Cross-chain bridges are the plumbing of decentralized finance. They move value and messages between blockchains that were never designed to talk to each other. Anyone who has tried to swap stablecoins from Ethereum to Fantom during a liquidity crunch or migrate an NFT from BNB Chain to Polygon knows the difference between a bridge that just works and one that traps funds in limbo. Anyswap, later rebranded as Multichain, sat at the center of this story for years. The Anyswap token (ANY) and later MULTI helped coordinate incentives for liquidity providers, relayers, and governance. Comparing it to other bridge tokens means looking beyond tickers and fees, and digging into the mechanisms that keep assets safe and liquid across chains.
This piece takes a practical view. It covers how Anyswap crypto worked when it was the default path for many cross-chain transfers, the incentives baked into the Anyswap protocol, and how those differ from peers like Synapse (SYN), Stargate (STG), Wormhole’s W token model for guardians and builders, LayerZero’s application tokenization through STG and independent emissions, and Thorchain’s RUNE collateral model. Where relevant, it addresses hard lessons, including bridge exploits, multisig risk, and liquidity fragmentation, with a bias toward what matters to traders, builders, and treasuries planning cross-chain exposure.
What the Anyswap token was designed to do
Anyswap launched in 2020 with a goal that feels quaint now: make it simple to move assets between heterogeneous chains using a combination of smart contracts, external validators, and liquidity pools. The Anyswap token, ANY, played three roles.
First, it incentivized liquidity. Bridges need pools on both sides and, unlike centralized exchanges, they cannot easily pull inventory from prime brokers or market makers. ANY emissions rewarded those who parked stablecoins, wrapped tokens, and native assets in Anyswap pools on chains like Ethereum, Fantom, BNB Chain, and Avalanche. Higher TVL meant less slippage and quicker settlement.
Second, it funded and aligned the validator network. Early Anyswap used what they called SMPC, secure multi-party computation, to sign cross-chain transactions. Validators who participated in MPC committees were expected to stake ANY and MULTI over time. The idea was to discourage misbehavior by adding a capital layer to a protocol that necessarily carried custody risk during transfer windows.
Third, it governed updates. Parameters such as fee curves, supported assets, and chain integrations often passed through token-holder votes. In practice, like many DeFi projects, decisions were influenced by the development team and largest LPs, but the governance role existed and mattered for emissions and listings.
Over time, Anyswap rebranded to Multichain and swapped the primary token from ANY to MULTI. Many users still search for Anyswap swap or Anyswap exchange in wallets and dapps out of habit, though the dapp URLs and contracts shifted. The core concept remained: attract liquidity, route flows, and pay the network that makes cross-chain work.
How Anyswap actually bridged assets
The Anyswap bridge mostly used a pool-based model. On chain A, you deposit token X into an Anyswap smart contract. The protocol mints or releases a canonical or wrapped representation of token X on chain B. In some routes, it maintained actual liquidity pools on both sides, so your token X could be withdrawn from the pool on the destination chain. In others, it minted a derivative and relied on later redemption. Either way, you traded the comfort of waiting for a standard finality window for faster bridging that used the bridge’s own state and security assumptions.
From a user’s perspective, Anyswap DeFi AnySwap tooling felt like a normal swap interface: pick source chain and token, pick target chain and token. Fees were dynamic, often a base fee plus a small percentage, and slippage depended on pool depth. During peak usage in 2021 and early 2022, Anyswap cross-chain routes frequently undercut the gas and MEV costs of doing manual withdraw-and-deposit through centralized venues. Projects integrated the Anyswap protocol directly, embedding a bridge button in their front ends.
The catch, and it is the same across almost every non-native bridge, is trust surface. An Anyswap transfer depended on the availability and honesty of SMPC nodes that held shards of the signing key or that attested to chain events. If the committee broke down, or if keys were compromised, the bridge risked a halt at best and a drain at worst. This is not theoretical. Many bridges over the last three years suffered nine-figure exploits due to validator or relayer keys, contract bugs, or misconfigured minting roles.
The competitive field: models and tokens that matter
Bridge tokens reflect the security and liquidity model of their protocols. Comparing ANY and Multichain’s approach to peers requires a quick taxonomy of bridge designs:
- Liquidity network bridges, like Anyswap and Synapse, maintain pools on both ends. Token emissions incentivize LPs, and fees roughly track demand on each route. Security depends on contracts and the relayer or validator system that controls mint and burn events. Messaging-first protocols, like Wormhole and LayerZero, pass authenticated messages between chains. Applications build bridges on top using those messages to move assets. Tokens in these ecosystems often accrue value from usage fees or governance across multiple apps. Native asset routers, like Thorchain, try to hold native assets on their own chain and perform swaps using a consensus layer that secures pooled assets with a protocol token, here RUNE.
