Wrong coin, wrong network? One screen fixes both
Your money is USDC on Base and the bill wants SOL, TRX or BTC. Several bridges quote on one screen, and the route we pick tells you why.
Your designer has sent an invoice for $200, payable in SOL to the Solana address at the bottom of the email. Your company keeps its money in USDC on Base.
You know how the next hour goes. A bridge, a swap site and a block explorer end up open side by side, and somewhere in there is a search for which bridge goes to Solana at all. When you’re done, you still can’t say how much SOL will arrive, or when.
We call it the three-tab transfer. The comparing is left to you because coins on one network can’t simply move to another, and no single bridge handles every combination, let alone gives the best price on all of them.
Cherum Exchange puts that comparing on one screen. You choose what you hold and what you want, and several bridges (the services that carry money from one network to another) price the transfer side by side. Before your wallet even opens, you see the smallest amount that can arrive.
Bridges race, and the pick comes with a reason
Type 200 USDC on Base and choose SOL on Solana. When we checked on 25 September, three bridges priced it (Relay, Mayan and deBridge), and each row showed what would arrive, the all-in cost and the time.
The same check turned up a four-way race. For $200 of USDC from Arbitrum to SOL, Mayan offered 1.7104 SOL, Chainflip 1.7084 and Relay 1.7076, while the fourth and lowest came in about 1.4% under Mayan. If that happens to be the bridge you’d have opened first, you pay the difference.
The chosen row carries a short reason, such as “most received”, “same amount · faster” or “cheapest with gas counted”. When there’s no clear reason, it says nothing. We never pick a route when another row gives more and arrives sooner.
You can overrule the pick. Tap Relay’s row and it stays pinned as your choice. Each time the quotes refresh, Relay’s row is priced again and the total follows. If Relay has no route for this transfer right now, the screen says so and offers to unpin it.
The same screen takes a Bitcoin, TON, Tron or XRP address too. From USDC, you get that network’s own coin.
A wait you can plan around
We work out the time on each row from deliveries we’ve recorded on that route, including the slow ones. If the bridge itself promises longer, you see its number instead. A row reads “usually” with a range or, where deliveries swing a lot, “up to” a number of minutes.
On busy routes a typical delivery takes about half a minute. Where we have records, the upper end of the range covers at least nine deliveries in ten.
If a delivery runs past twice the usual, the window says so and tells you who’s holding the money: “Taking longer than usual. Your funds are with Mayan, not lost.”
What your wallet will ask
Before the wallet opens, the review shows the bridge, what you’ll receive and a line called “Minimum received”, the least that can arrive even if the price drifts. The first wallet prompt signs the order, minimum included. It’s good for this amount and the Cherum contract only, and it expires in minutes.
A second prompt sends it. The first time you use USDC on a network, there’s also a one-off request for permission to spend it.
If the price moves while the review is open, we check the minimum again. After a small move, you sign the new minimum. Past 1%, nothing gets signed and you get a fresh quote with the new terms instead.
If a bridge can’t deliver
After you sign, there are two possible endings. The money arrives at the address you entered, or it can go back to the wallet that paid and nowhere else. Every transfer names your wallet as the refund address, and we refuse to build one that names anyone else.
The refund itself follows the bridge’s own rules. On a deBridge route, the review tells you before you sign who can cancel a stuck order, and that the money then comes back to your wallet in full.
Where it falls short
- It won’t beat a single bridge on its home route. If the best path is a bridge you already use, like Across or Relay between Arbitrum and Base, going direct saves you our fee. When we checked on 24 September, our fee was the whole difference on those routes.
- Small amounts get fewer quotes. On 27 September, $5 from Base to Tron drew a single quote, and the list said “Only one route right now”.
- No memo or tag. TON and XRP transfers go out without a comment or destination tag, so send to a wallet you control rather than an exchange deposit address.
- Gas on arrival starts at about $1,000. Gas is the network’s own coin for paying fees. Move $1,000 or more to Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, BNB Chain or HyperEVM and you can arrive with a little of it. Below that, bring your own.
What it costs
The fee is 0.30% of what you move, 60 cents on 200 USDC, with a minimum fee on very small amounts. Network fees appear in the quote before you sign. There’s no account to open. You connect a wallet, and nothing moves until you sign.
Send the SOL
- Open app.cherum.io and connect your wallet.
- Under You pay, pick USDC on Base and type 200.
- Under You receive, pick SOL on Solana and paste the address into Recipient address. The field checks it against Solana’s format and tells you if it belongs to another network.
- Read the route list (on a phone, tap Change route). The chosen row says why. Tap another to pin it.
- Press Review swap, check Minimum received and the time, then sign and send.
From there the window names the bridge and the wait, then settles on “Delivered”.