Because why pay Ethereum bridge fees when you can circumvent them.
The first time I wanted to buy an alt-coin, it was on the Polygon Network last summer. Seemed easy enough buy Ethereum, and head to the Polygon Bridge. At the time it was about $40 to bridge, and if I look at quotes right now to bridge from the Ethereum network to Polygon, it will run about $140 in Ethereum.
Alright, so what can I do?
Elk Finance is a DEX (Decentralized Exchange) that has a bridge built in that can bring assets to 16 different blockchains at the time writing, including Avalanche, Polygon, Fantom, Binance, Harmony, to name a few.
One thing to consider is if you want to put funds on a network you haven't used before, it is best to make sure you have a faucet to get some of the native coin to cover any transaction fees. (What is a faucet? See here)
Here once you have coins from a faucet in your target network, you want want to make your first swap to the native coin that is used to pay future transaction fees (AVAX for Avalance, Matic for Polygon, FTM for Fantom, ONE for Harmony).
So let's get into Elk Finance, to illustrate how the utility I will make an example of bridging funds from Avalanche to the Polygon Network, without using the Ethereum-Polygon Bridge, thus saving a significant amount of money.
First, let's say I buy AVAX (Avalanche). I will want to have my web3 wallet connected to the Avalance and Polygon mainnet. To connect one's wallet to other networks, it would be commonly found in their documentation. It is important to make sure you are connecting to a network from a reliable source.
(Click here for a guide to connect to Avalanche Network)
(Click here for a guide to connect to Polygon Network)
Once the respective networks connected, one would buy Avalanche from an exchange and send it to their web3 wallet. One that is done, you can go ahead and go to the dApp page of Elk Finance.
The important thing to know is that in order to send funds across networks through Elk Finance, one would have to swap to the ELK token. When swapping for Elk token, make sure to leave a relatively small amount of the native token to pay for at least two transaction fees (Swapping to elk, and transferring across network). ELK is relatively stable ($2.25-2.75) on average, but not necessarily volatile. The process takes about 1-2 minutes as well to keep your assets in ELK.
Once you have swapped for ELK, hit the tab to the right of Swap that reads 🔀Elk Net, here you will select your target network to send assets to, then press transfer. In a few seconds, your assets will appear in the target Network (Polygon from Avalance in this example) and then you can swap to the native token such as Matic.
Overall, the fees incurred to send across chains, including gas, is next to nothing. Just gas fees of three transfers, and retain 96-97% of your assets value. (Rough estimate)
Some things to note here:
- Make sure you have enough of the native token to make two transactions (Swap to ELK, send to another network)
- If you're using a network that has never been used before, make sure to use a faucet to get some funds for initial transaction fee. First swap needs to be for some amount of native token, in order to pay for future transactions, and assets aren't stuck.
- If you are using Elk.Finance for the first time, but have funds on the network, I would not recommend swapping for stable-coins. Swap to Matic for example, and then you can find the best rate to swap any coin for stablecoin, or anything else in general though the Exchange tab in Zapper.fi. (Highly Recommend for trading on Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Binance Smart Chain networks.)
- Lastly, make sure there is adequate liquidity on Elk Fiance for Elk and the token you want to swap in and out. Here is a list below for the analytics of Elk Finance on a few networks.
Polygon - Elk Finance Liquidity Analytics
Avalanche - Elk Finance Liquidity Analytics
Fantom - Elk Finance Liquidity Analytics
Harmony - Elk Finance Liquidity Analytics
Binance Smart Chain - Elk Finance Liquidity Analytics
That's it! Thanks for reading🥂
