Canonical bridge

Sonic Gateway

Sonic Gateway is the native bridge between Ethereum and Sonic, built by Sonic Labs. It moves ERC-20 tokens in batches called heartbeats and has a fail-safe that lets you reclaim funds on Ethereum if the bridge stops working for 14 days.

Official website

How it works

1You deposit tokens into the Gateway contract on Ethereum or on Sonic.
2Transfers are processed in heartbeats: every 10 minutes from Ethereum to Sonic and every hour from Sonic to Ethereum. For a fee, Fast Lane triggers an extra heartbeat right away.
3After the heartbeat, you claim the tokens on the destination network; the claim is a separate transaction that needs gas on that network.

Trust model

Transfers are confirmed by Sonic's validator network. As a backstop, if the Gateway or the Sonic chain is down for 14 consecutive days, you can recover bridged assets directly on Ethereum; this 14-day period is fixed and cannot be changed after deployment.

Strengths

Official route with a fail-safe that does not depend on the Sonic team.
Predictable timing: up to 10 minutes to Sonic and up to an hour back.
Fast Lane for urgent transfers.

Limitations

Two steps: you must come back to claim, and you need gas on the destination network.
Connects only Ethereum and Sonic.
Funds stuck in an outage are recoverable only after the full 14 days.