How to Connect Your Chain with Hyperlane

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This guide will help you deploy Hyperlane to your new chain as quickly as possible for testing, not production. This includes the core mailbox and ISM contracts as well as warp route contracts for assets you’re bridging.

To see which chains are already supported, visit the Registry.

If you need any help, reach out on #developers on Discord or get in touch.

Prerequisites

Anyone can begin this quickstart guide once they have the following artifacts & assets available:

• A new, custom, or pre-existing network of your choice, including the following metadata:
  • A chain name, e.g. ethereum
  • A chain ID, e.g. 1
  • A RPC URL, e.g. https://eth.llamarpc.com
• A deployer wallet/EOA private key or seed phrase
  • This EOA should be funded on your custom chain and any chain you will be passing messages to & from
• Hyperlane CLI

1) Registry

Let’s create a custom chain config, run:

hyperlane registry init

Follow the prompts to set up your chain metadata. Setting up block or gas properties is optional.

Now, under $HOME/.hyperlane/chains you will find a new folder named with your custom chain’s name, and a file named metadata.yaml within that folder.

Example content of this config at $HOME/.hyperlane/chains/yourchain/metadata.yaml

 # yaml-language-server: $schema=../schema.json
 blockExplorers:
   - apiUrl: https://explorer.yourchain.com/api
     apiKey: XXXX # helpful to avoid rate limiting on the contract verification API
     family: etherscan #explorer you're using, also supporting routescan or blockscout
     name: Chainscan
     url: https://explorer.yourchain.com
 chainId: 171717
 displayName: Chain Name
 domainId: 171717
 isTestnet: true # optional
 name: yourchain
 nativeToken:
   name: Ether
   symbol: ETH
   decimals: 18
 protocol: ethereum
 rpcUrls:
   - http: https://hyper-lane-docs.rpc.caldera.xyz/http

2) Core

Next, let’s configure, deploy and test your custom chain’s core contracts.

Initialize configuration

1. From your local environment, set the private key or seed phrase of your funded deployer address to HYP_KEY. For example: export HYP_KEY='<YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY>'
2. From the same terminal instance, run:

hyperlane core init

The deployment config will be written to ./configs/core-config.yaml

owner: "0x16F4898F47c085C41d7Cc6b1dc72B91EA617dcBb"
defaultIsm:
  type: trustedRelayerIsm
  relayer: "0x16F4898F47c085C41d7Cc6b1dc72B91EA617dcBb"
defaultHook:
  type: merkleTreeHook
requiredHook:
  owner: "0x16F4898F47c085C41d7Cc6b1dc72B91EA617dcBb"
  type: protocolFee
  beneficiary: "0x16F4898F47c085C41d7Cc6b1dc72B91EA617dcBb"
  maxProtocolFee: "100000000000000000"
  protocolFee: "0"

Deploy contracts

To deploy contracts, run:

hyperlane core deploy

Use the arrows and enter to select your custom chain from the bottom of the mainnet list. It will take a few minutes for all contracts to deploy.

Under $HOME/.hyperlane/chains you will find a new folder named with your custom chain’s name, and a file named addresses.yaml within that folder

  staticMerkleRootMultisigIsmFactory: "0x6906cb4741d3E2322E9f9aA645DfC8AB6F122c47"
  staticMessageIdMultisigIsmFactory: "0x3CE97a32d9C8294691cBd2baC09B078EDa75c429"
  staticAggregationIsmFactory: "0x81f969fDBF48278Ce09685Ce48e03388B6785aF4"
  staticAggregationHookFactory: "0x3d864A3c25F61E3c3A7d02e980453A6E1f0a92A6"
  domainRoutingIsmFactory: "0xC4c01f7B03f0fFa77A0265C600dEF7Ad28BCa5A2"
  proxyAdmin: "0xABb7175d5F123172E7B7Fa467CC9fE4C2FEdb942"
  mailbox: "0x5F58d75A9caDE4e2b191313223978dF049f93b81"
  interchainAccountRouter: "0x43c0745b0dE9Cb780816a24ddE63d79Ca99B5dE8"
  interchainAccountIsm: "0x9C96dC8f4257413225d6B5C47d1afbafc39B269F"
  validatorAnnounce: "0xE3bd39BF92DB385dE6313D6070b035bD934378CB"
  testRecipient: "0xa58462b1943Be1469Ed58db690C78583BA34Fd2E"

Send test message

To send a test message, run:

hyperlane send message --relay

Currently core self-relay only works from Holesky to your custom chain. When dispatch is successful, you should see that the message was self-relayed!

Support in the CLI for other origin chains is being added; chains that are not supported will output Error: No fallback hook config found.

note

🎉 Congrats! You have successfully sent a message to your custom chain

3) Warp Route

Now that you have a Hyperlane mailbox and core contracts on your chain, it’s time to set up token bridging between your chain and any other Hyperlane chain.

Continue on to the Deploy a Warp Route docs for more details.

4) Submit to Registry

If you want other chains to connect with you as well as to take this to production, make a registry PR.

Ensure complete info

Make sure your metadata is complete:

• add a logo.svg file inside the folder
• include Deployer information identifying the team deploying
• indicate isTestnet true if the chain is testnet
• add the api url gnosisSafeTransactionServiceUrl if you have a gnosis safe service
• lint the yaml files and order alphabetically

Commit to Github

First, navigate to your local instance of the registry and commit changes

cd ~/.hyperlane && git init && git add . && git commit

Then, sync local registry with canonical registry

git remote add canonical git@github.com:hyperlane-xyz/hyperlane-registry.git
git pull canonical main --rebase

Finally, push local registry to github fork and submit a PR. Please include a changeset in your PR.

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Congrats! You have successfully deployed Hyperlane to your chain and added your work to the Hyperlane registry

Thank you for contributing to the future of permissionless interop 🫡

Take to Production

Community-Run Infra

As a public good, a core dev team for Hyperlane - Abacus Works - can help take your mainnet chain to production free of charge. Feel free to request this in your PR, new chain batches are added every two weeks.

This includes running a relayer connecting your chain to the network, adding your chain to the Explorer, and running one of the validators in your chain's default validator set. There is no ongoing cost or lock-in - at any time you can choose to migrate your relayer to a self-hosted option or change your validator set.

Self-Host Infra

Chains with devops experience, like Stride, choose to run their own relayer. While this does have some operations burden, this allows them to add new chains even faster at their pace. In addition, they can choose to set or subsidize the interchain gas costs related to relaying. See the Operate docs for more information.