Hop Docs
User Docs
User Docs
User Docs
  • Welcome
  • Basics
    • A Short Explainer
    • What is special about Hop?
    • How to bridge with Hop
    • How long does a transfer take?
    • Fees
    • Providing Liquidity & Rewards
    • Transfer failures
    • Manual Withdrawals
    • USDC.e Manual Withdrawals
    • FAQ
      • How to manually withdraw your tokens on the destination chain?
      • How to use Hop with a Gnosis Safe?
      • My funds are stuck on a Layer-2 network because I can't pay the gas needed for transactions
      • Can I access Hop Protocol through other interfaces than Hop.Exchange?
      • Why can I not access Hop.exchange?
      • Hop labels my transaction as completed but I can't "see" my tokens in Metamask
      • Do I need to pay transaction costs on the destination chain before I receive my tokens?
      • What are the fees for transfering tokens with Hop?
      • What is Hop Protocol?
      • How safe is Hop?
      • How long does a Hop transfer take?
      • I sent a token but it's not arriving at the destination
      • How do $OP on-boarding rewards work?
      • What do I need in order to provide liquidity on Hop?
      • Do I need to add Hop tokens and native tokens in equal weights?
      • How does a Hop token hold its peg with its native counterpart (e.g 1hUSDC = USDC)?
      • How do I get Hop tokens (hTokens)?
      • Can I buy hTokens on L2?
      • Why does my LP token balance show less than I deposited?
      • How does a rogue chain affect my LP position on another chain?
      • Who can become a Bonder?
      • What is a "Transfer bond"?
      • What is a "Transfer root"?
      • What does “The Bonder” do?
      • What happens if The Bonder bonds fraudulent transactions?
  • Governance
    • Into to Hop DAO
    • How to Vote
    • Becoming a Delegate
    • Liquidity mining
    • Token Distribution
    • Protocol Fees & Public Good Funding
    • Roadmap
    • Important Links
  • Stats
    • Links to Stats Dashboards
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  • Hop is trustless
  • Liquidity is automatically rebalanced
  • Hop is powered by a set of Bonders
  1. Basics

A Short Explainer

Last updated 1 year ago

Hop is a scalable rollup-to-rollup general token bridge. It allows users to send tokens from one rollup or sidechain to another almost immediately without having to wait for the networks challenge period. It works by involving market makers (referred to as Bonders) who front the liquidity at the destination chain in exchange for a small fee. This credit is extended by the Bonder in form of hTokens which are then swapped for their native token counterpart in an AMM on the destination chain.

The end result allows users to seamlessly transfer tokens from one network to the next.

The hTokens exist to allow the protocol to mint & burn tokens programmatically to move them across chains more easily but also to shorten the native exit time of each scaling solution and allow Bonders to be more capital efficient. Bonders unlock their fronted capital every 24hrs.

Hop is trustless

Users have on-chain guarantees that they will receive their funds even in the event where Bonders are offline. In the rare event where this happens, users have to wait until the on-chain proof is propagated to the destination chain to withdraw their tokens manually. In the worst case users will face a slow experience but their funds can't be taken by the Hop bridge.

Liquidity is automatically rebalanced

By virtue of having AMM's on each chain, liquidity always flows to where its most needed. If a lot of user funds are bridged from say Optimism to Ethereum, arbitrageurs will be economically incentivized to bridge the other way to pocket a premium and thereby rebalance the pools.

Hop is powered by a set of Bonders

Bonders run local nodes to verify if the state transitions on the source chain are accurate and decide to "bond" the transfer by locking up 110% of the TransferSum as collateral. This allows them to mint hTokens at the destination chain which are sent to the user to provide instant liquidity. The Bonder unlocks the capital after a 24hr challenge period during which anyone can challenge the Bonder. If a challenge is successful the Bonder capital is slashed. For more info about Hop V1 please refer to our .

whitepaper