The First Community Research Contribution

In zkGasm (I) we analyzed Union’s gas cost at different parts of the stack and elaborated on the gas cost for both the zkp-based filling (main mode) as well as the intent-based filling scenario. Thanks to valuable benchmarks provided by 0xFust from CashmereLabs (our first public research contribution), we are now writing a follow-up on that article, in which we compare various bridge protocols.

<aside> <img src="/icons/customs_green.svg" alt="/icons/customs_green.svg" width="40px" />

Our contributor benchmarked various bridges over the last 6 months. The numbers are used in this article, including references to the bridge transactions.

</aside>

Recap

In a bridging operation's transfer lifecycle, both the user and the filler expend gas to facilitate specific parts of the process, as explained in zkGasm (I) [1]. For this comparison, we split the cost per transfer into cost at the source side and cost at the destination side. Furthermore, for Union, we use the cost for the critical path as described in zkGasm (I), since acknowledgments are not performed by other bridge protocols.

Results

This results in the following graph, from which we can draw several key observations:

  1. Axelar has the highest gas cost among the protocols, with a total of 848,548. The majority of this cost comes from the Destination side, while the Source side is relatively minor. This might have to do with signature verification on the Destination side for their validator set.
  2. LayerZero has a total gas cost of 280,330 with a more balanced split between "Destination" and "Source" costs. To quote the contributor on the settings used: I used the most centralized and minimal settings. We expect that with other DVNs, the cost will be greater.
  3. Union has the lowest total gas cost at 138,377. Indicating it is more gas-efficient than the others. Union's low gas cost could make it more efficient for scenarios where minimizing gas fees is important. Note that the gas cost will be slightly higher in production depending on which asset types are being bridged, and if transfers are batched within a packet. This may potentially result in a 20% increase in gas cost.
  4. Wormhole has a notable gas cost of 392,789 primarily driven by "Destination" costs.

Untitled

<aside> 💡

Related Works

zkGasm (I)

Back to Home

Union Research

</aside>