Author: Joyce, BlockBeats

Editor: Jaleel, BlockBeats

In the cryptocurrency ecosystem, new L2 and Rollup solutions are constantly emerging, accompanied by an increasing fragmentation of liquidity. At least for now and the foreseeable future, cross-chain solutions are indispensable participants in the multi-chain world.

In the fierce and homogenized cross-chain competition, focusing on interoperability and providing more personalized cross-chain services may be a direction worth paying attention to. For example, Poly Network, a veteran cross-chain protocol, provides a comprehensive cross-chain solution that is somewhat similar to Cosmos Hub in terms of functionality. It can connect multiple blockchain networks, and its current transaction volume has exceeded 1.67 billion US dollars, with a TVL of over 81.31 million US dollars.

Related reading: "Becoming the biggest "water seller" in the multi-chain world, how will the narrative of the cross-chain race continue in the second half?"

In addition, Socket, which has received 5 million in financing and has been invested by Coinbase Ventures and Framework Ventures, also provides a new idea for the cross-chain track. Socket did not choose to be a bridge or cross-chain application, but became the infrastructure for service developers to build cross-chain applications.

Since its launch in November 2021, Socket has facilitated over 2.5 million cross-chain transactions on 15 chains, serving over 80 protocols and dApps with a total transaction volume of $3.5 billion. It covers areas such as software and hardware wallets, browsers, and DeFi, including mainstream wallets such as Coinbase Wallet, Coinbase, and MetaMask. What is the architecture of Socket? What advantages have contributed to its relatively smooth development? In addition to targeting developers, does Socket have other directions for layout? Blockbeats has sorted this out in this article.

Socket Protocol: Interoperable Infrastructure Friendly to Developers

Socket is an interoperable protocol infrastructure for cross-chain data and asset transfer, aimed at providing secure, efficient, and seamless asset and data transfer for cross-blockchain protocols and dApps.

Its feature is that developers can use Socket to build interoperable products for different targets and trade-offs, providing seamless multi-chain experience for application users. Developers can add cross-chain asset transfer and data transmission functions to their applications by calling APIs, or they can directly use pre-packaged cross-chain functional modules and tools.

According to the official documentation, the seamless transfer of cross-chain data and assets is achieved through two key components of Socket, SocketLL (Liquidity Layer) and SocketDL (Data Layer). The information can be found in the official documentation.

Key Components: SocketLL and SocketDL

SocketLL unifies cross-chain liquidity through the aggregation of asset bridges and DEX, and dynamically selects the best bridging path mechanism based on developer preferences such as cost, latency, or security, to achieve seamless and efficient cross-chain asset transfers.

Socket's on-chain contracts and optional off-chain backend pricing engine and API together support the user's token bridging process. The backend pricing engine determines the best possible route between given token chains by utilizing DEX and bridge liquidity data, while the Socket LL API provides support for the frontend data flow, generating bridging routes and transaction data for bridging. SocketLL's smart contract aggregates all DEXs and bridges into a single function call route. Users can exchange and bridge tokens with just one click.

In addition, Socket has developed a centralized solution called Refuel to ensure that users can always obtain Gas on any chain they need, avoiding the problem of not having native tokens to execute transactions when performing token cross-chain transfers. Refuel can be used in the bridging process itself, allowing users to receive native tokens as well as bridged assets on the target chain, or as a bridge for transferring small amounts of native tokens.

除 SocketLL 以外，还有一个关键组件 SocketDL。

SocketDL connects all smart contracts on the chain to unify the chain, allowing them to perform read and write operations on each other. This supports secure cross-chain data transmission. With SocketDL, smart contracts can read states and communicate with other contracts on different chains. For example, a protocol on Polygon can read the APY of Aave on Arbitrum, or a protocol on Fantom can deposit funds into Aave on Optimism through Socket.

Team Operation Mechanism: Security Expert Community and OP Rush Plan

It is worth mentioning that Socket has established a security expert community called SocketSentinels. Community members are divided into three levels based on their abilities and contributions to Socket, and different levels will receive different benefits. Socket claims on its official website that "members who play a key role in Socket governance and all security work will receive 5% of any future Socket Tokens allocated to this and other similar security programs".

