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  • Quick Overview
  • Introduction
  • Fail-Safe Mechanism
  • Fast Lane
  • Looking Into the Future
  • Frequently Asked Questions
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  1. Sonic

Sonic Gateway

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Last updated 3 months ago

Quick Overview

The is our native bridge that facilitates token transfers between Ethereum and Sonic. The bridging process consists of three steps:

  1. Deposit Deposit your assets into the bridge, which takes ~15 minutes on Ethereum to achieve finalization and only ~1 second on Sonic.

  2. Heartbeat After your deposit is confirmed, your assets will be bridged at the next heartbeat, which are intervals that bridge user assets in batches to ensure gas efficiency. A heartbeat occurs every ~10 minutes from Ethereum to Sonic and ~1 hour the other way. You can pay a Fast Lane fee to trigger an immediate heartbeat.

  3. Claim Claim your bridged assets on the destination chain. That’s it! You’re now free to explore the Sonic ecosystem with your new assets.

— — — — —

Introduction

In today’s evolving blockchain landscape, a native, secure bridge is critical for ecosystem health, ensuring true interoperability and preventing network isolation. Yet, many current solutions on both layer-1 and layer-2 compromise security and speed —resulting in over to bridge hacks.

The Sonic Gateway is a revolutionary, secure bridge between Ethereum and Sonic that offers:

  • Security: The Gateway includes a fail-safe mechanism that safeguards user assets. If the Gateway experiences prolonged failure (14 consecutive days), users can recover their bridged funds on Ethereum.

  • Speed: Asset bridging is processed in intervals called "heartbeats" to ensure gas efficiency — every 10 minutes from Ethereum to Sonic and hourly in reverse.

At launch, the Sonic Gateway will only support bridging four tokens from Ethereum — USDC, EURC, WETH, and FTM. Our roadmap includes adding more tokens and introducing a permissionless mechanism for anyone to add new tokens for bridging.

While Sonic is not an L2, we are active participants on Ethereum as we spend ETH through the Sonic Gateway contracts.

Fail-Safe Mechanism

The Sonic Gateway includes a fail-safe mechanism that allows users to retrieve bridged assets on the original chain if the Gateway experiences a failure. In the highly unlikely event that the Gateway or the Sonic chain is down for 14 consecutive days, users are able to reclaim their bridged assets on Ethereum.

The 14-day period is immutable and cannot be altered by Sonic Labs or any third party after deployment. Importantly, this period is not intended as a contest period but rather as an essential feature that ensures users retain custody of their bridged funds on the originating chain.

Fast Lane

Assets bridged through the Sonic Gateway are processed in intervals called "heartbeats", ensuring gas efficiency by bundling bridging transactions together. For assets moving from Ethereum to Sonic, these heartbeats occur every 10 minutes, while Sonic to Ethereum heartbeats occur every hour.

During each interval, all queued transactions are processed simultaneously. While this system reduces costs, it may introduce waiting periods for users needing their assets bridged immediately. To address this, Fast Lane allows users to bypass the wait for a small fee and have their bridge transaction processed instantly.

Fast Lane works by adding an additional heartbeat to the Gateway. This means all other queued assets waiting to be bridged are also processed immediately, effectively accelerating the entire network. By using Fast Lane, users not only avoid delays and seize timely opportunities but also contribute to the broader ecosystem's efficiency, ensuring faster bridging for everyone involved.

Looking Into the Future

By enabling canonical access to native assets from other layer-1 platforms, the Gateway fosters a secure and thriving economy on the Sonic network.

Users can directly access these canonical assets on Sonic while maintaining asset security. The Sonic Gateway thus provides safe access to high-demand assets that natively exist outside the Sonic network.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Sonic Gateway also secure third-party bridges?

No, only assets bridged through the Sonic Gateway are secured by the fail-safe mechanism. Additionally, if a user spends the tokens bridged through the Sonic Gateway, e.g. by swapping to another token, these tokens may not be recoverable. In the future, Sonic Labs may provide specific recovery mechanisms for some financial protocols on Sonic.

Does Sonic rely on the state of Ethereum?

No, Sonic operates independently as its own layer-1 platform and does not rely on Ethereum’s state. Instead, the Sonic Gateway uses Merkle proofs on both Ethereum and Sonic to verify the rightful owners of bridged assets. These assets can be redeemed on Ethereum by their rightful ownership regardless of the Sonic Gateway’s status.

Does Sonic store data on Ethereum?

L2 platforms store their transactions on Ethereum, using methods like blobs, which allow these transactions to be reconstructed and contested. This is crucial for resolving any security issues that may arise after the transaction is submitted by the user (e.g. if a transaction is challenged during the 7-day period). However, this approach leads to substantial storage demands on Ethereum, costing millions annually.

Our approach is more efficient as we store only a Merkle root hash (256-bit) and the block heights of both blockchains (2x64-bit) at regular intervals (e.g. hourly) through the Sonic Gateway, which uses Sonic’s own trusted validator set. This significantly reduces data storage, requiring only about 1 KB per day (or 407 KB per year).

Note: We do not retain previous hashes; each new update through the Sonic Gateway overwrites the existing hash and block heights in the Gateway’s smart contracts. The full historical states and transactions remain accessible via an untrusted channel as an archive node.

Sonic Gateway
$2.5 billion lost
Introduction
Fail-Safe Mechanism
Fast Lane
Looking Into the Future
Frequently Asked Questions
Credit:
Credit:
Pavel Paramonov
Pavel Paramonov