What is Across Protocol?

What is Across Protocol?

Across Protocol is an interoperoperability solution that offers the most capital-efficient cross-chain transactions through a unique intents-based architecture. In this system, users specify desired outcomes rather than execution paths, and a network of competitive relayers ensures these outcomes are met efficiently. Relayers compete to provide users with the cheapest price to move assets cross-chain, optimizing for both cost and speed.

As the leading bridge by average monthly volume, Across Protocol has processed over $9 billion in transactions across more than 6 million transfers. Its advanced architecture ensures the quickest and most cost-effective transactions available, delivering an exceptional user experience without sacrificing security.

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Across Protocol’s Intents Architecture

Across Protocol's intents-based architecture consists of three modular layers that work together to provide users with the most capital-efficient cross-chain experience.

• Request for Quote Mechanism: Users express their desired outcomes without specifying the technical steps, enabling flexible and straightforward cross-chain interactions.
• Network of Competitive Relayers: A decentralized network of relayers competes to fulfill user intents based on cost and speed, ensuring optimal execution.
• Settlement Layer: User funds are escrowed and only released to relayers once the protocol verifies that the user’s intent has been fulfilled, ensuring security and reliability.

This architecture allows for fast, cost-effective, and secure cross-chain transactions, making Across Protocol a leader in interoperability solutions.

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Across Products

Across Protocol offers a suite of products designed to provide efficient and cost-effective cross-chain solutions. Each product leverages the protocol's intents-based architecture to deliver superior performance and user experience.

• Across Bridge: This end-user cross-chain bridging application offers the fastest and lowest-cost asset transfers available. It enables cross-chain swaps between 8 different chains including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Mode Network, Polygon, Linea and zkSync.
• Across+: A developer-focused framework that abstracts bridge functionality, promoting user onboarding and liquidity defragmentation by bundling bridge and protocol actions within decentralized applications.
• Across Settlement: A modular settlement layer for cross-chain intents, providing optimized escrow, verification, and relayer repayment. This layer ensures secure and efficient transaction settlement, enabling seamless cross-chain interactions.

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ACX Tokenomics

Across Protocol's tokenomics strategy for ACX, outlined in their governance forums, aims to expand the community, incentivize liquidity providers, and reinforce its position as the fastest and cheapest L2 bridge. The plan includes initial distribution and a reward locking incentive program.

Initial Distribution

1,000,000,000 $ACX tokens have been minted, with 700,000,000 $ACX reserved in the Across DAO Treasury. The initial supply of 300,000,000 $ACX is allocated as follows:

• $ACX Airdrop: 100,000,000 $ACX distributed to community members, early contributors, early protocol users, and liquidity providers.
• Token Swap for $UMA: 100,000,000 $ACX exchanged with Risk Labs Treasury for $5,000,000 worth of $UMA, providing governance power and voting rewards for the DAO.
• Strategic Partners and Relayer Capital: 100,000,000 $ACX used to raise funds and secure loans from key DeFi players, supporting the relayer network's growth.

Reward Locking Incentive Program

The reward locking incentive program emits a portion of the 700,000,000 $ACX in reserve, encouraging community participation. Participants earn $ACX by staking LP shares from bridge pools or $ACX/ETH pools. Longer unclaimed rewards result in higher multipliers, promoting long-term engagement.

• Days Held Multiplier: Starts at 1.0 on day zero, increasing to a maximum of 3.0 after 100 days. Claiming rewards resets the multiplier to 1.0.
• Initial Emission Rates: About 100,000 $ACX per day for ETH and USDC LP shares, and 20,000 $ACX per day for $ACX/ETH LP shares.

This structure encourages long-term commitment, aligning incentives with the protocol's growth and stability, and reducing short-term speculation.

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Across Protocol Team

The Across Protocol team includes key members who helped build UMA, a decentralized finance protocol known for its synthetic assets and financial contracts. UMA's Optimistic Oracle (OO) powers the intents system underlying Across, ensuring verifiable data on the blockchain.

Key Members

• Hart Lambur (@hal2001): Co-founder of Risk Labs and UMA, Hart oversees the strategic vision and technical execution of Across Protocol.
• Allison Lu (@Allison_Lu): Co-founder of Risk Labs, Allison designs and optimizes the protocol’s economic incentives and governance mechanisms.
• Kevin Chan (@kevinchan): Head of Product, leading the development and implementation of Across Protocol’s products.

The team leverages their UMA experience to advance cross-chain interoperability, driving continuous innovation and excellence.

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Bottom Line

Across Protocol excels in cross-chain interoperability with its intents-based architecture, enabling efficient, fast, and secure transactions. Handling over $9 billion in transactions, it offers the lowest-cost bridging service compared to traditional bridges like Synapse and Stargate Finance. 

Looking ahead, Across is collaborating with Uniswap Labs to propose a new standard for cross-chain intents. This standard will unify intents-based systems, enhancing interoperability and efficiency. By establishing a universal framework, it lowers entry barriers for fillers, broadens layer 2 interoperability and reduces some of the effects of liquidity fragmentation.