What: Hop is a scalable rollup-to-rollup general token bridge. It allows users to send tokens from one rollup to another almost immediately without having to wait for the rollup’s challenge period.

Why: To provide an easy and trustworthy way to move tokens across Ethereum mainnet and othere Ethereum layer 2’s.

Product: The Hop protocol allows assets to be moved directly from rollup to rollup, providing cost savings and enabling cross-rollup composability of applications. This happens via Bonders and liquidity providers. Bonders verify transactions and provide liquidity up front, enabling fast transactions without the usual rollup waiting period. Liquidity providers earn HOP by providing liquidity on the various rollups. Bonders and liquidity providers earn fees from transfers in exchange for providing liquidity. Currently Bonders must be allowed by the Hop Bridge smart contract governed by the Hop team. Liquidity providers can be anybody.

Token Model

Circulating supply: 53,694,009

Max supply: 1,000,000,000

Circulating Market Cap: $4,652,331

Fully Diluted Value: $86,645,258

Token Distribution (outlined here: https://twitter.com/HopProtocol/status/1522284534598967300)

Current holder distribution:

ETH — https://etherscan.io/token/tokenholderchart/0xc5102fe9359fd9a28f877a67e36b0f050d81a3cc

Arbitrum- https://arbiscan.io/token/tokenholderchart/0xc5102fE9359FD9a28f877a67E36B0F050d81a3CC


Optimism-https://optimistic.etherscan.io/token/tokenholderchart/0xc5102fe9359fd9a28f877a67e36b0f050d81a3cc


Matic-https://polygonscan.com/token/tokenholderchart/0xc5102fE9359FD9a28f877a67E36B0F050d81a3CC

Audit and Source Code:

Audit (Solidified)
https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/assets.hop.exchange/reports/Audit_Report_-_Hop_05.05.2021.pdf

Audit (MonoCeros)
https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/assets.hop.exchange/reports/MonocerosAlpha_-_Hop_Audit.pdf

Source code
https://github.com/hop-exchange/contracts

Team:

note — Lito Coen is highly visible in the discord and on twitter.

Analysis:

Pros:

● The service is useful for user who bridge often

● Clean UI/UX

● Fair launch, no dumpoors

● Team is active in discord and twitter

Cons/Risks:

● Sustainability of protocol is up in the air

● Hasn’t been hacked….yet

● Rollup centric is a small moat compared to various L1’s. Will see if that was a good bet over the long haul. A smart move would be tying in with BSC.

Verdict:

Innovation: 8/10

Tokenomics: 6/10

Team: 9/10

Risk: Low Medium High

This project is undervalued — it has a total value locked of $86 million and market cap of $63 million. With rollups in a bear market containing nearly a billion funds in TVL, a bull market for rollups could tease at multi-billion dollars being locked in rollups. Faciliting the transfer could be very profitable for when that growth comes. A similar protocol is synapse, which has a marketcap of $114 million. HOP provides a great UUI/UX and I can see it gaining more traction and token appreciation over the next couple years.