Socket held "SOCKET SURGE" in May, recruiting hackers to conduct security audits on the SocketDL test network. Socket implanted "Easter eggs" to identify potential collaborators and stated that "people with obvious security intentions in the blockchain security community will be airdropped SurgePass NFT". The outstanding ones will be invited to join SocketSentinels. Contributions in the event are scored in SurgePoints, and Socket invested $77,000 in Lootbox over 4 weeks. A total of 14,000 people participated in the registration and discovered 15 system bugs.

Socket's current popularity is partly due to its well-designed operational strategy. On August 2nd, Socket launched the OP Rush program, which offers users of Bungee and other dApps/wallets supported by Socket the opportunity to receive 90% of the bridging fee in the form of OP Tokens when bridging to Optimism. The event will last for 4 months, with a total distribution of 300k OP.

The calculation formula for rewards is commission amount = 90% bridge toll + USD gas fee (based on the current OP price), where the bridge toll = source amount (USD) - target amount (USD). The maximum amount of OP that can be obtained per transaction is 20, and the reward obtained will be displayed on Bungee.

Within a month after the start of the event, users injected $150 million in liquidity into Optimism through Socket.

How to master Socket Bridge Aggregator Bungee

For ordinary users, the bridging aggregator Bungee built by the Socket team can be directly used for single transaction bridging (Multi Txn Bungee, which supports multiple transaction bridging, is still in the testing phase). Bungee currently supports asset transactions between most mainstream chains, such as Arbitrum, Avalanche, Ethereum, Optimism, etc.

Enter Bungee and connect your wallet. Bungee supports popular wallets such as Metamask, Wallet Connect, Rainbow, and Coinbase.

Select the source chain and target chain, select the assets to be bridged, and enter the amount.

After entering the amount, available routes will be displayed, and you can view the cost and required transaction time of each route. Choose the appropriate route to proceed with cross-chain asset transfer.

About Refuel

If there are not enough native tokens on the target chain to pay for gas fees, you can use the Refuel function to exchange a small amount of bridged tokens from the source chain for native tokens on the target chain. The amount of tokens used as gas fees will be displayed in the interface.

For users who want to move a small amount of native tokens across chains, Refuel can also be used as an independent bridge. After selecting the source and target chains, Bungee will highlight Refuel's minimum and maximum limits on the slider below.

After submitting a cross-chain asset transfer request, confirm the transaction in the wallet and wait for confirmation on the source chain. Users can search for the source transaction hash or target transaction hash on Socketscan to track the transaction status. When the transaction is marked as successful, users can find the corresponding assets in the target address.

Coinbase's participation will expand cooperation with Coinbase

The Socket team is composed of programmers and cross-chain enthusiasts. The official website shows that there are 20 members, and the co-founders are Vaibhav Chellani (formerly an engineer at Matic Network) and Rishabh Khurana.

Socket, formerly known as Movr Network, changed its name to Socket in February last year and completed a $5 million seed round of financing led by Framework Ventures in March. Subsequently, Socket launched the SocketLL function and cross-chain trading product Bungee. On September 7th, Socket received a $5 million seed round of financing led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures. The new funds will expand Socket's cooperation with Coinbase, including providing an easy-to-use bridge for developers and users of Coinbase Wallet and Base.

Currently, Socket allows users to choose an acceptable slippage when using DEX or bridging protocols, and meets the needs of covering addresses in multi-currency cross-chain transactions. Socket plans to implement more user-friendly features in the future, such as enabling users to perform more operations, including bridging, swapping, depositing xToken, borrowing yToken, etc. Additionally, Socket will explore the implementation of splitting transactions between multiple bridging protocols to efficiently transfer liquidity between these different bridges through a single transaction.

Security rating and robustness rating are considerations made by Socket to ensure secure asset transmission. Evaluating the security of the bridging protocol or service exposed through SocketLL and assigning a security rating can help users or developers understand the security of a specific bridging protocol or service, and decide whether to perform asset transfers or other operations on it.

Robustness score refers to the difference between the actual bridging time and the reference time of a specific bridging service. If the difference between the actual bridging time and the reference time is small, the bridging service may be more stable and reliable, and vice versa. Evaluating robustness helps users or developers choose reliable bridging services to ensure smooth asset transfer.

Currently, Socket's partners can charge fees during the asset transfer process. Socket plans to make its data more accessible and usable to facilitate various analyses by partners. Socket said it will explore more objects on the basis of its existing ecological partners.

Reference reading:

1. Socket Protocol official documentation;

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