The ability to bridge assets between different cryptocurrency networks/blockchains is becoming a necessity! With over a dozen similar networks, all Ethereum compatible (EVM compatible), it’s possible that the project or asset you want to participate in could be on a different chain than where your assets are currently held. The solution is simple – use a blockchain bridge!
Today, we will look at using the Multichain bridge (formerly known as AnySwap). As a sample bridging transaction, we will look at the following situation:
I have assets on BNB Chain but want to purchase something on Ethereum mainnet.
The steps we will follow can be used to move any supported asset between any of the chains available on Multichain.
Please note: If the chain you are bridging to has never been used with your wallet, it is best to bridge over the native asset of that chain so you will have funds to cover gas fees. In our example, we will bridge ETH to the Ethereum mainnet for this purpose. Once you have an established wallet on the target chain, you can then easily bridge other common assets such as USDC, BTC, or any other desired asset.
Let’s Check a Few Things First
First, we should check to see that the asset we want to bridge is available on the bridge, and that the bridge has enough funds to allow us to complete the bridge. These steps are more important when bridging less common assets, or when bridging very large amounts where there may not be enough funds available on the target chain!
As per our demo bridging transaction, let’s look at Multichain and ensure they have enough ETH available for us to bridge over.
- Head over to https://app.multichain.org and connect your wallet.
- Change the top “From” field (source network and source asset) to the network you are bridging from, and the asset you are bridging from. In our case this will be BNB Chain and EthereumToken asset.
- Change the bottom “To” field (target network) to the network you want to send the funds to. The asset should stay the same as the source asset you selected in step 2, if it is available on your target network.
You should see something like this:
From the image, you can see that I would be able to bridge Ethereum from BNB Chain to Ethereum mainnet as there are over 170 ETH available on the target chain.
Also, ensure you have the asset available to bridge over. In the image above, you can see on the source chain (BNB Chain) that my balance of ETH is 0.00. Before bridging, I would first need to swap a different BNB Chain asset to ETH on BNB Chain in order to bridge it to Ethereum mainnet.
Time To Bridge the Asset
After checking the asset is supported and is available on the target chain, and ensuring you have the amount of the asset ready to bridge in your own account, it is time to start the bridging process!
You can click on your balance of the asset within Multichain to bridge all of it over, or enter any amount you want in the From box. I will bridge everything over:
You will notice that the To field automatically populates with how much you will receive on the other chain. Bridging to Ethereum is more expensive than bridging to any other chain.
If this is your first time bridging the asset, you will need to do an approval transaction before you can swap to the other network. You will see a button that looks identical to the “Swap” button but it will say “Approve”. This will need to be done before the Swap will be allowed.
After pressing Swap, you will be asked to confirm the details. By default, you will receive the bridged tokens to the same wallet you are using to initiate the bridge. This is fine for most situations, unless you wish to send the funds to a different wallet on the target network. While quite simple, as you just have to click “Send To” and enter a different wallet address, it is outside the scope of this tutorial so I won’t cover it in detail.
This is what the confirm screen will look like when bringing ETH from BNB Chain to Ethereum mainnet:
After confirming, you will see a status screen. At this point you simply need to wait a few minutes for the transaction to confirm on both chains, and for the funds to be routed to you on the target chain. In my experience with Multichain, this typically only takes a few minutes.
Step 1 – Waiting for the transaction to confirm on the source network.
Step 2 – Waiting for confirmation on the target network.
Step 3 – Routing the assets to your wallet on the target chain
From this point, the asset should be available in your wallet very soon, within a few minutes at most!
Now you can do something cool like buy a BOMB Evolution NFT on Ethereum mainnet!
