Cross-chain Bridges Market Review 2025: Trading Volume Hits New High, Landscape Changes Quietly

As the popularity of DeFi in the crypto market rises, on-chain activity has significantly increased. In the process of interconnecting different blockchain networks, cross-chain bridges play a key role. The activity level of cross-chain bridges not only reflects the overall heat of on-chain activities but also authentically reflects the demand for capital flow between different public chains. This article will comprehensively review the performance of leading cross-chain bridges since 2025.

Market Overview: Cross-chain trading volume increases year by year, while the number of transactions remains stable.

The overall data on cross-chain bridges shows that they will enter an active period starting at the end of 2024. The total cross-chain transaction volume in September 2024 is approximately $18.6 billion, which rapidly increases to $50 billion by November, representing an increase of about 188%. After entering 2025, the activity level continues to remain high.

In July 2025, the on-chain monthly cross-chain transaction volume reached $56.1 billion, setting a historical record. However, a deeper analysis of the data reveals that the increase in transaction volume is mainly due to large transactions. In terms of the number of transactions, the monthly transaction count in May 2024 was 15.12 million, and by November, it remained around 14.47 million, not significantly rising despite the surge in transaction amounts. According to calculations, the average single transaction amount on-chain in May 2024 was approximately $1,051, which grew to $3,489 by November, representing an increase of 231%.

The main reason for this shift may be that from early 2024 to early 2025, multiple public chains experienced fluctuating popularity due to hot topics like MEME coins and airdrops, leading to frequent movement of small on-chain funds. Since April 2025, the popularity of these themes has declined, but more well-capitalized mature players have entered the market. This has caused on-chain activities to gradually shift from high-frequency, small-scale interactions to larger-scale capital deployment and transfers.

From the changes in fund flows of various public chains this year, Ethereum remains the absolute leader in cross-chain transactions. Whether in terms of inflow, outflow, or net flow, Ethereum ranks first, with a net inflow of 10.1 billion USD since the beginning of the year, nearly 8 times that of the second-ranked public chain.

Sonic unexpectedly became the second public chain with net inflows, with a total net inflow of approximately $1.279 billion. Its net outflow amount is very small, and the majority of cross-chain activity is inflow. However, this may mainly be due to the statistical inflation caused by the migration of old chain assets to the new chain, and does not represent its true level of activity.

In terms of net outflow, Base ranks first with a net outflow of $5 billion. This may be related to the recent siphoning effect of the Ethereum mainnet. In the past three months, the funds flowing from Base to Ethereum have reached $5.9 billion, even exceeding the total net outflow amount from the beginning of the year to date.

Another interesting piece of data is that Starknet's cross-chain activity seems to be quite active. Both inflows and outflows rank second, with a trading volume of about half that of the Ethereum mainnet.

Industry Landscape: The Battle for Traffic Among Leading Protocols and Applications

In terms of cross-chain messaging protocols, LayerZero remains the leading project. In the past month, the cross-chain transaction amount completed through LayerZero reached $4.965 billion, accounting for nearly half of the total cross-chain transaction volume for the month. The cross-chain communication protocol CCTP of a certain stablecoin issuer ranked second in transaction volume over the past month, reaching $3.8 billion. This is directly related to the growing prosperity of the stablecoin. Additionally, the established cross-chain protocol giant ranked third, while the emerging Hyperlane ranked fourth.

In terms of cross-chain bridge applications, Hyperliquid has become the most active cross-chain bridge recently, with a monthly trading volume of approximately $4.965 billion. Although Hyperliquid's cross-chain structure is very simple, only facilitating the flow of stablecoins between Hyperliquid and a certain Layer 2, the current trading popularity of Hyperliquid and the absence of a native stablecoin have led to the vast majority of inflows and outflows relying on cross-chain bridges to complete. This has also propelled Hyperliquid to seize the leading position in the cross-chain bridge application.

The second-ranked cross-chain bridge is a cross-chain tool for a certain stablecoin; however, the main reason it can make the list may still be a statistical perspective issue. The data panel also includes "issuer-level minting and burning migration" as part of the "cross-chain bridge traffic". In simple terms, it means that the exchange and issuance of the stablecoin across various chains are combined and counted as cross-chain transaction volume.

