What is Benqi?

BENQI is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol built on the Avalanche blockchain that offers liquidity staking, lending, and borrowing services. It aims to provide users with efficient capital markets by enabling them to earn passive income on their assets or borrow against them.

Key Features:

• Cross-Rollup Bridge: Benqi allows users to transfer assets, such as ETH, ERC-20 tokens, and other supported tokens, seamlessly between rollups and L1 networks. The platform supports popular L2 solutions like Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, StarkNet, and others.
• High Speed & Low Cost: Orbiter employs a unique system where transactions are processed quickly and at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional bridging methods. This is achieved through a lightweight and efficient protocol that minimizes overhead and transaction fees.
• Decentralization: Benqi operates as a non-custodial bridge. This means that users retain control of their assets throughout the transfer process, ensuring security and trustlessness.
• Scalability: By enabling interoperability among various L2 solutions, Orbiter contributes to reducing congestion on Ethereum's mainnet, making it a crucial component of Ethereum's broader scalability roadmap.

How Decentralized Exchanges Work?

Benqi relies on "Messengers" and "Operators" to facilitate asset transfers. Messengers verify transactions on the source chain, while Operators execute the corresponding transactions on the destination chain.
The protocol uses an off-chain relay mechanism, which reduces costs and speeds up the bridging process.