Wormhole Unveils Sunrise: Bringing the $MON Token Launch to Solana

Wormhole, a cross-chain interoperability protocol, has launched Sunrise, a gateway application that enables assets from rival ecosystems to be listed for day one trading on Solana.

Sunrise’s maiden voyage begins tomorrow with the launch of Monad’s native token, $MON, which promises to be one of the biggest TGEs of the year.

Wormhole’s foray into day zero listing support comes at a critical time for Solana, which has seen rival chains dominate trading volumes on non-native assets on listing. 

Can Sunrise help Solana stay competitive in the race to house all onchain finance?

Wormhole’s Sunrise to Bring All Onchain Assets to Solana

Solana is undoubtedly a powerhouse of DeFi, exercising consistent dominance over DEX trading volume across all blockchains since October 2024. In addition to commanding the bulk of sheer trading volume (as pictured below in pink), Solana’s DeFi TVL and stablecoin supply have both recorded new all-time highs in the last three months.

But despite Solana’s meteoric DeFi growth in 2025, the network remains ill-equipped to support high-volume trading for non-native assets. While envisioning itself as “NASDAQ” onchain, Solana has been forced to watch the massive liquidity events of rival ecosystems from the sidelines. Solana-based traders have no choice but to leave the network to chase these opportunities elsewhere.

Wormhole’s Sunrise aims to solve this problem, providing a canonical, unified route by which assets from other ecosystems can enter Solana DeFi on launch day. Through Sunrise, asset issuers and liquidity providers from all corners of the crypto world will be able to access Solana’s liquid and diverse range of market participants, and ensure that Solana-based traders can enjoy the entirety of the onchain economy under one roof.

“Solana’s vision for internet capital markets means being the platform on which users can engage with any asset, including crypto assets that aren’t originated on Solana. Products like Sunrise are a critical part of enabling this future by giving non-native new assets a seamless, high-liquidity path into the network from day one.” - Kuleen Nimkar, Growth Lead, Solana Foundation

$MON Tradable on Solana From Day One

Sunrise’s debut coincides with the launch of $MON, the native asset of the Monad Layer-1. One of the most eagerly anticipated token launches of the year, the $MON TGE is a perfect opportunity to test Sunrise’s effectiveness at scale, hopefully enabling price discovery to occur on Solana.

"Sunrise gives any asset from any chain a liquid on-ramp to trade on Solana at TGE. With Wormhole’s fast NTT infrastructure behind it, MON is only the start." - Saeed Badreg, CEO of Wormhole Labs

According to the press release, Sunrise enables users to bridge $MON tokens directly from Monad across to Solana. Once bridged, $MON becomes immediately composable across integrated Solana DeFi apps, including decentralized exchanges and lending/borrowing protocols.

SolanaFloor engaged Wormhole for clarity on how Sunrise is different to its Portal stack, which has already bridged non-native assets like $wBTC and $wETH to Solana.

"Portal is a general-purpose bridge, whereas Sunrise is a specialized route for new listings on Solana on day one. Sunrise gives those assets a canonical Solana representation (via Wormhole’s NTT framework), and ensures they show up cleanly across the Solana stack (DEXs, wallets, explorers) on day one. Users can trade the token immediately after it becomes available on Sunrise’s platform and do not have to bridge, although they may via the website’s deposit flow if they wish to add their liquidity." - Ed, Sunrise Representative

The Race to House All Finance Begins

Wormhole’s Sunrise seems to be a direct retaliation to similar protocols on other networks, which have dominated launch day the price discovery of certain Solana-based assets already in 2025. 

On July 14, pump.fun launched its native token, $PUMP. Despite $PUMP being a Solana-native token, pre-market price discovery attracted traders to a rival network, essentially siphoning liquidity during one of the Solana ecosystem's biggest TGEs.

Even today, Hyperliquid remains the premier venue for DeFi venue for spot $PUMP trading activity, processing higher volume than pump.fun’s native AMM (though still falls short of the entirety of Solana DeFi).

Wormhole’s Sunrise seeks to rebalance the scales, bringing assets from outside Solana into the high-performance network and establish the chain as the home of Internet Capital Markets.

The race to dominate onchain markets pits two remarkably complex market structures against each in to provide the best possible conditions for traders. On one hand, Hyperliquid and Unit Protocol offer a low latency CLOB, popular with trading professionals. On the other, Solana DeFi and its Prop AMMs provide better spreads and process higher volumes than Binance in $SOL-USD pairs.

From today, users can access Sunrise and familiarize themselves with the platform ahead of the $MON TGE, its first baptism of fire. Developers and liquidity providers looking to integrate Sunrise into their own applications can learn more about its SDK and APIs by reviewing Wormhole’s documentation.

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