Butter Network

Butter Network is an omnichain interoperability hub that enables cross-chain asset transfers and smart contract interactions across more than 20 blockchains, including Solana, Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, TRON, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, zkSync, Linea, Mantle, and others. Rather than operating its own consensus layer, it functions as a product and developer infrastructure layer built on top of MAP Protocol relay chain, combining ZK light client verification with multi-signature oracle validation to secure cross-chain message passing.

How It Works

Every Butter Network transaction follows a three-phase flow.

On the source chain, a user submits a transaction through a Router contract, which handles any pre-swap into a bridge-compatible asset. A Bridge contract then locks or burns the tokens and emits a MessageOut event.

On the MAP Relay Chain, MAP Protocol oracle network picks up the emitted event, verifies the source chain block and transaction receipt through multi-signature consensus, deducts fees, and generates a proof for the target chain. This triggers a MessageRelay event.

On the target chain, a ZK and Light Client contract verifies the MAP Relay Chain state against a ZK-SNARK proof of the block header rather than replaying full validator set computations. If verification passes, the Bridge mints or releases the corresponding tokens. An optional Receiver contract can then route the tokens into a target-chain DEX or execute custom contract logic.

The ZK implementation uses the Groth16 protocol. Traditional light clients must store every validator public key and verify aggregated BLS signatures on each block, which is expensive in on-chain gas. Butter approach stores only a single commitment hash over all validator identities and weights, then generates a constant-sized ZK-SNARK proof that the block header is valid. This reduces per-update verification cost significantly while preserving decentralization guarantees.

This is a hybrid trust model, not a purely trustless one. The MAP Relay Chain oracle signers form a multi-signature set responsible for correctly validating cross-chain events from non-MAP chains. Liveness and correctness depend on the oracle network behavior in addition to the ZK light client protecting the MAP relay chain itself.

ButterSwap

The primary consumer product is ButterSwap, a cross-chain DEX aggregator and bridge that routes liquidity across supported chains without taking custody. Butter claims ButterSwap reached approximately 170 million dollars in monthly stablecoin swap volume and processed over 210,000 cross-chain messages. DefiLlama listed it among the top cross-chain solutions by activity. Supported wallets include OKX Wallet, Binance Web3 Wallet, TokenPocket, imToken, and D'Cent Wallet.

ButterSwap supports swaps between any pair of assets on any two connected chains in a single user transaction. A user can swap an Ethereum ERC-20 directly for a Solana SPL token, for example, without manually bridging first.

Solana Integration

Butter Network is deployed on Solana at contract address AGwu8gfXJshkB9UMM3eexeq26m7zf8wM1FgNdBt5wkqN as part of the v3.1 mainnet deployment. The project GitHub includes a dedicated solana-mos-contracts repository containing the MAP Omnichain Service implementation for Solana. Solana users can move assets to or from any of the 20+ connected chains through the ButterSwap interface.

Liquidity Vaults

Liquidity providers can deposit assets into Butter cross-chain liquidity vaults. The vault fee rate is 0.018% on bridged volume, distributed pro-rata to vault token holders. There is no lock-up period; deposits and withdrawals are available at any time.

Developer API and SDK

Butter exposes an Omnichain Messaging API for developers building cross-chain applications, with separate mainnet and testnet endpoints. Three message types are supported: MESSAGE for flexible custom execution, CALLDATA for predetermined execution, and MESSAGE with Relay for relay chain intermediate processing. A TypeScript SDK is available through the project GitHub organization.

Token

Butter Network does not issue a native protocol token. The underlying relay infrastructure runs on MAP Protocol MAPO token, which has a total supply of 10 billion. Users pay bridge fees in the native gas tokens of the source and target chains; no separate BUTTER token is required to use the protocol.

Security and Audits

Butter Network has engaged three security partners: CertiK, DeHacker, and MistTrack for anti-money laundering tracking. A published DeHacker audit of the core contracts found no critical, major, medium, or minor issues, with two informational findings resolved before publication. Audit reports are linked from the project GitHub.

Despite this audit coverage, the protocol suffered a significant exploit in May 2026. An attacker exploited a hash collision vulnerability in abi.encodePacked() inside the retry message verification logic deployed on Ethereum and BNB Chain. By deploying a contract at a precomputed address and restructuring message data to produce an identical hash, the attacker forged a valid retry message that bypassed on-chain verification. This allowed approximately one quadrillion MAPO tokens to be minted, roughly 4.8 million times the legitimate circulating supply. The attacker sold approximately one billion MAPO for around 52 ETH before the exploit was contained. Butter Network described the incident as a smart contract design issue rather than a protocol-level failure, paused operations, and stated that patching and redeployment were in progress.

Relationship to MAP Protocol

Butter Network is a separate team from MAP Protocol but relies on MAP Protocol relay chain as its core verification layer. MAP Protocol was founded in 2019 and Butter Network launched its product layer in 2023. MAP Protocol co-founder James XYC was named a Forbes China Web3.0 Innovation Pioneer.

Team

No individual team members are publicly named under the Butter Network brand. The project GitHub organization shows active internal development across the main contract repositories, with hundreds of commits on the core router and bridge contracts, but limited external community engagement.

Ecosystem Position

Butter Network occupies the cross-chain interoperability segment alongside protocols such as LayerZero, Wormhole, and Stargate. Its technical differentiator is the ZK light client approach for MAP relay chain verification combined with multi-chain oracle coverage across both EVM and non-EVM chains including Solana, Bitcoin, and TRON. Solana support positions it as a route for assets moving between the Solana ecosystem and EVM-compatible networks. Given the May 2026 exploit and subsequent operational pause, users and developers should verify current operational status before relying on the bridge for production use.