At Relay, we do our best to provide the best speed and prices. In order to do this, sometimes there are fee adjustments involved.
Deposits
When depositing, there are typically next to no fees involved. How are we able to provide instant, near free bridging? This is because we going from an L1 to an L2/L3 bridge the native or canonical bridge is also near instant.
What is a native bridge? A native bridge is the native bridge that bridges funds from chain to chain. It typically only accepts ETH. Deposits typically take minutes to hours. Withdrawals typically take around 7+ days to complete. Native bridges also take multiple steps to complete.
Withdrawals
When withdrawals, you might notice a fee between 1% to 5% if you want to send funds from an L2 or L3 to another chain. For example, if you want to bridge Shape WETH to Optimism ETH. The fee is there for a couple reasons:
The chain sets native withdrawal wait time of 7+ days; some chains can be 14 days but most at around 7 days.
There can be increased demand to withdrawal off a chain. Like when there is a reward to move funds to another chain.
We at Relay cannot control the native withdrawal wait time or increased demand. So, we use an increased fee primarily to make sure we have liquidity for more people to bridge. It's important to make sure we have the liquidity for everyone to exit without running out.
When you use Relay we are insuring that you can withdrawal instantly and inexpensively. To provide that experience, we add a small fee. You are paying for instantly receiving your funds; we at relay still must wait 7+ days for our funds to bridge while we give you funds instantly.
How do I reduce fees?
You can reduce fees by using the native bridging route. When using the native bridge you'll need to go from the L2 to L1. For example, if you want to withdrawal Shape ETH you'll need to withdraw funds to Ethereum ETH. If you want to go from an L2 to another L2, you cannot use native.
Please note if you decide to use the native bridge, your funds will typically take a little over 7 days to be deposited into your account.
Check out the diagram below to learn more:
Native Bridging
Relay Instant Bridging
Why is gas so high? Can you make it cheaper?
Gas is set by the blockchain itself. We at Relay cannot control the gas fee. The gas fee is the cost it takes to validate a transaction on the blockchain. Ethereum L1 chain will always be the most expensive on gas. L2 and L3 chains like Base or Apex chain will always have lower gas fees. They are optimized for increased amount of transactions.
You can always wait later to bridge to see if the network has decreased activity. Congestion of transactions will always increase the gas on any chain. There are times through out the day with less transactions and therefore cheaper gas.
Example of Ethereum Gas
Example of Base Gas
