By Frank, PANews

With the overall resurgence of the DeFi craze in the crypto market, on-chain activity has surged simultaneously. The role of cross-chain bridges in connecting chains is crucial. Cross-chain bridge activity not only reflects the fluctuations in on-chain activity but also the demand for activity across different chains. So, how have the leading cross-chain bridges performed this year? PANews has conducted a comprehensive review.

Market overview: Cross-chain transaction volume increases year by year, while transaction frequency remains stable

In terms of overall cross-chain bridge data, it entered an active phase at the end of 2024. The total cross-chain transaction volume in September 2024 was only around $18.6 billion. By November 2024, this figure had rapidly increased to $50 billion, an increase of approximately 188%. This active level remained at this level after entering 2025.

Cross-chain transaction volume changes

In July, the highest cross-chain transaction volume on the blockchain reached $56.1 billion, a record high. However, a closer look at the data reveals that this growth in transaction volume is largely driven by large-value transactions. In terms of transaction volume, the monthly number of transactions reached 15.12 million in May 2024. By November 2024, the number remained around 14.47 million, showing no significant increase in volume as transaction value surged. According to PANews calculations, the average transaction value on the blockchain was approximately $1,051 in May 2024. By November 2024, this figure had grown to $3,489, a 231% increase.

Changes in the number of cross-chain transactions

The main reason behind this shift may be that from 2024 to early 2025, public chains like Solana, Base, and BSC saw a surge in popularity due to the MEME token and airdrops, leading to frequent fluctuations in small amounts of on-chain funds. Since April 2025, the popularity of these themes has declined, but more established players with deeper pockets have entered the market. This has led to a gradual shift in on-chain activity from high-frequency, small-scale interactions to larger-scale capital deployment and transfers.

Looking at the liquidity changes across various public chains this year, Ethereum remains the undisputed leader in cross-chain transactions. Whether inflows, outflows, or net flows, Ethereum ranks first, with net inflows reaching $10.1 billion year-to-date, nearly eight times that of the next-largest public chain.

Sonic unexpectedly became the second-largest public chain by net inflow, with a total net inflow of approximately $1.279 billion. Its net outflow was minimal, with the vast majority of cross-chain activity being inflows. However, this is likely due to statistical inflated figures caused by the migration of assets from the old chain to the new chain, and does not represent actual activity.

In terms of net outflow, Base ranked first, reaching $5 billion. This may be related to the recent vampire effect of the Ethereum mainnet. In the past three months, Base has transferred $5.9 billion to Ethereum, even exceeding the total net outflow since the beginning of the year.

Another interesting statistic is that Starknet's cross-chain activity appears to be quite active. It ranks second in both inflow and outflow, and its transaction volume is about half of that of the Ethereum mainnet.

Track pattern: the battle for traffic between leading protocols and applications

In terms of cross-chain messaging protocols, LayerZero remains the leading project. In the past month, LayerZero handled $4.965 billion in cross-chain transactions, accounting for nearly half of the total cross-chain transaction volume. Circle CCTP ranked second in transaction volume, reaching $3.8 billion. This is directly related to the growing popularity of USDC. Furthermore, established cross-chain protocol giant Wormhole ranked third, and emerging startup Hyperlane took fourth place.

In terms of cross-chain bridge applications, Hyperliquid has recently become the most active cross-chain bridge, with a monthly trading volume of approximately $4.965 billion. Although Hyperliquid's cross-chain structure is very simple, simply transferring stablecoin funds between Hyperliquid and Arbitrum, due to Hyperliquid's current trading popularity and the lack of a native stablecoin, the vast majority of deposits and withdrawals must be processed through cross-chain bridges. This has also helped Hyperliquid seize its position as a leading cross-chain bridge application.

The second-ranked cross-chain bridge is USDT0. However, its inclusion on the list may be primarily due to statistical caliber issues. The data panel also includes "issuer-level minting, burning, and migration" as "cross-chain bridge traffic." In layman's terms, this lumps together the exchange and issuance of the stablecoin USDT on various chains as cross-chain transaction volume.

Top cross-chain bridge rankings

Core Players Review: Differentiated Competition among the Three Major Protocols

The third to fifth ranked cross-chain bridges are Across, Stargate, and deBridge. These three cross-chain bridges are more representative of the market situation of cross-chain bridge protocols.

