# Introduction

Welcome to Stargate V2 documentation!

You can find here necessary information and code examples required to build on top of Stargate.

### New features

A quick summary of V1 → V2 upgrades goes as follows:

* **Cost Reduction**: V2 drastically reduces the cost for users and developers compared to V1 through transaction batching (Stargate Bus) and a one-to-one transaction mode (Taxi Mode).
* **More Chains**: V2 introduces "Hydra," a novel expansion to offer Bridging as a Service. This feature allows for the seamless flow of assets across chains, including those without native assets, by locking assets in core pools on source chains and minting corresponding assets on destination chains. This mechanism ensures that assets are always redeemable and leverages Protocol Locked Liquidity for internal accounting. The assets used as wrapped assets on destination are built on the OFT Standard.
* **Capital Efficiency**: To address V1's limitations regarding dynamics and scalability, V2 introduces an off-chain mechanism called the AI Planning Module to adapt more swiftly to volume changes and user preferences, moving beyond the constraints of on-chain-only operations.

### Interfaces

Stargate V2 has been built on top of LayerZero V2, which means there is a lot of different functionality built into the protocol. It also opens up a lot of interesting surfaces to build on. If you want to learn more about LayerZero omnichain messaging, please refer to its [documentation](https://docs.layerzero.network).

It also means that **the Stargate interfaces have changed**.

Stargate V2 interfaces are the same as the IOFT interface for OFTs on LayerZero V2. IOFT interface is [available here](https://github.com/LayerZero-Labs/LayerZero-v2/blob/main/packages/layerzero-v2/evm/oapp/contracts/oft/interfaces/IOFT.sol). Documentation for building on IOFT is [here](https://docs.layerzero.network/v2/developers/evm/oft/quickstart).


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