Investigating Wormhole Bridge and Effect of FTX crash on performance of this platform


What is a Wormhole?
Designed to work as a fully decentralized, reliable, and robust message-transfer protocol for connecting multiple blockchains, Wormhole is a lot more than you can think of. Speaking in simple terms, Wormhole is a ‘bridge’ that efficiently facilitates the movement of digital assets from one blockchain to another blockchain network. The portal helps users operating on top-tier decentralized channels like Ethereum, Binance, Solana, Polygon, Oasis, etc., to communicate with each other via a transparent interface.
It won’t be an exaggeration to say that blockchain technology has managed to build a strong empire for itself across the globe. Today, we can find industrial domains relying on blockchain to enhance their operational and working capacities. Though finance is the most popular application of DLT, the technology presently shows its prowess across other domains as well, including education, healthcare, banking, supply chain, etc., to name a few. The Decentralized Ledger Technology offers its users high-end security, transparency, and immutability. It has a robust suite of advantages. However, DLT has its shortcomings too.
Firstly, it is difficult to move assets between blockchain networks without involving centralized platforms for managing the bridging and swapping of tokens. This increases the threat of counterparty risks.
Secondly, interoperability between chains becomes cumbersome as there is no communication link between DApps and smart contracts on different blockchain channels.
Wormhole strives to resolve these issues by providing a safe link for the movement of virtual assets across blockchains. The portal depends on the Wormhole Core Layer to achieve this objective. It is a contract deployed on each chain that effortlessly wires the received messages to the destination chain. A strong cluster of 19 nodes secures Wormhole’s blockchain ecosystem. In addition, the channel allows cross-chain message protocols such as token and NFT bridges, oracle networks, etc., that depend upon Wormhole’s core infrastructure.
How does Wormhole Work?
While Wormhole comes packed with some of the most remarkable features for users, the native token bridge remains its most potent and well-known characteristic. The Wormhole Token Bridge facilitates the trustless and permissionless transfer of virtual assets across different Layer1 blockchain channels. So, how does Wormhole manage all this? Let’s dive into this exciting topic.
Protected by Validator Nodes or Guardians The Wormhole ecosystem is secured and controlled by a group of mindfully hand-picked validator nodes, often called guardians. The guardian nodes check the activities taking place on the chains to ensure the security of transactions. The guardian nodes include famous names such as the world’s biggest staking platform, Everstake.
After making a transfer request, the guardians verify it and lock the portal’s native tokens in a smart contract. Further, the system mints an equivalent number of tokens as a wrapped asset on the destination chain. Each bridging trade involves a transaction fee and the gas fee for the sender and the destination chain.
Presently, the Wormhole ecosystem uses the V2 bridge version that is created on top of the Wormhole Core Layer. It is not considered a part of it. The solution is fully decentralized as the core layer and works as the primary token bridge for Solana and Terra. The Wormhole bridge has over $1 billion in TVL and provides necessary support to NFTs.
The process:
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Send the message to the Wormhole ecosystem
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The Guardian nodes scrutinize the transaction
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Within seconds, the nodes manage to reach the Quorum
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The Guardian nodes make the attested message publicly accessible
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Access the message on the destination chain
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Methodology
in this dashboard we can choose a lot of subject about Solana. I decided to investigate about Wormhole one of Solana Bridges platforms and I wanted to investigate inflow and outflow of money to and From Solana specifically after FTX Collapse at the start of last month.
My Discord Handle for further question:
Hossein#4457
Thank you for reading.
Summary
- An interesting point about Wormhole bridge from Ethereum to Solana was the highest number of bridge was on 9 Nov 1 day after FTX collapse while I except after FTX collapse the number of daily bridge experienced a decreased movement. also, the highest number of bridgers from Ethereum to Solana was on that day with about 65. moreover, the greatest USD volume that bridge per day bridged on that day and volume of this bridge was about 1.7M USD.
- Wormhole has experienced nearby 1300 bridge transactions before FTX crash and nearby 3800 transactions after FTX crash.
- Wormhole has experienced nearby 1000 bridgers before FTX crash and nearby 2500 users after FTX crash.
- Wormhole has experienced nearby 36.2M bridge USD Volume before FTX crash and nearby 162.3M USD after FTX crash.
- USDC is the most popular token that bridged to Solana with 2000 bridge transactions and about 1000 bridgers and finally about 166M USD as Volume.
- on the other hand, Wormhole has experienced about 28K transactions as Total bridge transactions from Solana to Ethereum Network. also about 7.5K users done this bridge transactions and, about 89B USD bridged from Solana to Ethereum.
- the highest number of daily bridge from Solana to Ethereum was on 9 Nov with about 3.8K and about 1.4K users on that day and 23M USD bridged only on that day.
- Cumulative data: Totally Wormhole has 3.5K bridge transactions before FTX crash and about 28K after it. moreover, 1.7K users before and about 11.5K users after FTX crash. in addition, about 2.5M bridged to Solana before FTX crash but after it about 96M USD bridged to Ethereum.
- USDC has the highest bridge USD volume to Ethereum with about 79M USDC but wSol had the highest number of bridge transactions with about 28K.
- while at first I think FTX collapse did not affect on Solana out/in flow but at the end I realized it seems this news could encourage people to withdraw their assets from Solana.
Introduction