Coinbase Wallet

Bridging your crypto

Important for Base Bridging in CB Wallet

Currently, customers can only bridge from Ethereum to Base. The Coinbase Wallet app will support bridging from Base back to Ethereum by mid-August. If you would like to bridge your tokens on Base back to Ethereum using Coinbase Wallet before that date, please visit bridge.base.org, connect your Coinbase Wallet, and select the amount you wish to bridge. More instructions can be found here.

You can now send and receive your crypto assets between blockchains supported on Coinbase Wallet. Bridging makes it possible to access and use dapps that are not accessible on the Ethereum main network or mainnet.

Bridging is the term used to describe the action of moving assets from one blockchain to another.  Blockchain assets are not always compatible with each other, so blockchain bridges create derivatives (or copies) that represent an asset from another chain.

For example, if you use a bridge to send a token on the Polygon blockchain to an Ethereum wallet, the Ethereum wallet would receive a bridge version of the Polygon token that was converted to an ERC-20 token for use on the Ethereum blockchain.

Select the Bridge iconbridging icon from your Coinbase Wallet. The networks and assets that are available for bridging will be displayed based on the balances held in your wallets. If you don't have funds that are eligible, you'll be prompted to fund your wallet.

  1. Select the Bridge iconbridging icon from your Coinbase Wallet. Read the information about Bridging and click ‘Continue’ to proceed.

  2. At the top of the screen Click the Bridge to select the networks you’d like to bridge between.

  3. Select your From and To Networks and Click ‘Done’.

  4. When you have returned to the Bridge screen, select the assets you would like to bridge from your available assets.

  5. Enter the Amount of the Asset you would like to bridge and Click ‘Preview’.

  6. Review the transaction and associated fees and time to complete the transaction and click ‘Confirm’ to proceed.

  7. You will be taken to a screen that confirms the conversion has been initiated. You may click ‘Done’ or “View Transactions” to review the in-progress transaction. 

You can also access this view by click theTransaction historysymbol at any time from your Coinbase Wallet.

Coinbase does not currently charge a fee for bridging.  However, the underlying bridge used to facilitate the transaction may charge a fee. This will be displayed in the “BridgeFee” field in your transaction summary.

Coinbase has partnered with the bridge aggregator, Socket, to enable bridging in the Coinbase Wallet.

A bridge consists of two transactions.  First you lock your crypto in a smart contract on the blockchain network you're bridging from, and then you'll receive crypto from the network you're bridging to. 

For example if a user is bridging from Ethereum to Polygon, the first transaction on Ethereum typically takes 10-20min. The transaction on Polygon happens much faster afterwards, typically within a few minutes. Added up together and accounting for changes in network congestion, the total time for a bridge can vary.

Common reasons for using a blockchain bridge include:

  • Accessing networks that offer faster and cheaper transactions

  • Leveraging markets that only exist on another blockchain

  • Buy tokens that are only on another blockchain

  • Interact with a dapp or protocol that is on another blockchain

Bridges can either be custodial, which means they are centralized or trusted, or non-custodial, meaning they are decentralized or trustless.

In custodial bridges, assets are held in custody by a centralized entity.  Non-custodial bridges are held and managed by the blockchain protocol, making them decentralized.

On occasion, bridging may be unavailable for a variety of reasons, including low liquidity tokens, network outages.  In these instances we recommend attempting the transaction later or visiting a different bridge using your browser.

Transaction may also fail if the amount bridged is lower than the network fee. You will need to bridge an amount larger than the network fee, or else the  transaction will not go through.

In certain cases, there may be extremely high demand for a token relative to its available supply on the destination network, which may result in there not being enough liquidity to complete a send or receive transaction for the token.

In the event that this occurs, Hop, a token bridging protocol, will send h-tokens that represent the destination token. 

A transaction might also fail if the bridge times out after a set deadline, in which case you will receive h-tokens and can convert them manually to the native token. 

You can learn more about h-tokens here, and swap these h-tokens for the destination token here