What is AXELAR's Interchain Token Service?
Welcome to the end of the week Lion's and it is starting to become a period of good news in that we're starting to see a lot of project announcement and news. This is a great change as it means Blockchains are starting to feel a little more confident in the current climate and work is continuing.
The SEC saga with Ripple and other projects including Coinbase has started to weigh down on everyone and it has been a challenge to come up with some good new content.
But alas it looks like the sector is picking up right where they left off with the focus being on interconnected blockchains which is something the Cosmos system is well known for. Today we also have some good news of continued work Axelar has been undertaking in this space.
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What is Axelar?
Axelar is one of the leaders in interrogability and cross chain technology having developed it's own Axelar Virtual Machine built on Cosmwasm which is what Cosmos (Atom) Network operates on. This system enables instead of tokens being launched on a chain like we see on Ethereum, entire blockchains can be layers onto Cosmos network.
This enables a more scalable environment for projects to keep operating without being interfered with congestion or high fees in order to undertake transactions. The project has been quite successful over the past few years and now there are quite a few projects that reside on Cosmos.
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Is Axelar Operational?
The project has been operational for quite some time and if you go back a few years ago I write an article on the project at launch which was quite successful although a lot of people had concerns around security.
Axelar has studied this topic and released research into it and they also raise other crucial issues beyond just safety and security of funds and blockchain assets.
Thus far utilising the Axelar network many tokens can be bridged to other networks affordably and fast including Ethereum with many more to come as stated by Axelar.
Fantom was the most recent chain to join Axelar and is showing strong community support from the sector as it moves to become more accessible in more locations.
Axelar Interchain Token Service
Axelar is aiming to change the way tokens are bridged in the sector due to the many barriers bridges face including losing their abilities. i.e. A token with special abilities like we saw with De-Fi reflection tokens that provided % to holders.
These tokens only retained their special ability on the chains that they were minted on and bridging to other chains would render them useless and often quite costly for developers.
This is a problem Axelar seeks to fix with their Interchain Token Service (ITS) which promises to retain those special features no matter where or what chain developers who choose to use the service send them.
Developing a project utilising ITS will also support developers in managing all the tokens across chains giving them more oversight and ability to address issues and concerns as they emerge.
Try before you buy
If you're a bit skeptical about it all and want to see ITS in action the project has partnered up with Sushi Swap and they're operating on the test net which can be accessed here.
You'll be able to either create your own with special abilities and test them out across other chains to see if they work or if you simply want to purchase some of the one's already created you can do that too.
It looks like the competition for cross chain tokens is heating up and with Axelar implementing their ITS service we may have a new contender for top value in 2023.
We're looking forward to see where these new developments take us and if they work well a very exciting concept one perhaps Hive could look at joining to see our token available in more places across different blockchains.
If you're looking for a project to follow for the next few months, chances are this is it as people are always looking for new and innovative projects that are leading in their field.
What are your thoughts on the latest ITS and how do you think it will change the current course of crypto projects?
image sources provided supplemented by Canva Pro subscription. this is not financial advice and readers are advised to undertake their own research or seek professional financial services.