Celer’s Steve Yu: We Are Living in a MultiChain World

We are moving towards a multi-chain world as dApps, and token assets are distributed over more loosely joined systems with different tradeoffs on security, throughput, latency, developer friendliness, and modularity.

We clearly see various protocols built on different Layer 1s and Layer 2s. The ecosystem’s liquidity is often siloed in different pockets, and trying to transfer a token cross-chain can prove to be slow and expensive.

Therefore, the value of bridging different chains together is clear. It enables users of the different protocols to connect to a cross-chain bridge to fund seamlessly, transfer, and extend to the greater blockchain community.

For example, when withdrawing assets back to Ethereum Layer 1 through Arbitrum, the standard withdrawal process takes at least 7 days with a high fee. Still, when you use a specialist bridge, as the subject of this interview, cBridge, the same transaction would likely take seconds at a much lower fee cost.

dApps on Celer Enjoy Over a Million Users

We spoke to Celer’s VP of Business Development and Ops Steve Yu, who explained that while traveling to Africa, he fell down the rabbit hole of looking for a way that payment processing and remittance could be made better. He said,  “This is where I saw first hand how mobile financial platforms were effective in helping to free up different financial silos through faster payments, money transfers all over a 3G network. It’s life-changing when your bank is 20 miles across the Serengeti, and your only mode of transportation is your feet.”

Another big draw to the industry was “the chance to work with Celer’s founding team, who were already highly regarded in the fields of computer science, cryptography, blockchain — and now pressing to innovate and bridge the entire blockchain ecosystem was something I didn’t want to miss.”

Celer Network has big plans. According to Steve, their mission is “to bring mainstream adoption to the blockchain via Layer2 scaling. We’re middleware. Core applications and widely used middlewares like cBridge and layer2.finance are built on Celer and have attracted over a million users in DeFi, blockchain interoperability, and the gaming space.”

“cBridge maintains inter-network liquidity flow without the need of a trust-based custodian and without delay. We’re still in the early stages of cross-chain bridging, and we want Celer Network’s cBridge to lead the way.”

Their main focus currently is “building on the success of our cross-chain bridge, cBridge 1.0. The goal of cBridge 1.0 was straightforward — build an interoperable bridge that can transact cross-chain where any digital asset can be transferred instantly, cost-effectively, and securely. We’ve already recently surpassed $1 billion in total cross-chain transactions, just 5 months after launching V1.0, so there’s a clear demand from the community.”

He added: “The testnet version of cBridge 2.0 has been gaining traction since being announced recently, so the upcoming cBridge 2.0 mainnet will be an innovation-packed release geared towards enhancing and adding features that better incentivize users, liquidity providers, cBridge node operators, stakers, and validators as well as developers. For example, cBridge 2.0 will be the first and only cross-chain architecture that allows liquidity providers to freely choose between the ‘self-managed’ and the ‘pooled-together’ liquidity models’.”

“Another feature is developers can build cross-chain messaging for NFTs, decentralized exchanges, and other projects. We believe this and the other enhancements in this release would encourage more users to engage and result in a much higher 24 hr transaction volume on cBridge, contributing to the growth of the space.”

Technology is a One Way Bet

How will we know when the blockchain is in a state of mass adoption? Steve believes that “technology is a one-way bet.”

“The first time I received an email was back in 1995 when I served in the Marines. Back then, the military was using it along with some academics and scientists mostly. If you told me back then that the same underlying technology would enable us to self manage our banking, book travel, have basically anything you want delivered to your door, interact with our friends and family, have real time video chat with someone halfway around the world for free in just a few years later, it would’ve been hard to comprehend, but all that and much more happened in a short period.”

Steve has no doubts that the future of the blockchain is mass adoption. He says “Transferring digital assets cross-chain will be as common as how we send funds to accounts across different banks and countries. Celer is building the key infrastructures in place now and the current engagement numbers of cBridge’s adoption continue to accelerate to new highs every week. For instance, when we first launched cBridge 1.0 back in July, our 24-hour transaction volume was around $1-2 million. Fast forward to November, our average 24-hour volume is hovering between $15-20 million with over $1 billion in total cross-chain transaction volume. In the tech world, things can go from the early lag to log phase growth in a short period and I believe we’re seeing this throughout the blockchain space.”

“Fortunately, Celer is seeing a clear path to growth as the greater blockchain community also grows because Layer2 will continue to play a key role in the space. This explosion of innovation feels very much like the other transformative ones I’ve seen before in mobile and AI.”

So cBridge has rapidly surpassed $1 billion in total cross-chain transaction volume while offering the most number of chains with the lowest fee in fully non-custodial mode. This surging growth of cBridge, as well as other players in the industry, indicates that these are the kind of solutions that the ecosystem needs right now.

According to Steve, “Our desire with cBridge was to make it simple to integrate our technology with multi-chain apps, to a point that users don’t even realize the existence of cBridge but still use it every day and of course, benefit from the Celer core technology ecosystem. We believe this occurs when there’s ease of use and economic incentive in a trustless way. I think we’re heading in the right direction and look forward to supporting a 24-hour transaction volume of over $100M in the near future.”

“We also couldn’t have achieved this without the collaboration and support of our key partners like Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche and so many more that also shared the same vision, and we’re proud to contribute to the space to help move forward together.”

Moving the Industry Forward With an Agnostic Technology

The blockchain space moves extremely fast, faster than any other industry and that’s why it is important for any project or protocol to be agile enough to seize the opportunity as it comes along and then to execute it. The underlying technology as a Layer 2 is highly applicable and agnostic to other blockchains including other Layer 1s and Layer 2s. This means that the technology can be applied and integrated with other protocols and use cases, across DeFi, micropayments, IoT, insurance, etc. A protocol like this could move the entire space forward.

Celer is indeed moving forward at warp speed with an aggressive pipeline and a laser-focused team. In the immediate short term, they’ll be releasing cBridge 2.0 mainnet in the next couple of months then they will shift their focus to Layer2.Finance — a “ride-sharing” service for DeFi. It’s much more end-user-centric and customer-facing, like banks.

Celer is ambitious. According to Steve, “cBridge and Layer2.Finance will emerge in the near future to provide and serve as the main infrastructure of digital asset bridging and DeFi similar to how our current banking systems not only enable bridging funds to other accounts but offer consumer-facing services and facilitate various investment products. Similarly, we’re fixated on contributing our work to the entire blockchain ecosystem. This is just the start for us.”

CELR Price Analysis: Picking Up Momentum

In the meantime, CELR keeps gathering bullish steam above the $0.068 level and aims to reach the 50-period simple moving average in order to consolidate above $0.10. If that happens, it could take bids to rally towards $0.11 in a first instance.

However, once it plunges below the $0.0625 zone, eyes will be on the $0.050 area, followed by the $0.040 level, although the RSI indicator keeps favoring the bullish stance.