Bridge Widget: How to add a Multichain Gateway to bridge right inside your dApp!
Cross Chain Bridge Widget Integration Tutorial
Today, we live in a multichain world. Apps, assets, and users are all fragmented across different chains. You too are probably building a DApp on a specific chain.
But assets and users are spread across chains, making it hard for users to check out apps present on other chains. In fact, users will face two challenges:
- Bridging tokens to the app’s chain
- Getting the right token for interacting with the app
To solve this challenge, DApps can integrate bridging and swapping interfaces into their frontend. To do this, you have to first answer a few questions:
Which bridge is right for you?
There is a long list of bridges to choose from. Each bridge comes with its pros and cons (see comparison chart here) but choosing the right bridge is hard. As bridge prices and bridging times keep fluctuating, there is never a permanent “right” bridge for your DApp.
Hence the best option is to integrate a bridge aggregator, and you can find the smoothest bridging experience with Socket. Bungee, built on Socket, is the most loved DApp in the bridging community. It shines compared to others as it is powered by super-fast Socket APIs.
Which DEX or DEX aggregator is right for you?
Choosing a DEX and implementing it can take some time, and integrating a DEX aggregator will require either contract integration or a two-transaction flow, both of which result in a bad user experience. Additionally, sticking to one provider will rarely give you the best results.
Don’t worry though, Socket APIs have inbuilt DEX support so we are good to go! 🚀
What if I made my own bridging component?
Building bridge widgets and bridging infrastructure is a lengthy task in itself. Bridging widgets have various elements like:
- Maintaining quotes (updated every few seconds)
- Token lists, and
- User transactions status, since these elements will have their own nuances
These things are not easy to make and will take up a week’s worth of valuable developer bandwidth.
if you want a fully-functional custom bridge widget integration that follows your style guide and design, you should definitely head toward the Socket Liquidity Layer APIs docs. In this article, we will explore a widget for bridging provided by Socket (Socket Plugin) which is easy to integrate into React component.
Integrating the bridging widget — Socket Plugin
- First, add the Socket plugin package.
npm install @socket.tech/plugin2. We will need an API key for using Socket. You can grab the public testing key 645b2c8c-5825-4930-baf3-d9b997fcd88c for now. For official access, fill out this form.
3. Now, simply use the component Socket provides with a web3 provider and API key. Voila, the bridge widget is ready!
function SocketBridge() {
return (
<Bridge
provider={web3Provider} // web3 provider can be passed
API_KEY={"645b2c8c-5825-4930-baf3-d9b997fcd88c"}
/>
)
}
This widget can be customized to a great extent. Play around with the storybook here and read about customization here.
For more information, here is a detailed tutorial about using Socket Plugin.
About Socket
Socket aims to unify the multichain ecosystem by connecting all chains and enabling seamless asset and data transfers between them. With Socket, developers can build unified, multichain apps with interoperability as a core part of the protocol logic.
