From what started as the first Ethereum to Solana token bridge in 2020 and evolved into the industry’s leading interoperability platform, Wormhole is a result of years of innovation, resilience, and a relentless focus on driving the industry forward. But these first four years were only just a start to the decades-long road ahead to build the platform that connects the decentralized web.

The Wormhole Roadmap below expands on Wormhole’s evolution to date and gives a preview of what lies ahead. Step by step, era by era, Wormhole is connecting crypto.

Era1: Launch (2020 - 2021)

In 2020, funded in part by a grant from the Solana Foundation, Wormhole launched the first-ever token bridge between Solana and Ethereum. This development opened up new possibilities for asset transfers to and from Solana and nearly immediately established product-market fit in this budding segment of crypto.

Key Milestones:

• Launch of the Solana-Ethereum bridge
• Implementation of the initial Guardian set (3-5 Guardians)
• Development of the first user interface

Era2: Expansion (2021-2024)

With a proven concept, Wormhole evolved from a single product into a platform of products powering an entire ecosystem of multichain applications. Era2 brought the industry’s first general message-passing protocol, laying the groundwork for seamless asset transfers to 30+ blockchains and the delivery of over one billion secure cross-chain messages.

As of August 2024, Wormhole has processed over a billion messages and facilitated tens of billions in cross-chain value transfer.

Key Milestones:

• Wormhole Messaging launches, enabling arbitrary data transfer between chains.
• First-ever general message-passing protocol
• Launch of NFT bridge
• Launch of Portal
• Guardian Network expansion
• Security enhancements
• Introduction of the Accountant, Governor, and Flow-canceling Governor.
• Asymmetric Research onboarded as Wormhole contributor
• Integrations with Uniswap, Pyth, Lido, Circle, Backpack, Jupiter, and more.
• Strategic hardware partnership with AMD

Products:

• Wormhole Connect
• Wormhole Queries
• Native Token Transfers (NTT) framework
• Wormhole SDK
• Wormhole’s Gateway blockchain
• CCTP integration
• Wormhole decentralization (W launch)
• Staking for governance going live on EVM
• DAO initiated
• Onboarding ZK cryptography expertise from Lurk, Zpoken, Supranational

Era3: Experience (TBD 2024)

Wormhole Era3 will be the Era of Experience, introducing significant UX/UI improvements and a suite of new products, including native swaps, fast transfers, more options for native token swaps, and major enhancements to Portal, Wormhole Connect, the TypeScript SDK. Along with these major product updates, Wormhole Institutional will also be rolled out as a product line to provide interoperability solutions for global enterprises and financial institutions.

Upcoming Releases:

• Wormhole Institutional
• Native swaps and fast transfers
• Connect upgrade
• Portal upgrade
• TypeScript SDK upgrade
• Wormholescan upgrade for improved transaction tracking and analytics

Era4: Ubiquity (TBD 2024 - 2025)

Era4 will continue to build on the strengths of the previous Eras, introducing industry firsts and further upgrades to the platform.

Upcoming Releases:

• The industry’s first multichain governance solution, MultiGov
• Wormhole DAO goes live
• Platform ZK upgrades with ZK light clients for Ethereum, Near, Sui, Aptos, and Cosmos
• Portal v3 and Portal SDK
• Community incentive campaigns

Era5, Era6, Era7, and Beyond (2025+) — Future

As the global economy shifts onchain, trillions in volume and tokenized assets from individuals, institutions, and governments will flow across multiple blockchain networks. Wormhole is positioned to be the connective infrastructure, a network of networks, for this emerging decentralized economy, offering seamless interoperability that removes blockchain complexity and secures systemically important assets. The Wormhole vision is to become the heartbeat of this new onchain economy and internet. By continually evolving our platform and collaborating with developers and integrators, we're building the foundation for a seamlessly connected, decentralized world. Start growing your product with Wormhole today or learn more at wormhole.com.