Many assets, many chains, one interface. Velodrome, the leading DEX on Optimism, has launched Superswaps, a new interchain swapping experience powered by Hyperlane.
With Superswaps, users can swap assets on Velodrome across different chains in one, single transaction flow. Hyperlane's comprehensive interoperability stack featuring secure interchain messaging, remote contract execution, and MEV-resistant privacy features forms the technical foundation that enables Velodrome's Superswaps to deliver a truly unified interchain experience.
Superswap today ⏩ velodrome.finance/superswaps
Understanding Interchain Liquidity Today
In DeFi today, token liquidity is largely concentrated on the chain where that token was first deployed. Native pools are where pricing is most reliable, and where integrations tend to concentrate to. While tokens can exist across chains, extending liquidity often requires deploying new pools and coordinating incentives around them. This creates overhead for teams and can split liquidity across multiple environments.
This fragmentation makes it harder to build applications that rely on consistent pricing and deep liquidity. For users, it can introduce slippage, inconsistencies, or extra steps when moving between chains.
Enter Superswaps.
Superswaps are built to solve for this, starting with one clear goal: make interchain swaps feel like local ones.
Now live on Velodrome, Superswaps let users trade from one asset to another across chains using a single transaction flow. Behind the scenes, Hyperlane powers the interchain messaging infrastructure that makes this possible.
What Superswaps Enable
Superswaps offer key benefits enabled by Hyperlane’s modular architecture:
Simple User Experience: Superswaps simplify bridging for users. Instead of hopping between different bridges and DEXs and signing multiple transactions, Superswaps reduce this experience to one single flow by using Hyperlane helps facilitate transfers behind the scenes.
Native Liquidity: Users receive native assets on the destination chain when they swap.
Safe Swapping/MEV-Protection: Superswaps help keep users safe from frontrunning and other MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) attacks. To do this, Superswaps uses a novel Hyperlane feature that keeps swap calldata on the destination chain private, helping protect users from MEV attacks to ensure they can swap any asset safely across any supported chain.
How It Works
Users can access Superswaps directly through Velodrome. Just like a regular swap, users choose the token they want to sell, select a token on a different chain to buy, and submit one transaction to swap the tokens.
Hyperlane handles the bridging and execution in the background, so the user only sees one smooth flow.
A simple, one swap experience, powered by Hyperlane. Behind the scenes, the process looks like:
1. Velodrome swaps the original asset for oUSDT, 1:1, on the source chain.
2. The oUSDT is then bridged through Hyperlane to the destination chain.
3. Velodrome then swaps the oUSDT into the preferred asset, 1:1, on the destination chain.
Powered By Hyperlane
Superswaps are build on several core components of Hyperlane:
Interchain Accounts (ICAs)
To reduce multiple transactions into a single flow, Velodrome uses Hyperlane’s Interchain Accounts (ICA).
Interchain Accounts enable a contract on one chain to interact with any contract on another chain. For Superswaps, this means Velodrome can swap assets on the destination chain on users’ behalf - this is key to the smooth experience they offer.
This allows:
Remote execution/Composable transactions: ICAs allow oUSDT that is bridged over during a Superswap to be immediately swapped for the user’s preferred asset. This is possible thanks to the cohesive structure of Hyperlane’s Transfer-and-Call Pattern, which enables a contract on the origin chain to both bridge assets through Hyperlane Warp Route (HWR) and execute an action on the destination chain afterwards.
User-level isolation: Each Superswap has its own ICA for the user on the destination chain, such that each swap is isolated and independently executed, keeping the execution secure and predictable.
Private destination swaps/MEV protection: ICAs enable Superswaps to execute swaps privately on the destination chain to mitigate MEV risks. This is possible thanks to a special feature in ICAs which helps prevent frontrunning by only revealing certain transaction details prior to execution.
MEV-Protected Swaps
To protect users from frontrunning and other MEV attacks, Superswaps can keep the destination swap private until execution. This is possible thanks to a feature Hyperlane offers, which uses a commit/reveal pattern to separate the information about what’s being swapped from the rest of the transaction data.
Here’s how it works:
1. When a user initiates a Superswap, only a cryptographic hash summary of their swap details is revealed.
2. The actual swap data is directed to a secure offchain gateway managed by Velodrome.
3. Once the final step of the Superswap - the destination chain swap - is ready, a Hyperlane Relayer fetches the hidden swap details from the gateway and verifies it matches the original transaction data.
4. Once verified, the user’s dedicated ICA executes the swap on the destination chain on their behalf. This process uses Hyperlane’s CCIP-Read ISM, an Interchain Security Module (ISM) that allows applications to fetch and verify offchain data at the time of execution.
OpenUSDT: Interchain USDT for Settlement
Superswaps use OpenUSDT (oUSDT) as the intermediary stablecoin to transfer value from one chain to another. OpenUSDT is a joint effort by leading blockchain infrastructure providers including Velodrome, Hyperlane, and Chainlink. It maintains 1:1 backing with native USDT locked on Ethereum and Celo, using Chainlink CCIP and Hyperlane for interchain transfers.
OpenUSDT supports both XERC20 and SuperchainERC20 formats, allowing for broader chain support and native asset delivery across a wide range of chains and ecosystems.
Why Hyperlane
Superswaps demonstrates several key advantages of building with Hyperlane:
As the Velodrome team put it:
“The modularity of the message transportation allows for virtually any bridge provider to be supported. The preference for Hyperlane is thanks to no requirements for a specific token format and their chain-agnostic open source implementation.”
Modular by Design
Hyperlane's modular design allowed Velodrome to implement custom features like private destination swaps while maintaining compatibility with the broader ecosystem. Hyperlane doesn’t enforce any requirements for a specific token format and offers a chain-agnostic open source framework.
Future-Proof
As the DeFi landscape evolves, Velodrome can easily upgrade Superswap components, or integrate other security layers, like native Superchain interoperability, easily.
Broad Coverage
Superswaps are not limited to a single ecosystem. They can easily be extended to new chains and protocols thanks to Hyperlane's extensible architecture.
Superswaps Are Live.
Superswaps are now live on Velodrome. Secure, simple swapping for any asset on any chain on Velodrome, powered by Hyperlane.
Superswap today ⏩ velodrome.finance/superswaps
Read the Superswap docs ⏩ velodrome.finance/docs/superswaps
About Hyperlane
Hyperlane is an open framework for interoperability. It is the toolkit empowering developers to connect any chain and build applications that can easily and securely communicate between multiple blockchains.
