Transaction times and fees

Fees

Squid currently charges no fees. The user will only pay gas fees on source and destination chains.
Squid plans on introducing the ability to charge fees via our SDK or API. Partners will be able to elect a % fee they would like to charge, and Squid will receive a portion of this fee. Contracts have been audited, but not deployed yet or integrated into our backend.

General message passing fees (swap on destination chain)

For transactions where there is a swap on the destination chain, fees are paid using the Native token on the source chain. This fee is paid to Axelar's relayers, who trustlessly pass messages and proofs across chains.
Axelar's relayers hold gas on every chain and provide a pricing API which Squid calls to get the expected gas price for a trade. For example if the destination trade will probably cost 50 cents of AVAX in gas, then Squid will instruct the user to pay Axelar's gas service 50 cents worth of Moonbeam, as per the pricing which Axelar gives our backend.

sendToken fees (bridge only, no swaps on destination)

If there are no swaps on the destination chain, Axelar's network takes a flat fee out of the bridging token. Prices can be seen here.

What happens in the case of a spike in gas fees

If the cost of gas on the destination chain doubles while your cross chain transaction is being approved by Axelar, there is a chance you will either need to wait for the gas prices to lower again, or you will need to add gas to your transaction. The best way of doing this is by going to AxelarScan and searching for your transaction, using the transaction hash from the source chain. AxelarScan will show a call to action to "Add gas" where you can login with Metamask, or the relevant wallet, and help get your transaction to the finish line.
Squid also plans to expose the ability to add gas to a transaction by wrapping the Axelar SDK.

Transaction times

Transaction times are dependent on the source chain finality
  • From Ethereum: 16 min
  • From Rollups: 22 min
  • From other chains: 30seconds-2min

Boost

Squid and Axelar have a feature which powers any cross-chain swap and interaction across chain in under 20 seconds.
Service providers are able to optimistically execute a transaction on the destination chain, by providing axlUSDC on dest. Later, the transaction through Squid checks proof of this execution on arrival at the destination chain and repay the market maker instead of executing a second time.