Within these buckets, tokens do different jobs. Some are pure incentives, some are collateral that protects pooled assets, some control governance over critical parameters, and some pay for message verification.
Synapse (SYN) versus Anyswap
Synapse lives in the same broad category as Anyswap: a liquidity network with its own cross-chain messaging. LPs deposit assets into pools. When you bridge USDC from Arbitrum to Avalanche using Synapse, you often receive native USDC on the destination because the pool on that chain already holds it. If inventories diverge, Synapse nudges flows with fees and incentives.
The SYN token rewards LPs and stakers, and it governs emissions and pool parameters. In practice, Synapse concentrated liquidity on a smaller set of assets and chains than Anyswap did during its expansionary phase. That narrower focus made its risk management simpler. Where Anyswap raced to support dozens of chains, some of them new and under-documented, Synapse tended to move more cautiously. If you were bridging on weekends, Anyswap’s breadth often saved a trip to a centralized exchange, but it also increased operational load and code surface.
On economics, both SYN and ANY/MULTI paid yield to bootstrap liquidity. This worked as long as bridging demand matched or exceeded emissions. When markets turned and fees thinned, token prices fell, and yields followed. Bridges then had to cut incentives, shrinking pools, raising slippage, and worsening user experience. Synapse partly mitigated this by consolidating around high-volume routes like Ethereum L2s and major alt-L1s. Anyswap’s broader footprint left some pools perpetually thin, a headache for projects that depended on them for treasury movements.
Stargate (STG) and the LayerZero angle
Stargate sits on top of LayerZero, a messaging protocol that relies on an Oracle and Relayer pair instead of a fixed validator committee. The bridge product, Stargate, focuses on stable assets and uses unified liquidity. You deposit USDC on Chain A, and you get USDC on Chain B, not a wrapped representation, because pools are logically connected. STG governs emissions and pool gauges, much like Curve and other AMM ecosystems.
LayerZero puts more of the security choice in the hands of applications. An app can choose which Oracle and Relayer to trust. Stargate uses a specific, known configuration. This design shifts some trust from a monolithic validator set to a pair of services that the community can audit and replace. It is still not native, and it still hinges on off-chain actors, but the modularity has proven attractive to developers.
Comparing STG to ANY/MULTI is really comparing a product-specific token to a protocol-level token that attempted to cover many bridges and routes. STG’s incentives are tightly scoped. The team resisted the temptation to list every chain under the sun, and instead concentrated on the chains with deep stablecoin demand. The result has been fewer edge-case failures and quicker refills of inventory during imbalances. From a treasurer’s perspective, Stargate often feels like a stable, boring workhorse for USDC and USDT moves. Anyswap felt like a Swiss Army knife, invaluable in a pinch, but carrying more moving parts.
Wormhole: messaging first, tokens later
Wormhole started as a generalized interoperability layer that secures messages with a set of guardians. Bridges for assets like ETH, SOL, and USDC were early showcases, but over time the ecosystem leaned into messaging for NFTs, governance, and cross-chain applications. For years, there was no widely used Wormhole token playing the same role as ANY or SYN. Guardians were professional operators, funded and coordinated outside of a typical emissions program.
The value proposition here differs. Instead of paying LPs with a token so they hold USDC on both sides, Wormhole enables an application to mint and burn with a trusted minting authority on destination chains. When it bridges into an asset, say wrapped ETH on Solana, that asset’s trust depends on the guardians’ honesty and operational rigor. The token dynamic, where it exists now, relates to protocol governance and ecosystem growth, not pool inventory management.
For users deciding between an Anyswap bridge and a Wormhole route, the trade-off came down to asset provenance and liquidity. Wrapped assets minted by Wormhole could be deep in DeFi on the destination chain, or they could be shallow and trade at a slight discount during stress. Anyswap’s pool model sometimes delivered native assets, which spared you wrapper risk, but if the pool dried up you paid slippage or waited.
Thorchain and the RUNE collateral model
Thorchain is different enough to sit in its own bucket. It is a chain that holds native assets like BTC and ETH in vaults secured by its proof of bond consensus. Nodes bond RUNE, which acts as collateral against misbehavior. If a node steals, its bond is slashed. The system aims for economic security where it costs more to attack than to behave. Swaps happen through liquidity pools paired with RUNE, not through wrapped assets.
