• This guide is for EVM-compatible chains only.
  • It will walk you through deploying Hyperlane to your new chain as quickly as possible for testing, not production. This includes the core Mailbox and ISM contracts as well as Hyperlane Warp Route contracts for asset 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.

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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

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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.

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2. Core

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

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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

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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.

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Send test message

To send a test message, run:

hyperlane send message --relay

The --relay flag is optional and will deliver the message to the destination chain.

You can also run a relayer in the background with

hyperlane relayer --chains yourchain,sepolia

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

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3. Hyperlane 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 Hyperlane Warp Route docs for more details.

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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.

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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

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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.

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 🫡

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Take to Production

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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.

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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.