What is Axelar? | Cross-Chain Communication

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to the sugarcane podcast, where you get all of crypto's tastiest tips. Here's your hosts.

Speaker 2: 0:08

Sheldon Trotman and Rudy Dogum. Sheldon, can you share with me what is axlar?

Speaker 1: 0:17

So axlar back to our episode about bridging is this ability to now move assets from one chain to another Right? So, in the sugarcane context again, we basically create some contract wallets across a bunch of different chains. So arbitram, optimism, polygon, ethereum base and BSC so a number of different chains. And in our previous episodes we talked about how blockchains are essentially like different worlds, like separate, solid worlds where assets are living, and so in order to move assets from one place to another, you need what's called the bridge and in the context of axlar, they are our bridge provider, our primary bridge provider.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Nice. So they're kind of like the middle man gateway between all these different chains and allowing the passes different assets to go through each of them.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Yeah. So like, let's say, you have Ethereum on like Ethereum the asset, on polygon right and let's say we allow you to lend that Ethereum out and get some return for that on arbitram right, because there's a protocol on arbitram that has a really good yield In our context, what we actually do is take the Ethereum from the polygon context to go through the axlar contracts on polygon. Axlar, which is kind of awesome, like it has an off chain process. It transmits that message from polygon over to contracts on arbitram and sends that message from their actual gateway contracts on the arbitram context into, like, the user's balance on arbitram. It's like they handle a lot of the cross chain, what's called cross chain messaging, and interoperability is another word that people use for that.

Speaker 2: 2:01

That's pretty advanced stuff. It's pretty I'm thinking like how would one user be able to go about that on their own?

Speaker 1: 2:12

Yeah, so it's a pretty clunky process, like if you think of the current bridge providers. Pretty popular when people use is called hop, so hop protocol, another one's called connects, another one's called across, so there's a number of different providers that allow you to do it. But I can assure you that anyone in the crypto space right now, if you ask them what they're most afraid of, is actually using bridges. Just because, like when you actually move assets from one blockchain to another blockchain, it's always a worry because you don't know how long it's going to take, you don't know how much work is going to be involved and in the period of waiting, you're kind of scared because you don't know what's going to happen. So there's no certainty. It's like from our context, if we can actually make the waiting experience easier and also faster, then it makes the whole experience easier for them, because you're as well.

Speaker 2: 2:59

You're mostly easy building with the.

Speaker 1: 3:00

X-ray. It was I wouldn't say easy, so it's easy kind of two contexts. Axlar has amazing docs.

Speaker 2: 3:10

Yeah, so that was a neat question, yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:15

Axlar has amazing docs. Like, out of all the providers that we've used we've used a bunch of different providers in our product Axlar has one of the best docs, so I actually like understand and read how things work and how to actually use it. So from that context, it's pretty straightforward. From the ability to do cross chain what's called cross chain messaging it was also pretty straightforward because we actually have custom code that essentially wraps around Axlar's cross chain messaging features. So easy from the perspective of understanding. Yes, Technically implementing it it's really complex, so we actually had to build a lot of custom stuff ourselves. But yeah, it's been a great Friday though, because they really have nailed down how to do cross chain messaging pretty seamlessly and safely.

Speaker 2: 4:06

Yeah, and I've always recognized our team always responding to any questions we had when working with them, and that's other part of the battle. It's the community of helping each other out is what's so strong, and Axlar did a really good job with that too.

Speaker 1: 4:22

Yeah, it's been fun because they also are one of the other ones that we first started talking to around building what we were building, and they're very helpful when it comes to dealing with the docs or any questions that we have. As you said, they've been really responsive. So good team so far.

Speaker 2: 4:39

Hi and you have to bridge. So we're so thankful for having someone to help us bridge and not let us build a total custom solution for that. And again, it saves us time, saves users money and gives a better experience overall.

Speaker 1: 4:53

For sure. Yeah, because if you look at the most common hacks that were done by bridges and so with the ability to now have a provider who's really focused on just that experience and making that safe, makes it easier for us to pass on that safety to our consumers as well. So they've been really good for that.

Speaker 2: 5:11

Thank you, axlar, and thank you everyone for listening, because if you have any questions or are developing with Axlar, we'd love to know and we're here to help. So stay tuned to the next product series, music.