Wormhole Labs unveils ‘Sunrise’ gateway to bring MON and other assets to Solana

Wormhole Labs, the firm behind the Wormhole cross-chain protocol, today announced the public launch of Sunrise, a new liquidity gateway focused exclusively on the Solana ecosystem.

The product is pitched as a "canonical route" for external assets to enter Solana with day-one liquidity, giving users a single interface to move tokens from their origin chain onto Solana and immediately tap the network’s DeFi venues, according to materials shared with The Block.

According to the announcement, Sunrise aims to solve the "fragmented" liquidity issues often associated with bridging new tokens, ensuring that new onchain assets are tradable across Solana venues including decentralized exchange Jupiter and supported on Helius-incubated block explorer Orb from day one. Sunrise will launch with day-one support for Monad's high-profile MON token, scheduled to begin trading tomorrow, as its first major test case. 

"Solana’s vision for internet capital markets means being the platform on which users can engage with any asset, including crypto assets that aren’t originated on Solana," said Kuleen Nimkar, growth lead at the Solana Foundation. "Products like Sunrise are a critical part of enabling this future by giving non-native new assets a seamless, high-liquidity path into the network from day one."

The move comes as interoperability protocols race to capture flows between high-throughput chains. Monad, which raised $225 million in a round led by Paradigm in early 2024, has been one of the most closely watched Layer 1 networks in development. By positioning Sunrise as the primary entry point for MON, Wormhole Labs is looking to entrench itself further into Solana’s market structure.

Standardizing the 'front door'

While Solana has seen a resurgence in activity—with Solana DEX volume frequently flipping Ethereum in recent quarters—the process of bridging assets remains complex for the average user, often involving disparate bridges and wrapped assets with low liquidity.

Sunrise attempts to unify this by acting as a "canonical gateway." Under the hood, the platform utilizes Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT) infrastructure, which allows tokens to retain their utility and fungibility across chains without relying on traditional liquidity pools that can be vulnerable to hacks or slippage.

"Sunrise gives any asset from any chain a liquid on-ramp to trade on Solana at TGE (Token Generation Event),” said Saeed Badreg, CEO of Wormhole Labs. "With Wormhole’s fast NTT infrastructure behind it, MON is only the start."

According to the press release, Sunrise intends to expand beyond crypto assets like MON to support tokenized commodities, stocks, and real-world assets (RWAs) issued on institutional chains.

Wormhole itself has been aggressively expanding its footprint following its own W token launch and airdrop earlier in the cycle, and its recent change to its tokenomics. By securing the Monad bridge flow, Wormhole Labs is betting that users will prefer a specialized, UI-friendly gateway over generic bridging aggregators.