Wormhole

Wormhole is a generic cross-chain messaging protocol secured by a set of 19 Guardian nodes. Each Guardian runs a full node for every connected chain and observes the Wormhole Core Contract. When a contract emits a message via publishMessage(), Guardians independently observe the event, sign an attestation, and produce a VAA (Verified Action Approval) once 13-of-19 signatures are collected. The VAA is the fundamental primitive -- a signed, portable proof that something happened on a source chain, verifiable on any destination chain.

What You Probably Got Wrong

AI agents confuse Wormhole's multiple transfer mechanisms, chain ID schemes, and delivery semantics. These are the critical corrections.

• NTT is NOT the Token Bridge -- NTT (Native Token Transfers) burns tokens on the source chain and mints natively on the destination. The legacy Token Bridge locks tokens on the source and mints wrapped representations (e.g., WETHwh). NTT produces canonical tokens; Token Bridge produces wrapped tokens. Choose based on whether you control the token contract.
• VAAs must be verified on the destination chain -- A raw VAA is just bytes. The destination chain's Core Bridge contract verifies the guardian signatures against the current guardian set before any action is taken. Never trust unverified VAA bytes.
• Wormhole chain IDs are NOT EVM chain IDs -- Wormhole uses its own chain ID scheme. Ethereum = 2, Solana = 1, Arbitrum = 23, Base = 30, Optimism = 24. Using EVM chain IDs (1, 42161, 8453, 10) will silently route messages to the wrong chain or revert.
• The guardian set rotates -- Guardian addresses change via governance VAAs. Never hardcode guardian public keys or set hashes. Always read the current guardian set from the Core Bridge contract.
• publishMessage() does NOT deliver the message -- Publishing only emits an event on the source chain. A relayer (automatic or manual) must fetch the VAA and submit it to the destination chain. Without a relayer, the message sits undelivered forever.
• Consistency levels matter -- consistencyLevel = 1 means "instant" (observed immediately, less safe). consistencyLevel = 15 waits for 15 block confirmations on Ethereum before Guardians sign. For high-value transfers, use consistencyLevel = 15 (finalized).
• Standard Relayer has gas limits -- The automatic Standard Relayer caps gas on the destination chain. If your receiveWormholeMessages handler does significant computation, use manual relaying or increase the gas budget via quoteDeliveryPrice.
• Token Bridge amounts lose precision -- The Token Bridge normalizes all amounts to 8 decimal places. If your token has 18 decimals, the last 10 digits are truncated. NTT does not have this limitation.
• Emitter addresses are bytes32, not EVM addresses -- Wormhole identifies message senders as bytes32. For EVM chains, the address is left-padded with zeros. For Solana, it is the program's emitter PDA. Always normalize when comparing emitter addresses cross-chain.

Quick Start