How many clicks does it take to get to the DeFi center of a x-chain DeFi transaction?

Remember the Tootsie Roll ad with the little boy who asks the owl, "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" And the owl takes the Tootsie Pop and eats the thing in one bite?

SushiXSwap is this owl for cross-chain DeFi transactions.

SushiXSwap INSTANTANEOUSLY TRANSFORMS you from the silly goose little boy who wanders around mindlessly giving other people his lollipops, into the wise owl who GETS SHIT DONE!

Let's have some context on this from the hard-scrabble daily life of the humble, small-time Jeffersonian yield farmer.

We all love DeFi, right? So many DeFi platitudes on crypto Twitter these days. DeFi is freedom. DeFi is the future. DeFi is the future of freedom? DeFi is a truly open financial system that will revolutionize the way we Money. All true. Thank you, Mr. DeFi!

You know what else DeFi is? ANNOYING! It's very, very annoying!

It is one thing to tweet about wallets and yields and cross-chain liquidity. It is quite another thing to actually use this stuff.

How many clicks does it take to execute one (ONE!) DeFi transaction using MetaMask with a Ledger wallet?

Let's take a DEX swap, for example:

1. Select your tokens to swap and the amounts (a bunch of clicks but we won't count these – I'm just talking about sending a transaction through when it's ready)
2. DEX website: Click "Swap" – 1 CLICK
3. Metamask: Click "Confirm" – 2 CLICKS
4. Ledger Live: Click "Open Bridge" – 3 CLICKS
5. Ledger wallet: Click through the screens until you can "Verify," we'll say 5 clicks – 8 CLICKS

EIGHT CLICKS! For ONE transaction!

Do you know how many transactions it takes to move liquidity from one chain and invest it on another?

1. Buy USDC
2. Bridge from the chain it's on to the chain where you want to make the investment
3. Swap from USDC to the tokens you want to buy (could be TWO transactions!)
4. Deposit the tokens in a liquidity pool
5. Stake in a vault

Five or six transactions! Eight clicks per transaction! Do you know how many clicks that is? A LOT! (No math when I'm in my angry place.)

And you have to pay for each of these transactions!

Doing this, over and over and over, each time I want to make a DeFi investment, makes me feel like the little Tootsie Pop boy.

How many clicks does it take to get to the DeFi center of a DeFi transaction?? TOO MANY!

So when SushiSwap announces that you can now use Stargate to swap tokens across chains in one transaction, safely, securely, and inexpensively, it is A BIG DEAL!

Look how deliciously simple this UX is to use liquidity from one chain to purchase tokens on another chain!

If I were an actual farmer instead of a yield farmer, this would be the difference between having electricity, and no electricity. This is the first time I have ever used a DeFi protocol and thought, "THANK YOU!"

And look at these fees! Completely reasonable! One click – bridge, swap, done. Thank you, have a nice day!

So, I love this. It's a quantum leap forward for DeFi on ETH Layer 2.

I was going to write a whole explanation of the Layer 0 of it all (i.e. how does Stargate work?), but the rant part of the post ran long so we'll go under the hood tomorrow.