Which Bridge Is Cheapest? Founders of Across Protocol and LayerZero Labs Clash

A dispute has arisen regarding what bridge has the cheapest transaction fee in DeFi, with Hart Lambur, co-founder of the interoperability protocol Across, referring to the situation as ‘Bridge Wars.’

A disagreement has sprung up on X over who has the cheapest DeFi bridge, with Hart Lambur, the co-founder of interoperability protocol Across, calling the situation ”Bridge Wars.” 

On Wednesday, cross-chain bridging solution Stargate Finance built by LayerZero Labs rolled out its second iteration and called itself on social media platform X “DeFi’s cheapest bridge.” Taking issue were Across’ Lambur and Chainlink Labs’ marketing chief of staff Evan Drake. 

Drake said on the same day as the Stargate’s V2 rollout, “The claim ‘cheapest bridge’ makes me chuckle,” who then used the opportunity to highlight Chainlink’s bridging application Transporter.  

Lambur conducted a simple test on Wednesday by bridging 0.1 ETH from Arbitrum to Optimism using different bridges and found that Across was both cheaper and faster compared to Stargate’s newly launched v2. Lambur proceeded to respond to Stargate by saying, “Let’s drop the false marketing.”

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Bryan Pellegrino, the co-founder of LayerZero Labs, pushed back specifically against Lambur’s claims, saying that Lambur’s test was “this single cherry picked route” that is “just egregiously wrong.” Pellegrino conducted a similar test several times and noted Stargate had cheaper transaction fees from Arbitrum to Optimism. 

The disagreement continued through Friday, with Placeholder Capital’s Chris Burniske quote tweeting Lambur, saying, “Data doesn’t lie: @AcrossProtocol is consistently cheaper and faster than @StargateFinance, despite marketing that will try to convince you otherwise.” Lambur and Pellegrino also kept up their sparring over further research and analysis conducted by Lambur who remained consistent in claiming Across is the cheapest bridge between various layer 2 networks. 

Mark Murdock, senior researcher at LayerZero Labs, shot back by arguing that the transactions Lambur shared showed Stargate having cheaper transaction fees than Across. “You [Lambur] framed the entire thread with ‘for the average L2 to L2 transfer, AcrossProtocol is clearly the fastest and cheapest bridge.’ You then showed 3 transactions, of which Stargate was the cheapest in 2 of them,” Murdock wrote.

Breaking down further Lambur’s shared transactions for fees from bridging between layer 2 networks, Unchained discerned that Across had cheaper deposits, while Stargate had cheaper fills.

The debate was over fractions of pennies, as Across’s deposits were a mere $0.000534 vs Stargate’s $0.001558 and $0.000630, while Across’s fills clocked in at $0.001492, and Stargate’s were a bit less: $0.001198 and $0.001472.