Garden Finance

Garden Finance is a cross-chain Bitcoin bridge that enables trustless, non-custodial swaps of native BTC across major blockchain networks. Rather than issuing wrapped tokens or relying on centralized custodians, Garden routes trades through Hash Time Locked Contracts and a competitive solver network, settling in under 30 seconds without placing users' funds in the hands of any intermediary.

The project was founded in 2023 by former members of the RenBTC core team and has since facilitated more than $2 billion in total swap volume across a growing set of chains and assets.

How It Works

Garden uses a two-sided settlement model. When a user initiates a swap, independent operators called solvers compete to fill the order at the best price. Once a match is found, both the user and the winning solver lock funds into Hash Time Locked Contracts — smart contracts that function as digital escrow with a countdown timer. The swap finalizes automatically when both parties fulfill the agreed conditions before the timer expires. If either side fails to act, locked funds return to their respective owners. No third party ever holds the assets, and no transaction can complete unless both sides commit.

This design eliminates the trust assumptions common in conventional bridge architectures. Garden does not mint wrapped tokens, does not rely on external validator sets, and does not operate as a custodian. The HTLC smart contracts are deployed as permissionless, immutable code.

Supported Chains and Assets

Garden supports native Bitcoin swaps to and from Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Hyperliquid, Litecoin, Sui, Monad, Starknet, and Tron. Contract implementations cover EVM, Solana, Cairo (Starknet), Move (Sui), and Rust.

Supported assets include BTC, WBTC, cbBTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, SOL, and additional tokens on each supported chain, with more than 20 documented conversion routes. Solana is a first-class participant: the February 2026 Code4rena security audit explicitly covered Garden's Solana smart contracts alongside the rest of the stack.

Products and Developer Access

Beyond the consumer swap interface at app.garden.finance, Garden exposes a REST API and JavaScript/TypeScript SDK so developers can embed Bitcoin swapping into their own applications in roughly 30 minutes according to the documentation. A drop-in widget allows third-party wallets and apps to surface Garden routes directly.

Phantom Wallet integrated Garden's API in July 2026, letting users swap native Bitcoin without leaving the Phantom interface. SwapKit added Garden routes to its aggregator in August 2026. An explorer tool and staking dashboard round out the product suite.

SEED Token

Garden's native token, SEED, launched on January 18, 2024. Total supply is fixed at 147 million tokens, of which 54.4 percent (80 million SEED) is allocated for community incentive programs. SEED staking is conducted on Arbitrum.

Staking positions are created in multiples of 2,100 SEED — a figure that echoes Bitcoin's 21 million supply cap. Stakers earn a share of protocol revenue and participate in governance. Users who stake at least 210,000 SEED become eligible to operate as solvers, the liquidity providers who fill swap orders and earn the spread on each trade. Longer stake durations earn higher rewards through a multiplier system.

Security and Audits

Garden has commissioned four independent audits covering different layers of the stack:

• OtterSec (August 2023): reviewed EVM contracts and Bitcoin script HTLC implementation, covering the full atomic swap lifecycle
• Trail of Bits (April 2024): reviewed the GardenStaker contract, HTLC contract, and FEEAccount contract
• Zellic (June 2025): reviewed the Move-based HTLC implementation on Sui, including state transitions and transfer integrity
• Code4rena (February 2026): competitive audit of 15 smart contracts written in Cairo, Move, Rust, and Solidity, covering the EVM, Solana, Starknet, and Move-based swap stack; 813 submissions against a $37,500 reward pool

The protocol also holds SOC 2 Type II certification and runs an ongoing bug bounty program.

Despite the HTLC architecture remaining uncompromised, Garden has experienced two significant solver-layer security incidents. In October 2025, an attacker gained unauthorized SSH access to the operating environment of one of Garden's largest independent solvers and drained approximately $11.4 million in crypto assets that the solver held as working capital. A forensic investigation by Ernst and Young confirmed the breach was limited to the solver's infrastructure; HTLC contracts and user funds were unaffected. In July 2026, an attacker breached the off-chain database of a separate independent solver and inserted fraudulent transaction records, causing the solver to release approximately $450,000 in USDT across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and BNB Chain for swaps that had not been funded by counterparties. Garden temporarily halted the application and confirmed the attack was again isolated to the solver layer.

Both incidents highlight a structural tension in the solver model: the HTLC contracts are trustless and immutable, but solvers — which hold and deploy their own capital to facilitate fast settlement — represent an off-chain attack surface that requires hardened infrastructure.

Team

Garden Finance was founded in 2023 by former core contributors to the RenBTC protocol, a cross-chain Bitcoin bridge that shut down following the collapse of Alameda Research, its primary backer. The team has not published detailed public biographical information.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

Garden represents one of the few protocols enabling trustless native BTC transfers onto and off Solana without wrapping. As Solana's DeFi ecosystem matures, native Bitcoin liquidity becomes increasingly relevant for lending protocols, perpetuals platforms, and yield strategies that want BTC exposure without the counterparty risk embedded in bridged assets. Garden's solver architecture means Solana-based liquidity can be tapped or provided directly, with HTLC settlement secured by Bitcoin's base layer. The February 2026 audit's explicit coverage of Solana smart contracts, combined with direct wallet integrations like Phantom and aggregator integrations like SwapKit, confirms Garden's active role in the Solana ecosystem.