The state of cross-chain on Balanced

When 2024 began, Balanced embarked on a quest to become a leading cross-chain DeFi platform. Six months and five blockchain connections later, Balanced has increased its availability by 250%. All five connections launched in the past eight weeks, but it took months of work to plant and nurture the seeds.

Learn more about Balanced’s cross-chain accomplishments during the first half of 2024, and preview where it’s going from here.

Balanced’s journey so far

For the first 2.5 years of its life, Balanced was only available on ICON. That changed at the end of 2023, when it connected to the Archway blockchain and gave people the ability to swap and transfer cross-chain.

The ICON Network proposed an economic enshrinement soon after, which allowed the contributors to pour more resources into app development and cross-chain connections. To improve the trading experience, ICON supplies liquidity for each connected chain (US$2.5 million and counting). In return, Balanced uses 50% of its revenue to buy and burn ICX (140k ICX so far).

After taking time to refactor the code for improved performance and scalability, the Balanced contributors launched five connections in quick succession: Avalanche, Arbitrum and BNB Chain, Base, and Havah.

Along with these connections came token listings for native assets like AVAX, BNB, ETH, and HVH, in addition to BTC and USDC.

For an optimal trading experience, multi-chain assets like BTC, ETH, and USDC are represented as a single token, so you don’t have to deal with wrapped tokens or fragmented liquidity.

And after the Stability Fund update, you can trade USDC more freely than before. The Stability Fund holds most of the stablecoin liquidity, but low liquidity outside the fund made it impractical to swap USDC for anything other than bnUSD on ICON. Now that trades can route through the fund, you can swap stablecoins cross-chain and exchange USDC for a range of assets — without excessive slippage.

Where Balanced is going next

Progress on the back-end has outpaced the front, so the app’s direction for the rest of the year is clear. Front-end connections to Injective and Optimism are in progress, and cross-chain loans will be available within a few weeks.

The rapid release schedule has introduced some bugs, technical debt, and areas that need enhancement. After the upcoming releases, we plan to slow down to smooth the rough edges and make sure the app is as stable as possible, so we have everything in order to finish the year strong.

We’ll then move on to phase two, with connections to Solana, Stacks, Stellar, Sui, and more. Concentrated liquidity will also launch later this year – its addition will improve trading efficiency on the exchange, so Balanced can provide low-slippage trades even with limited liquidity.

With each connection and product update, Balanced’s utility multiplies.

How to use Balanced cross-chain

If you haven’t tried Balanced’s cross-chain experience, visit the Trade page to get started. Click ‘Sign in’, connect your wallet(s), then choose your own adventure:

Swap crypto

Swap an asset on one chain, and receive your new asset on another.

From the Swap tab:

1. Choose which assets to swap, and where to send & receive them.
2. Enter the amount, then click Swap and complete the trade.

Transfer cross-chain

You can also send crypto directly to another blockchain from the Bridge tab:

1. Choose which blockchains to transfer between.
2. Choose an asset, then enter the amount.
3. Click Transfer and follow the prompts to complete the transfer.

Swap and transfer on Balanced today

Ready to use Balanced for your cross-chain crypto needs?

Visit app.balanced.network/trade and sign in with your favourite wallet(s).

To learn more about Balanced, visit the website, read the docs, and join the Balanced community on Discord.

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