Bridge
A bridge moves an asset, or a token that represents it, from one blockchain network to another and leaves the trade, loan or deposit that follows to the user. SODAX is not a bridge: it coordinates the whole financial action across networks.
What it refers to
A bridge is infrastructure that moves an asset, or a token that represents it, from one blockchain network to another (often searched as crypto bridge or token bridge). Many bridges lock the asset on the source network and create a token on the destination network that stands for it, often called a wrapped token. Others pay out from pools of the asset held on each side.
A bridge's job ends when the asset arrives. Whatever the user does next, a trade, a loan or a deposit, is a separate step on the destination network.
Why this concept exists
Blockchain networks keep their own state and cannot read each other directly, so moving value between them needs dedicated infrastructure. Bridges became the common answer, and "bridge" is still the word many people use for anything that works across networks.
Moving an asset is only part of most financial actions. A transfer can succeed and still leave the asset on a network with no liquidity to use it. When a route stitches a bridge and a separate trade together and one step fails, the user can end up holding a token on a network they did not ask for.
What this changes for system design
Treating the transfer as the whole job pushes everything after it onto the app and the user. A system built for financial actions treats the trade, loan or deposit itself as the unit of work, with liquidity where the action needs it and a defined result if it cannot complete.
SODAX is not a bridge. It coordinates the whole financial action through cross-network execution: SODAX routes, quotes and settles, and a permissioned solver within the SODAX system performs the fill. Actions travel over SODAX's own messaging protocol and relay, and SODAX works alongside existing messaging layers rather than replacing them. A trade completes as requested or reverts and returns the original assets, and apps that call the SODAX API have no bridges to run.
Related terms
- Cross-network transfer: moving an asset as a SODAX capability
- Cross-chain swap: the trade a bridge leaves undone
- Cross-network execution: the whole action, coordinated
- Generalized Messaging Protocol (GMP): how SODAX carries actions
- Liquidity fragmentation: why arrival is not enough
- Native Bitcoin: native versus wrapped assets