Axelar for developers

Axelar enables secure interchain communication and token transfers, regardless of consensus mechanism or message payload.

Interchain apps built on Axelar are truly permissionless, meaning that their transactions cannot be censored by any oracle, relayer or validator. Axelar is based on the same proof-of-stake security model as many of the chains it connects.

Basic functionality

Axelar supports two main types of interchain capabilities.

1. Send Tokens: Send fungible tokens securely between many Cosmos and EVM Chains (opens in a new tab), as well as other complex transfers.
2. General Message Passing: Call smart contract functions across blockchains. You can compose DeFi functions, move NFTs cross-chain, or perform cross-chain calls of any kind that sync state securely between dApps on various ecosystems.

Tools

There are several helpful tools that will make building interchain dApps simpler.

Axelar Examples (opens in a new tab)

A curated collection of interchain examples using Axelar that can be executed locally or deployed to testnets.

Axelar JavaScript SDK

axelar-local-dev (opens in a new tab)

• Create locally simulated chains with RPC endpoints on your localhost. These chains come preloaded with the AxelarGateway, AxelarGasReceiver, and a routed ERC-20 token contract (axlUSDC).
• Deploy your custom IAxelarExecutable contracts to your simulated EVM chains.
• Test your dApp against the RPC endoints and contract addresses of your local development environment.

For the actual development of your dApp, there are four simple steps (two mandatory and two optional):

1. Call the contract method on the source chain:
   • callContract, or
   • callContractWithToken
2. Pay gas to the Gas Services contract on the source chain.
3. Optional: Check the status of the call.
4. Optional: Execute and recover transactions.

Helpful resources

If you have any issues with the two steps above, you can use the suite of tools and other "kick-starter" examples in the Axelar developer ecosystem to get you going: