Ecosystems

At present, there are 6 ecosystems supported by Wormhole, though the number of supported ecosystems is always growing.

EVM

EVM is the most popular ecosystem, and most xDapps will have some support for this platform. These contracts are written in Solidity -- a 'jack of all trades' style of computation environment. A common strategy for xDapps is to develop one single contract in Solidity, and then deploy that contract to all the supported EVM blockchains.

Example chains:

- Ethereum
- Polygon
- BNB Chain
- Avalanche (C Chain)
- Aurora (Near Network)
- Karura (Polkadot Network)
- Acala (Polkadot Network)
- Celo
- Fantom
- Oasis (Emerald)

Solana

Solana is characterized by its high transaction throughput, increased computation power and cheap data storage when compared to EVM environments. These contracts are written in Rust.

Cosmos

Cosmos is a network of blockchains that share a common ecosystem. Cosmos is a general purpose environment, but excels in certain areas like application-specific blockchains and the use of Cosmos-wide standards via its sdk 'modules.' It uses CosmWasm for its smart contract runtime, which is based in Rust.

Algorand

Algorand is a leading blockchain on the state proof front and repesents the bleeding edge of trustlessness. These contracts are written in Python.

Aptos

Aptos is characterized by its optimisitic approach to computation parallelization to bring increased performance. These contracts are written in Move.

NEAR

NEAR is characterized by its sharding technology that may allow for greater transaction capacity and security. These contracts are written in Rust.

Read-Only Chains

Some chains in the Wormhole ecosystem are 'Read-Only.' These chains are able to verify messages emitted from other chains in the network, but are not able to emit messages themselves. For information about these chains, check the contracts page.