ITS Hub

💡

The Interchain Token Service (ITS) Hub is currently under active development, please check back frequently for updates.

The Interchain Token Service (ITS) Hub is a Cosmwasm contract on the Axelar network that acts as a central routing hub for token transfers across Amplifier and consensus chains. The ITS Hub is designed to enhance the security, interoperability, and extensibility of cross-chain token transfers by ensuring that all ITS-enabled chains route their token transactions through this hub. This approach helps maintain consistent security measures, enables scalability, and supports a diverse set of connected chains, including EVM and non-smart contract chains.

Axelar supports two types of tokens: Gateway Tokens and ITS Tokens.

  • Gateway Tokens: Cross-chain tokens deployed natively via the Axelar protocol and the old EVM Axelar gateway. These are legacy tokens that the ITS Edge Contracts support. They are native tokens registered and minted within the Axelar consensus model.
  • ITS Tokens: Tokens deployed via ITS and controlled by the ITS protocol. These tokens are based on General Message Passing (GMP) and are minted, burned, and managed on the connected EVM chains directly.

The ITS Hub supports both token types and enables the secure bridging of these tokens across different types of chains.

ITS Hub brings significant value to Axelar’s ecosystem by addressing the limitations of a peer-to-peer Interchain Token Service (ITS) model, which posed security risks in case one of the chains is compromised.

By routing through a central hub, token bridging is simplified and protected by an invariant that tracks the total balance bridged per chain per token.

The key outcomes of the ITS Hub implementation include:

💡

Custom ITS token are not supported in the current version of the ITS Hub.

  • Unified Token Routing: All token bridging across ITS-enabled chains is handled through the ITS Hub, regardless of chain type (Amplifier or consensus).
  • Support for ITS and Gateway Tokens: Both ITS and Gateway Tokens can be securely transferred across chains, reducing fragmentation and complexity.
  • Balance Invariance: ITS Hub maintains balance tracking to ensure that tokens escrowed to a chain cannot be over-bridged.
  • Rate Limits: Ability to set rate limits per token by chain, adding an additional security layer.

The ITS Hub’s future iterations are designed to be compatible with new features like General Message Passing (GMP) express while avoiding breaking changes to the existing ITS contracts.

Edit on GitHub