RUNE’s utility is direct. It is bonded by validators, paired in every pool, and used for fees. Its value is tightly linked to the system’s TVL and swap volume. There is no concept of SMPC committees or off-chain guardians. The trade-off is coverage. Thorchain integrates a handful of major chains, because each integration requires significant low-level work and long-term maintenance. You will not use Thorchain to move a new gaming token from an experimental L2 to a sidechain next week. You will use it to rebalance BTC, ETH, ATOM, and similar majors without trusting a multisig or wrapper.
Against Anyswap, Thorchain offers stronger economic alignment and avoids wrapped assets altogether, but it lacks the breadth and the ease of adding new ERC-20s or niche L1s. If you run a DeFi project that needs to move many token types across many chains, Anyswap multichain support once looked compelling. If you are a desk moving majors and you want to reduce your exposure to bridge keys, Thorchain has an appeal that a pool-based bridge cannot match.
Security realities that separate tokens from talk
The single most important variable in a bridge is how it fails. When a pool underfills on Synapse or Stargate, you pay a fee or wait. When a validator key leaks on an MPC-based bridge, funds can be minted without backing. When a guardian set signs an invalid message on a messaging protocol, assets can be fraudulently moved or wrapped. When Thorchain’s consensus fails, native assets in vaults are at risk. No token economics can erase these categories, but they can make them more or less likely.
Anyswap’s use of SMPC reduced the risk of a single-key compromise, but committee management and key rotation are complex. During times of team disruption or regulatory stress, committees can lose responsiveness. That leads to pauses or congested queues. Other bridges that rely on off-chain signers have similar pain points. Messaging protocols diversify risk across guardians or oracle-relayer pairs, which helps, but adds its own coordination challenges.
Tokens layer on carrots and sticks. ANY and MULTI encouraged long-term participation, but large emissions also created sell pressure that, in down markets, led to thinner liquidity and more volatile fees. STG’s tighter scope meant its incentives could remain meaningful without diluting holders as much, since the covered universe was smaller. SYN sits in the middle, with reasonably broad coverage and a governance culture that prunes underused pools. RUNE goes further by tying consensus security directly to token bonds, which lets it punish bad actors at the protocol layer, not just at the application layer.
Liquidity, depth, and what users actually feel
Most users remember a bridge by two sensations: how soon the token arrives and whether the amount matches the quote. During 2021’s growth phase, Anyswap often delivered fast routes where nothing else existed. You could move FTM, MATIC, or native chain assets that centralized exchanges did not list yet, straight into yield farms. That speed felt magical. The trade-off showed up when the crowd rushed the same door. On weekends, during new farm launches, pools drained, slippage widened, and fees ticked up. Power users learned to check pool depths or split transfers into tranches.
Stargate and Synapse tried to hide those dynamics under smoother routing. Unified pools and rebalancing incentives helped, but they did not eliminate supply and demand. During a stablecoin depeg scare, demand for USDC on one chain can blow out spreads everywhere. A desk that moves seven figures will still see price impact and will still choose the route that minimizes operational risk, not just headline fees. Wormhole routes may look cheap on paper, but if the wrapped asset trades at a 20 basis point discount in the target DEX, the savings melt away. Thorchain pays out in native assets, which helps, but pool depth for majors can still vary with RUNE Anyswap exchange price and LP behavior.
Governance culture and how it translates to reliability
Tokens enable governance, but culture determines whether that governance helps users. Anyswap’s breadth reflected a ship-fast ethos. It onboarded chains quickly and relied on a mix of internal audits, community reporting, and fast patches. That served early adopters who needed routes more than they needed perfection. Later, as volumes rose and sums got large, the same speed created risk. Serious bridges tend to adopt a more conservative posture with staged rollouts, kill switches, and insurance buffers.
Synapse and Stargate exhibit that posture more consistently. Their DAOs debate emissions and pool changes in public, and changes to core logic go through formal audits with published artifacts. It is slower, sometimes frustratingly so, but the record of outages and losses reflects the trade. Messaging protocols like Wormhole require trust in the guardian operators and the firms that audit them. They have improved their transparency over time, but a user still accepts a black box compared with a fully on-chain proof system. Thorchain’s governance happens through on-chain signaling and validator behavior, which can be rough around the edges, but the system has demonstrated an ability to absorb incidents, patch, and resume with improved safeguards.
