Axelar

Axelar was founded by Sergey Gorbunov and Georgios Vlachos and first introduced in February 2021 as an interoperability network that aimed to enable cross-chain communication across Web3. Its development began with the launch of an incentivized testnet that lasted four months beginning in February 2021, followed by a mainnet launch one year later, in February 2022. In May 2022, Axelar’s General Messaging Passing (GMP) protocol went live on the mainnet, enabling one-click interchain experiences for users. In September 2022, it implemented Quadratic voting to modify the network’s node consensus system. It also released the AXL token to the mainnet in the same month to incentivize permissionless node participation on the network.

In 2023, Axelar underwent several incremental mainnet upgrades, including the full transition of the network’s governance for the gateway contract from being managed via a multi-sig to being governed by Axelar nodes. Notably, in October 2023, the Axelar Foundation proposed short, medium, and long-term plans to modify AXL’s tokenomics as follows:

Based on a commercially reasonable search as of May 2024, only the adjustments to the network inflation rate have been implemented on the mainnet. A commercially reasonable search found no active proposals or further disclosures regarding the other proposed plans.

The Interchain Token Service was released to the mainnet in February 2024, allowing developers to deploy customizable interchain tokens across connected chains. In March 2024, following the successful approval of Proposal 195, the Axelar Virtual Machine went live on mainnet enabling programmable cross-chain transfers and cross-chain developments.

Axelar’s 2024 roadmap highlights the following development plans:

A commercially reasonable search found no definite release dates published for the above roadmap items.