Hop Protocol (HOP)

Hop is a protocol for sending tokens across rollups and their shared layer-1 network in a quick and trustless manner. It is a multi-chain bridge connecting Ethereum to various scaling solutions like Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and xDAI (13-10-2021).

Basics

• Started in / Announced on: 29-1-2021
• Based in:
• Mainnet release: says (23-3-2021) it will go live in April. Hoptimism went live (25-8-2021).
• From their whitepaper (29-1-2021):

"A protocol for sending tokens across rollups and their shared layer-1 network in a quick and trustless manner. Rollups have the potential to scale the Ethereum network, but each rollup creates a siloed environment for its applications. Moving assets between rollups and the layer-1 network is slow and expensive, diminishing the savings users gain by using the rollup. The Hop protocol allows assets to be moved directly from rollup to rollup, providing cost savings and enabling cross-rollup composability of applications."

Audits & Exploits

• No information relating to a bug bounty was found in Hop's documentation (21-4-2022).
• Scored 67% on DeFi Safety (21-4-2022):

"There is perfect traceability between software documentation and implemented code. There is some coverage of deployed contracts by software function documentation. Individual functions are identified and the analysis is a high-level overview. There is no test report evident. This protocol has not undergone formal verification. Hop was audited twice before launch."

• From their blog (23-3-2021): "The Hop contracts are currently being audited"

Governance

Admin Keys

• From DeFi Safety (21-4-2022):

"Admin control information was not documented by Hop. The relevant contracts are not identified as immutable / upgradeable. This protocol's pause control is not documented. This protocol has no timelock documentation. A mention of a day-long timelock is nevertheless identified in the GitHub repo at this location."

DAO

• Has Flipside and GFX Labs as one of their professional delegates (30-11-2022).

Treasury

• From their twitter (7-2-2023):

"HIP-16 recognizes that Hop has been built on the shoulders of giants and commits to allocating 10% of future fee revenue to public goods funding outside of the direct Hop ecosystem."

Token

Token Allocation

• From Aidrops.io (22-5-2022):

"Hop Protocol will be airdropping 8% of the total supply to early users of the platform. Users who’ve used bridge at least two times with at least $1,000 volume, liquidity providers, bonders, top 500 Hop Discord participants and 79 Twitter users who were early evangelists for Hop, external Hop contributors and past Authereum users with deployed accounts by the snapshot date are eligible to claim the airdrop. The snapshot was taken on April 1st at 12:00 am UTC."

Technology

• Whitepaper can be found here 27-1-2021.
• Code can be viewed here. From DeFi Safety (21-4-2022):

"At 959 commits, this protocol's commitment to development is evidently a hop to perfection."

• Built on: Ethereum, xdai, Polygon and Arbitrum (29-3-2021).

How it works

• From Our Network (13-11-2021):

"Hop uses hTokens (hETH, hUSDC, etc.) which are essentially IOU's backed by collateral on L1 which can instantly be transferred between networks with the help of Hop Bonders. The AMM's are used to convert hTokens into canonical tokens like USDC or ETH in the final step of every transfer."

• Another thread that goes into the trust assumptions of Hop can be read here (28-2-2022), essentially claiming you do not have to trust the protocol. This due to that users could in theory make the swaps themselves with the code without interference (just not a smooth UI).

Liquidity Mining

• Launched a program (27-10-2022): "In total, 2m $HOP will be distributed to LPs per month."

Interoperability

• From Yield Farmer (25-8-2021):

"Hop just unveiled the first “fast bridge” for moving funds between Ethereum and Optimism. Remember, a big previous concern about ORU L2s was that their withdrawal periods were going to take ~7 days. Notably, then, this new Hop resource lets users “transfer assets in and out of Optimism in minutes.”

Oracle Method

• From DeFi Safety (21-4-2022):

"Hop does not use an oracle because it is a bridge. Since Hop is a bridge, it cannot be front run. This protocol documents no flashloan attack countermeasures."

Their Other Projects

DEX

• Hop cross-EVMchain AMM exchange to go live in April with xdai, Polygon and Arbitrum (29-3-2021).

• From Our Network (18-12-2021):

"Hop Exchange is a cross-L2 bridging protocol. The project uses “bonders” (essentially LPs) to front liquidity on a cross-chain AMM for trading fees; L2 canonical tokens are exchanged for Hop Bridge Tokens, which can be swapped for the underlying asset on L1 or a different L2 token. It supports Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, xDai, Optimism, and Arbitrum."

Roadmap

• Can be found [Insert link here].

Usage

• The protocol has facilitated $2.7B in bridging volume (9-9-2022).
• From Our Network (18-12-2021):

"Total Hop users recently grew to 35k+. The exchange saw ~$23m in volume over the past week and over $300m total since its launch in late June. Hop TVL is now tracking around $120m across multiple chains. Polygon and Optimism TVL are around $11.5m; Optimism’s TVL exploded over the past few months, along with Polygon whose TVL passed its previous ATH in October. xDai saw some traction as well with 7D volume jumping ~2x, but TVL still trails behind major L2s."

• From Our Network (13-11-2021):

"Hop passed the $100M in TVL milestone. Close to 70% of the funds are locked in Curve-like AMM pools which Hop deploys on each scaling solution it supports. The remainder is staked by “Bonders,” which are essentially market-makers underwriting transfers and fronting the liquidity at the destination chain when a user sends tokens between networks."

Team, Funding, Partners

Team

• Full team can be found [here].
• Has Flipside and GFX Labs as one of their professional delegates (30-11-2022).

Partners

• Part of the Cross Chain Coalition (2-11-2022)
• From EthHub (1-3-2022):

"Lyra partnered up with Hop Protocol"

(:

Knowledge empowers us all and will help us get closer to the decentralised world we all want to live in!

Making these free wiki pages is fun but takes a lot of effort and time.

If you have enjoyed reading, tips are appreciated :) This will help us to keep expanding this archive of information.

ETH tip address: 0x83460bE5F218b1520B69D702cE60A1DE37dD8E31