Choosing a bridge token and protocol based on actual needs
It helps to stop thinking in absolutes and map needs to properties:
- For stable, routine treasury moves of majors between well-supported chains, Stargate and Synapse usually offer predictable costs and fewer surprises. Their tokens, STG and SYN, align with that mission and continue to govern incentives in a focused way. For long-tail tokens or less popular chains, older Anyswap routes were often the only viable option for a period. Today, similar multichain routers exist, and the same caution applies: check pool depth, contracts, and the current state of the team and validators before sending size. For applications that need message passing more than asset transfer, Wormhole and LayerZero change the playbook. Here the relevant token is less about LP emissions and more about the health of the messaging ecosystem. You would judge them by audit cadence, guardian or oracle diversity, and incident response, not APRs. For native asset swaps without wrappers and with economic security tied to a protocol token, Thorchain stands apart. RUNE is a different beast than ANY or SYN, and its risk and reward profile should be evaluated on that basis.
Practical safeguards from lived experience
After moving seven and eight-figure totals across bridges since 2020, a few habits have proven their worth.
- Test the route with a small transfer before sending size, even if you used it last week. Bridges change configurations, pools rebalance, and chains fork. Watch pool inventories and fees on both ends. If a pool looks thin, split the transfer or consider an alternate path, including a centralized exchange hop when time matters more than a few basis points. Prefer routes that deliver native assets when liquidity is deep. Wrapped assets can work, but the unwind path matters. If redemption requires a bridge you do not trust, look again. Track governance and operations. A token that signals active, transparent stewardship is not a guarantee, but it raises the floor. Silent forums and stale docs are red flags. Insure when possible. Some protocols partner with on-chain insurance providers. Coverage is not cheap, and exclusions abound, but for treasuries it can be rational.
These are not theoretical niceties. They are the difference between a mundane transfer and a late-night scramble to recover funds or paper over a shortfall.
Where Anyswap’s legacy fits now
Even with the rebrand to Multichain and the market’s churn, the Anyswap bridge left a legacy that shaped how cross-chain protocols compete. It proved there was demand for an Anyswap exchange experience that felt like a simple swap, not a developer tool. It taught teams that breadth without depth invites trouble when volumes spike. It showed that emissions-heavy programs can bootstrap network effects, but they also lock protocols into reflexive cycles where token price, TVL, and user experience feed on each other.
Other teams absorbed those lessons. Synapse narrowed scope and leaned into governance and risk controls. Stargate emphasized unified liquidity and fewer assets. Messaging layers invested in professional operators and formal verification. Thorchain doubled down on economic guarantees. If you evaluate Anyswap token economics alongside peers today, you will see those trade-offs reflected in how tokens accrue or spend value, how they secure the system, and how they respond under stress.
A measured framework for comparing bridge tokens
When I advise teams on cross-chain strategy, we use a simple rubric that keeps us honest and avoids hype:
- Security model clarity. Identify who can mint or move funds during a bridge event and how they are monitored or punished. Tokens that only pay yield without affecting security deserve a discount in your mental model. Liquidity persistence. Look at historical depth across bull and bear cycles. An emissions schedule that evaporates in a drawdown often predicts painful slippage when you need the bridge most. Operational maturity. Review incident reports, pause mechanisms, and time to resolution. A protocol with a culture of postmortems and concrete fixes earns trust. Asset provenance. Native on arrival beats wrapped when depth is equal. If you must accept wrappers, confirm redemption paths and market depth for those wrappers on the destination chain. Governance and runway. Token treasuries and DAO processes matter. If a protocol’s future depends on emissions it cannot sustainably fund, plan for alternatives.
Run ANY or MULTI, SYN, STG, RUNE, and the tokens in messaging ecosystems through that lens, and the right fit for each job becomes clearer. The comparison stops being about which logo is on top this month and starts being about which mechanics match your risk tolerance and operational needs.
Final thoughts for practitioners
Bridges are not all the same, and neither are their tokens. Anyswap built a fast, wide network that met users where they were, and it paid for that reach with complexity and risk. Synapse and Stargate prioritized a tighter footprint and cleaner economics. Messaging protocols like Wormhole and LayerZero exported risk choices to applications and professional operators. Thorchain made a bet on economic security with native assets and a protocol token at the core.
If you are choosing routes for a product or treasury, do not fixate on APRs or slogans like cross-chain without compromise. Look at the boring details that govern failure modes and recovery. Treat Anyswap crypto and its successors as tools with capabilities and edges. Respect the edges, and you will move value safely across chains. Ignore them, and you will eventually donate to someone else’s postmortem.