Axelar Connects Hedera, Expanding the Gateway to Onchain Finance

The integration brings Hedera into the Axelar cross-chain network, supporting tokenization, trading, and yield across a unified connectivity layer.

Axelar has integrated Hedera, giving developers and users across onchain finance seamless access to Hedera technology, applications, and liquidity through a single programmable interface. The connection enables secure cross-chain transfers and contract calls between Hedera and dozens of blockchains supported by Axelar, providing a common foundation for institutional-grade onchain products. 

At launch, SaucerSwap and Squid are leveraging the Hedera integration to extend cross-chain liquidity, access, and execution.

Hedera as a Foundation for Institutional Onchain Finance

Hedera has emerged as a leading destination for institutions exploring tokenization, trading, and yield, combining a governance model aligned with regulated markets with a high-performance public network designed for predictable execution. Its council-based validator set gives financial institutions a familiar framework for trust, oversight, and operational resilience. At the same time, Hedera’s architecture delivers low-cost, high-throughput settlement with deterministic finality, features that reduce reconciliation overhead and support high-volume use cases, from tokenized money-market funds to onchain yield-generating products.

For developers and investors, Hedera offers a maturing ecosystem built around EVM compatibility, audited tokenization frameworks and integrations with custody, identity and cross-chain providers. This ecosystem supports traditional fund issuance models, structured products, and real-world asset distribution while allowing institutions to compose trading and yield strategies using familiar tools. Institutions gain a pathway to issue, access, and settle tokenized assets without compromising compliance, while benefiting from onchain programmability that enables efficient liquidity management, automated yield distribution, and interoperable capital flows. As regulated fund sponsors, custodians, banks and onchain investors converge on shared infrastructure, Hedera’s combination of governance, technology and integration standards makes it a practical foundation for institutional onchain finance.

Programmable Interoperability with Axelar

The Hedera Foundation outlines the importance of the Axelar integration in a blog post, noting how Axelar expands the reach of the network’s growing onchain finance and DeFi ecosystem. As more developers launch new assets, liquidity venues and real-world-asset applications on Hedera, non-custodial interoperability becomes essential. Through Axelar’s programmable interoperability, Hedera developers can now reach users and capital on dozens of connected blockchains, while builders already plugged into the Axelar ecosystem gain access to Hedera’s performance profile and council-governed network environment.

Common Prefix recently outlined a 2026 roadmap for Axelar centered on institutional adoption, strengthening economic security, enabling compliant and privacy-aware infrastructure, and building institutional products up the stack, areas where Hedera is well aligned. Hedera’s predictable execution, strong governance, and compliance-oriented design make it a natural execution and settlement environment for institutional-grade onchain applications.

As part of this focus, Axelar is doubling down on a set of strategically important institutional ecosystems, prioritizing connections that drive meaningful adoption and long-term value. Connecting Hedera through Axelar reflects this direction, enabling builders to pair Hedera’s execution strengths with Axelar’s interoperability to deploy scalable, transparent, and compliant onchain products across networks.

SaucerSwap: Cross-chain liquidity and execution on Hedera

SaucerSwap is a leading decentralized exchange on Hedera, providing high-performance trading and liquidity infrastructure optimized for predictable execution and low fees. Through its integration with Axelar, SaucerSwap can support assets originating on external blockchains and deploy them into Hedera-based trading and liquidity pools. This allows liquidity providers, traders, and application builders to access multi-chain capital while settling activity on Hedera as a secure, governed execution layer, combining Axelar’s cross-chain connectivity with Hedera’s enterprise-grade performance and operational assurances.

Squid: Cross-chain access and liquidity routing

Squid is a cross-chain routing and liquidity layer built on Axelar that simplifies how users and applications move assets across ecosystems. With Hedera connected through Axelar, Squid enables assets to be routed into Hedera-native assets and applications through a unified transaction flow, abstracting away fragmented bridge workflows and intermediaries. By leveraging Axelar for secure message passing and settlement, Squid acts as an access and distribution layer for the Hedera ecosystem, bringing external liquidity and users onto Hedera while preserving its security model, performance profile, and governance standards.

Enabling Institutional-Grade Onchain Finance at Scale

Together, Axelar and Hedera deliver what institutions increasingly expect from onchain finance: secure connectivity, transparent settlement and the ability to deploy products across multiple networks without fragmentation. This integration strengthens the foundation for tokenization, trading, and yield strategies that operate at scale, all through a single cross-chain platform.

For institutions: Explore Hedera ecosystem projects: hedera.com/ecosystem

For builders: Get started building on Hedera with Axelar: docs.axelar.dev