Across:

Across's trading volume over the past month has reached approximately $1.4 billion, with approximately 20,000 transactions. Across is a cross-chain bridging protocol based on UMA's Optimistic oracle. In March of this year, it secured $41 million in funding led by Paradigm, with participation from renowned institutions such as Coinbase Ventures, Bain Capital Crypto, and Multicoin Capital.

In May, Across integrated the BSC ecosystem and launched one-click cross-chain token swaps with PancakeSwap and KyberSwap. With the growing popularity of the BSC chain, its popularity has continued to rise. In July, the V4 upgrade was released, reducing the time it takes to add new chains from weeks to months to hours. Current trading volume is approximately $46 million per day, roughly double the average level at the beginning of 2024. The average cross-chain transaction size on Across is approximately $4,718, and it supports 19 chains.

From the perspective of ecological development, Across's current strategy is to seize the leading DEXs (PancakeSwap, KyberSwap), sink "cross-chain" to "a step in currency exchange", and use V4 to increase the "speed of adding new chains".

Stargate:

Stargate is a composable liquidity transfer protocol built on the LayerZero messaging layer. Its trading volume in the past month was approximately $990 million.

In 2025, Stargate's focus will be on the optimizations and key Hydra mechanisms introduced in version 2. Hydra extends liquidity from established "core" chains to emerging L1/L2 chains by locking native assets in core pools and minting chain-homogeneous tokens on target chains. This innovation eliminates the need for new chains to establish pools across multiple chains; instead, they can simply connect to Hydra and receive liquidity in tokens like USDC, USDT, and ETH from any connected chain. One of Stargate's greatest strengths is its extensive chain support; according to official announcements, 80 chains are currently supported.

However, Stargate's governance token, STG, has consistently underperformed, declining steadily since the beginning of 2024. In August 2025, the LayerZero Foundation proposed a proposal worth approximately $110 million to acquire Stargate. The proposal would dissolve the Stargate DAO and deactivate the STG token, with all STG holders being exchanged for ZRO tokens at a fixed ratio of 1 STG to 0.08634 ZRO.

The public rationale for the proposal is to accelerate development, provide more resources for Stargate, and create a unified technology stack for the LayerZero ecosystem. Given that Stargate was originally developed by LayerZero Labs, this move is seen as "bringing the bridge home." However, there has been considerable opposition within the STG community, with many arguing that the offer significantly undervalues Stargate's substantial revenue stream (projected to exceed $1.4 million annually) and its historical transaction volume of over $70 billion. The proposal requires a 70% supermajority to pass, and LayerZero insiders holding STG will abstain from voting. Voting on the proposal is expected to be completed on August 21st.

Overall, continuing to achieve "multi-chain coverage" remains Stargate's current main goal.

deBridge:

deBridge is a universal messaging protocol, secured by an independent, elected network of validators running nodes for all supported chains. deBridge has seen approximately $814 million in trading volume over the past month and has settled over $13.4 billion in trading volume.

deBridge is one of the most profitable cross-chain bridges, generating $2.96 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025 and $2.06 million in the second quarter. Annualized fees are expected to exceed $19 million. On July 24, 2025, the deBridge Foundation announced the launch of a reserve fund, which will use 100% of the protocol's revenue to repurchase its native token, DBR, on the open market. This announcement significantly stimulated DBR's market value, leading to several rapid 50% increases in a short period of time, with the price nearly doubling within a few days. However, this stimulus failed to stabilize the market, with each surge quickly followed by a decline.

Overall, the cross-chain bridge market in 2025 presents a complex situation of "macro-hot and micro-differentiation".

On the one hand, driven by a shift in capital deployment and transfers on a larger scale, overall cross-chain transaction volume hit a record high. Ethereum, with its strong consensus and liquidity, has unsurprisingly become the largest capital hub. However, the data reveals that this boom is driven more by large transactions than by widespread user growth, signaling a shift in cross-chain activity from retail speculation to deeper capital flows.

On the other hand, the competition among cross-chain protocols has transcended simple trading volume. While applications like Hyperliquid and USDT0 top the charts, their data reflects specific business needs or statistical calibers and does not fully represent the true market landscape for general-purpose cross-chain bridges. The real focus is on core protocols like Across, Stargate, and deBridge, which are engaged in a comprehensive battle over technical architecture, ecosystem integration, and economic models.

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