility and efficiency.

For example, a popular pathway like Optimism <> Ethereum might have a 30-second waiting period with a 5-seat capacity, while a less popular pathway might have a 5-minute waiting period with only 3 seats. This flexibility ensures cost efficiency while maintaining instant guaranteed finality.

• Fast (Stargate Taxi): For users seeking immediate transaction processing, Stargate Taxi offers a direct, one-to-one transfer option. While it incurs the full gas cost, it remains far cheaper than V1 due to the optimized contract design. This mode offers composability to support additional use cases, like cross-chain swaps, or cross-chain lending and borrowing. Transfer times depend solely on source chain finality (e.g., 20 seconds from Base to Optimism).

More Chains: Hydra

Hydra extends Stargate via Bridging as a Service (BaaS), enabling seamless transfer of Hydra-wrapped USDC, USDT, and ETH to chains without native version of those assets. Hydra locks assets in core pools and mints corresponding assets on Hydra chains, ensuring they are always redeemable.

When a user bridges USDC from a core chain like Arbitrum to a Hydra chain (e.g., Chain X), their USDC is locked in a secure pool on Arbitrum, and an equivalent Hydra-wrapped asset is minted on Chain X. These assets remain redeemable at any time through Stargate, maintaining unified liquidity across all connected chains.

Hydra’s Benefits

• To Hydra Chains: Hydra chains gain access to all core Stargate chains and future Hydra chains, eliminating any pathway liquidity constraints. Bridging into Hydra chains is free, while bridging out incurs a low redemption fee.
• To Stargate Protocol: Hydra establishes Stargate as the canonical bridge for participating blockchains, increasing Protocol Locked Liquidity (PLL) in Stargate. For instance, $1 bridged via Hydra adds $1 to PLL, reducing the need for additional incentives. The protocol also collects fees on Hydra chain redemptions, enhancing its revenue model.

Capital Efficiency: AI Planning Module (AIPM)

Stargate V2 introduces the AIPM. This system replaces v1’s static Delta algorithm and dynamically manages credits across all chains in a more capital efficient way.

Capabilities of the AIPM:

• Dynamic Credit Distribution: The AIPM redistributes credits to maintain liquidity on high-demand pathways, ensuring deeper liquidity and reduced slippage. The AIPM has no access to funds, or any part of token messaging.
• Fee and Reward Adjustment: It adjusts fees and rewards from a limited fund pool to incentivize balanced liquidity across chains.
• Protocol Fee Adjustment: The AIPM ensures Stargate remains the cheapest bridging option by dynamically adjusting protocol fees.

Tradeoffs

• Liveness Issues: In theory, the AIPM could cause temporary liveness issues by withdrawing credits from specific pathways. This could also provide protection against exploits or asset depegging.

The AIPM, initially managed by the Stargate Foundation, uses bridging data from Stargate V2 to ensure optimal liquidity, slippage, and fees.

Instant Guaranteed Finality

Continuing from V1, Stargate V2 ensures enhanced capital efficiency while maintaining instant guaranteed finality across all transactions. This feature guarantees that transactions will reach the destination chain with the exact value initiated from the source chain, providing users with security and reliability.

Conclusion

Stargate V2 addresses the challenges of cost, speed, and connectivity head-on. By maintaining instant guaranteed finality across all transactions, Stargate V2 ensures that users can conduct their cross-chain activities with confidence, knowing that their assets will be transferred securely. This, combined with its position as the most cost-effective solution in the market, solidifies Stargate V2’s role as a cornerstone of DeFi infrastructure.

The omnichain future is dead, long live the omnichain now.