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Forwarder Addresses

What does the Forwarder Address do?​

The forwarder address is essentially a proxy contract that:

  1. Receives chain-abstracted calls through the SOCKET protocol.
  2. Forwards the calls to the correct chain and address.

Since each forwarder is tied to a specific (chainSlug, address) pair, it knows exactly where to forward the call when triggered.

SOCKET uses these forwarder contracts that are automatically deployed alongside your onchain contracts when you deploy. Each forwarder contract is immutable and is specifically tied to a unique (chain, address) pair. This ensures that when a forwarder contract is called, it knows exactly which chain and which address to forward the call to.

forwarder addresses

Creating and Accessing Forwarder Addresses​

Uploading an onchain contract to use on an AppGateway on EVMx​

↘ See a reference implementation of this functionality here.

When your AppGateway contract is deployed, the constructor can automatically create a forwarder for your onchain contract. If you need to upload an onchain contract to the EVMx you can call the following from the AppGateway:

addressResolver__.getOrDeployForwarderContract(
    address(this),        // The address of the current AppGateway contract
    onchainAddress,       // The address of the onchain contract (e.g. token)
    chainSlug             // The chain identifier for the target chain
);
  • address(this) — Refers to the current AppGateway contract.
  • onchainTokenAddress — The address of the onchain contract (such as a token or other smart contract) that needs a forwarder.
  • chainSlug — A unique identifier for the target blockchain (e.g., 1 - Ethereum, 8453 - Base, etc).

This call ensures that a forwarder contract is deployed and linked to the specified (chainSlug, onchainTokenAddress) pair.

Accessing Forwarder Addresses​

If the onchain contract was deployed via the AppGateway, you can access the forwarder addresses through the forwarderAddresses mapping in the AppGateway contract:

address forwarderAddress = forwarderAddresses[contractId][chainSlug];

This mapping allows you to retrieve the forwarder address for any contract and chain combination. For example:

address someContractForwarder = forwarderAddresses[superContractId][chainSlug];
info

See a reference implementation of this functionality here.