What is the Squid Protocol & how does it enable cross-chain liquidity?

Squid is delivering the cross-chain future for both developers and users. For developers, Squid is a protocol that enables cross-chain liquidity routing and swaps through a single Javascript software development kit (SDK). This routing allows for the swapping of any tokens across all the supported chains, by connecting users to liquidity pools on dexes anywhere in Web3. The SDK works by getting a route that returns the details of the token transfer and the cost to execute it. Developers can then execute the transfer with the required signer and route.

Squid uses Axelar's General Message Passing capabilities to enable smart contract calls across multiple chains. Using the multicall feature of Squid, applications can call multiple contracts in sequence. Use cases might include swapping tokens using a dex on another chain, then using the acquired tokens in another dApp. This feature delivers cross-chain liquidity, and saves time for both users and developers as a signature for the second transaction is not required.

What this means for users is one-click transactions. They will not need to download multiple wallets to sign the transactions across different chains. Users can buy NFTs from any marketplace, play a game on another chain or transact with multi-chain DeFi protocols, without any extra steps. Squid enables dApps to source cross-chain liquidity and deliver this kind of experience, using security provided by the Axelar network.
www.axelar.network/blog/cross-chain-liquidity-via-squid

In this dashboard, I have used the table "axelar.core.ez_squid" from Flipside to calculate the activity of bridge in Squid. This table contains all information related to Squid bridge.

To determine most active chain, I have used the "concat" command and identified bridge path from the source chain, which is listed in the SOURCE_CHAIN column, to destination chain, which is listed in the DESTINATION_CHAIN column.

Moreover, to calculate token prices for calculating the bridge volume in USD, I have used the table "crosschain.core.ez_hourly_prices", although most of the bridges were related to stablecoins.

After demonstrating that almost 99.9% of transactions are for 2 stablecoins, USDC and axlUSDC, the calculations in the following charts will only be shown for these two tokens.