Crossing the Void via Multichain XYZ
Sending money through a bridge for the first time is never a carefree endeavor, especially as the amount increases. There is something strange about the fact that there is very little difference, to the end-user, between a smart contract (SC) bridge and a SC deposit. However, there have certainly been cases of funds being lost in the void between chains.
Today, we traverse the waters between Etherum and Fantom’s Opera blockchain. So we start by heading to https://multichain.xyz/
Multichain connects a fair share of blockchains, from Ethereum to Binance Smart Chain, to Fantom’s Opera, to Huobi ECO Chain, and a few others.
Before we send some funds, we should try to gain a basic understanding of how this service works. In simple terms, a user locks tokens from one blockchain in a contract on that blockchain, and a linked contract on the destination blockchain mints new tokens at a 1 to 1 ratio. There is no slippage, no value swapping, no bonded curves.
When we want to return, the minted tokens sent into the bridge are burned and the tokens on the other side are released. Therefore, all the bridges are single-directional in a sense. ERC20 native tokens lock on Ethereum, and mint aboard, and the tokens abroad burn when returning to Ethereum
If this sounds a bit scary, you can take ease in by checking the explorer that lists all the past transactions that displays a 100% successful rate, so far. But please do take care as this product is still in a test phase, and DO NOT send money you need immediately.
Another consideration is the amount of funds locked in all the contracts which can be seen here.
As these funds increase, the level of trust in the product might also increase in your mind. And, if you have time, consider reading the audit.
Let’s walk through the steps after arriving at the site. Today, we will be sending USDT from Etherum to Fantom. Since we are sending ERC20 USDT to Fantom we have set it to Ethereum Mainnet
The first thing we need to do is to make sure your wallet is connected to the network containing the tokens you wish to send.
Now we need to select the token that we wish to send and make sure the destination is correct. So we look to the main user interface.
You will notice that the addresses match for both the From and To. You cannot send funds from one wallet to another wallet address via the bridge.
So we need to select the token we wish to send. As mentioned, we want to send USDT, so we click on the large token icon in the FROM section and are met with this popup window.
As you can see, we can see USDT near the top and down at the bottom of this list and we could simply scroll down to it and select it, but there is also the option of typing the token name into the search field. Let’s do that.
At first, you might be taken aback by the fact there are 3 tokens that all seem to be USDT and display my balance. This is because of the differing destinations. Let's click on the top one.
This shows that we have selected the USDT from Ethereum to USDT on Huobi ECO Chain. This is NOT the destination we want today.
So let's click on the FROM token icon again and select the second choice and we find yourselves here; right where we want to be!
Today, we will send 155 USDT up to Fantom, but you might want to consider the number of tokens that best suit the costs of this transaction more carefully. So we input 155 and we are shown that the output will in fact match 1 to 1.
When we feel confident with our choices, we press the transfer button.
Having submitted the transfer we are met with a Metamask popup that details the transaction.
With most transactions on Ethereum, you may wish to adjust the gas prices by pressing the EDIT, however, this is a topic for another article, and today we will just proceed with gas set at normal.
After we press Confirm in Metamask we will see the following popup which will automatically change to as the transactions are completed
Then
And then — green for GO!
If we wish, at any time during the process, we can click the small icon to get a copy of the transaction hash that we can use to see more details of the transaction, on the corresponding blockchain explorer.
Ethereum Explorer — https://etherscan.io/
Fantom Opera — https://ftmscan.com/
Binance smart Chain — https://bscscan.com/
Huobi ECO Chain — https://scan.hecochain.com
Another point of note is the fact that we were required to pay gas for this service. The entire amount is paid by the sending wallet, and the image below shows the cost of gas to lock the USDT into the ERC20 SC.
The lower half of the image shows the cost to mint fUSDT on Opera at that time quoted in FTM which was paid by the bridge from the pools of funds they hold from previous transactions.
In some cases, you may find that the resulting quote of a swap is not 1–1 as shown below.
This is on account that a fee is being charged to make sure there are enough funds to pay for the gas at the destination. This will commonly be the case for funds being sent to Ethereum. To see the breakdown of the fees, hover the cursor over the ⓘ View Limits. In most cases, the fee will be about 15USDT or 0.1000%.
Here we also see that there are some more pertinent details such as the maximum and minimum amounts, and a warning about large transaction times.
Finally, as you can see here. We have successfully traversed the abyss between blockchains.
Now… let’s find a place to put that fUSDT to good use! 🥪
Special Thanks 🧊🍭
Video guide here