Core Players Overview: The Differentiated Competition of Three Major Protocols

The cross-chain bridges ranked third to fifth are Across, StarGate, and deBridge. These three cross-chain bridges better represent the market situation of cross-chain bridge protocols.

Across:

According to the data, Across has a trading volume of about $1.4 billion and approximately 20,000 transactions in the past month. Across is a cross-chain bridges protocol based on a certain oracle, which completed a $41 million financing round in March this year with participation from several well-known institutions.

In May, Across connected a certain public chain ecosystem and launched a one-click cross-chain token swap on a certain DEX. This was accompanied by a surge in popularity as the public chain gained traction. In July, the V4 version upgrade was released, which shortened the new chain support time from 'weeks~months' to 'hours'. The current trading volume is approximately 46 million dollars per day, which is about twice the average level at the beginning of 2024. The average single cross-chain transaction size for Across is about 4,718 dollars, supporting 19 chains.

From the perspective of ecological development, Across's current strategy is to focus on top DEXs, making "cross-chain" a step for "currency exchange," and increasing the "new chain speed" through V4.

StarGate:

StarGate is a composable liquidity transfer protocol built on a messaging layer. The trading volume in the past month is approximately $990 million.

In 2025, StarGate focused on introducing optimization measures and key Hydra mechanisms in the V2 version. Hydra expands liquidity from mature "core" chains to emerging L1/L2s by locking native assets in the core pool and minting fully chain-homogeneous tokens on the target chain. This innovation allows new chains to connect directly with Hydra and receive liquidity of mainstream tokens from any already connected chain without the need to first deploy pools everywhere. One of StarGate's greatest advantages is the sufficient number of supported chains; according to its official statement, it currently supports 80 chains.

However, the governance token STG of StarGate has performed poorly, declining all the way from the beginning of 2024 to now. In August 2025, a certain foundation proposed an acquisition plan worth approximately $110 million, aimed at acquiring StarGate. The proposal plans to dissolve the StarGate DAO and disable the STG token, with all STG holders converting to another token at a fixed ratio.

The public reason for the proposal is to accelerate development, provide more resources for StarGate, and create a unified technology stack for a certain ecosystem. Given that StarGate was initially developed by a certain Labs, this move is seen as "bringing the bridge home." However, as of now, there are also many opposing voices within the STG community, with many believing that this offer seriously underestimates StarGate's substantial revenue stream (, which is expected to exceed $1.4 million in annual revenue ) and its historical trading volume of over $70 billion. The proposal requires an absolute majority vote of 70% to pass, and insiders holding STG will abstain from voting. The voting on this proposal is expected to be completed by August 21.

Overall, continuing to pursue "multi-chain coverage" remains StarGate's current main goal.

deBridge:

deBridge is a universal messaging protocol whose security is guaranteed by an independent network of elected validators that operate nodes for all supported chains. In the past month, deBridge has processed approximately $814 million in transaction volume, settling over $13.4 billion in transactions.

deBridge is one of the most profitable cross-chain bridges, with revenues of $2.96 million in the first quarter of 2025 and $2.06 million in the second quarter. The annual expected fees exceed $19 million. On July 24, 2025, the deBridge Foundation announced the launch of a reserve fund to use 100% of the protocol's revenue to buy back its native token DBR on the open market. After this announcement, there was significant stimulation for DBR in the market, with several rapid increases of 50% within a short period, and the price nearly doubled in a few days. However, this kind of news stimulation did not stabilize the market; there was a quick drop after each rise.

Overall, the cross-chain bridges market in 2025 presents a complex situation of "macro heat and micro differentiation."

On one hand, under the larger scale of capital deployment and transfer transformation, the overall cross-chain transaction volume has reached a historical high. Ethereum, with its strong consensus and liquidity, has undoubtedly become the largest capital hub. However, the other side of the data reveals that this prosperity is driven more by large transactions rather than a widespread increase in the number of users, indicating that cross-chain activities are shifting from retail speculation to deeper capital flows.

On the other hand, the competition among cross-chain protocols has transcended the mere contest of transaction volume. Applications like Hyperliquid may rank high on the list, but the data behind them more reflects specific business needs or statistical criteria, and cannot fully represent the true market landscape of general cross-chain bridges. The real focus has shifted to core protocols such as Across, StarGate, and deBridge, which are engaged in a comprehensive competition regarding technological architecture, ecosystem integration, and economic models.