(Update: This is an older view on the potentials for bridges for crypto. For an updated perspective, check my thoughts on The Spelunking Podcast Ep. 21 about how we are moving to a “zero-knowledge everything” world, or this piece on ZKP Bridging.)
Cosmos and Polkadot, which were both born to ensure interoperability among different chains, are in a race to maintain their relevance.
I’m starting to get pretty annoyed with people using TVL to compare the value or activity in a platform.
I personally think TVL is a flawed metric for platforms as a whole. It works only when you’re comparing domains like DeFi. If a particular platform is very DeFi-focused, it could have a higher TVL than one that gets more active use but does not require value locking (eg. Arweave).
It also seems that high chain fees would skew users to locking, since active use chews up your stack. With low fees you can be liquid and productive. Instead of keeping your $VOTE tokens locked in a system, why not move them in just when you need to cast a vote, and then out when you’re done?
(See also: Bridged volume as a metric)
On Beyond The Wormhole, Meltem talks about bridges and mentions that < 1% of bridged assets are going through Wormhole (as of 202111).
That raised an interesting idea: How much is being bridged to each platform is likely a more interesting metric of platform financial usage than TVL.