We’re excited to announce that Swell will be integrating with Chainlink’s industry-standard Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) for secure cross-chain interoperability across Arbitrum and Ethereum. By upgrading our cross-chain token transfer mechanism from LayerZero’s OFT Standard to Chainlink CCIP’s Simplified Token Transfers solution, we’re enabling the highly secure, reliable, and scalable cross-chain transfer of our liquid staking token, swETH.
We selected CCIP as our preferred interoperability solution because Chainlink has the most proven track record of maintaining the highest standard of security and reliability in the Web3 industry. Furthermore, CCIP is backed by the Risk Management Network—a separate, independent network that continually monitors and verifies cross-chain operations for suspicious activity. This additional layer of security is particularly important given historical industry exploits and the billions in user funds lost due to insecure and unreliable cross-chain infrastructure.
The integration will build on a longstanding collaboration, with Swell using a range of Chainlink innovations to help securely push forward the frontiers of liquid staking. This includes our Chainlink Proof of Reserve, which provides a best-in-class monitoring service for the ETH reserves backing swETH. After reviewing various solutions, we integrated Chainlink CCIP because it provides a multitude of important benefits and features, such as:
- Defense-in-depth security — CCIP’s consensus and transport layer is powered by Chainlink decentralized oracle networks, which have already secured tens of billions of dollars for smart contracts and enabled over $8 trillion in onchain transaction value. CCIP also includes additional layers of protection via the ARM Network, transfer rate limits, and the Smart Execution of transactions.
- Simplified token transfers — Seamlessly scale your user base and benefit from enhanced token composability by securely transferring tokens across chains in a fraction of the time it would take to build a custom solution. In addition to providing fully audited token pool smart contracts, CCIP token transfers have additional security features, such as rate limits that allow you to cap the value transferred over a given time interval.
- Effortless integration and scalability — CCIP eliminates the need to write custom code when building chain-specific integrations. Instead, we can use a single interface and integrate CCIP with a smart contract on a single blockchain to access all other supported blockchains. Tokens transferred through CCIP are also highly composable, enabling ecosystem partners to easily transfer and build new capabilities around them.
- Flexible and programmable — CCIP messages are programmable, meaning token transfers and smart contract calls can be one atomic transaction. CCIP also supports multiple token handling mechanisms on source and destination chains (e.g., mint and burn and lock and unlock) to open up a wider range of use cases.
- Future-proof — CCIP is built to support continuous updates, such as the integration of new blockchains (including non-EVM chains), the introduction of advanced functionalities, and the addition of other defense-in-depth approaches to security. Thus, an integration with CCIP eliminates future switching costs should new cross-chain functionalities be needed.
“We’re excited to continue our longstanding collaboration with Chainlink. At Swell, the community is excited to be integrating the most secure, reliable, and scalable cross-chain solution, Chainlink CCIP. By underpinning our liquid staking protocol, CCIP can help accelerate the adoption of swETH across the wider cross-chain economy.” — Daniel Dizon, Founder
About Chainlink
Chainlink is the industry-standard decentralized computing platform powering the verifiable web. Chainlink has enabled over $8.8 trillion in transaction value by providing financial institutions, startups, and developers worldwide with access to real-world data, offchain computation, and secure cross-chain interoperability across any blockchain. Chainlink powers verifiable applications and high-integrity markets for banking, DeFi, global trade, gaming, and other major sectors.
Learn more about Chainlink by visiting chain.link or reading the developer documentation at docs.chain.link.
About Swell
Swell is a non-custodial liquid staking protocol that aims to provide the best liquid staking (and soon liquid restaking) experience in DeFi, while securing the future of Ethereum. Our easy-to-use platform enables users to stake, monitor yield strategies across DeFi, and more.
