Axelar

Axelar is a developer of decentralized interoperability software designed to help connect blockchain ecosystems, applications, and users. The software is powered by Byzantine consensus, cryptography, and mechanism design protocols that allow applications to live on different blockchains to communicate across different blockchains. The Axelar Network consists of a protocol suite, tools, and APIs to increase interoperability between blockchains. The company was founded in 2020 in Waterloo, Ontario, by Sergey Gorbunov and Georgios Vlachos.

Axelar Network is a solution for cross-chain communication that works to meet the needs of both platform developers and application builders without the need for integration and instead delivered through a simple protocol and API for global liquidity and communication. The network consists of a decentralized network that bridges blockchain ecosystems to make it easy for applications to perform cross-chain requests.

Axelar is a developer of a satellite web-based application that offers cross-chain interoperability to allow users to transfer assets across chains through a web-based user interface. The satellite bridge supports nearly two dozen blockchains across the Ethereum and Cosmos-based ecosystems.

A component of the network is the underlying decentralized protocols. The network uses validators to maintain and run the Axelar Network nodes that are responsible for securing Axelar's blockchain. These validators are elected through a delegation process by the users, and validators receive the voting power pro-rata according to the stake delegated to them. These validators are then required to reach a consensus on the state of multiple blockchains the platform is connected to and are responsible for maintaining and running the cross-chain routing and transfer protocols.

The network follows a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) model to elect validators who must bond their stake to participate in the consensus and maintain high-quality service. This is intended to allow for the maintenance of large decentralized validator sets and robust incentives to guarantee validators maintain bridges and share cryptographic threshold schemes.

The consensus method is used to ensure the network remains decentralized while ensuring security through validator security policies, such as mandatory key rotations. And the process uses quadratic voting mechanisms to further increase the decentralization of the network. In the case where a malicious actor or interconnected chain is identified, the network function and traffic are suspended until an audit is made.

The AXL token is the native utility token of the Axelar network. The ERC-20 token is chain-agnostic with representations capable of living on connected chains and can be swapped through the Axelar permissionless layer through the Axelar bridge front ends. The token is used for staking in the network's consensus model to ensure validators and network security.