I read about Optimism Bridge sometime ago around the LeoFinance space and been wanting to give it a try but then I have been putting it off for weeks already. Today, I finally decided to get my hands on it, no more procrastination.
I found the bridge a very user-friendly especially for a beginner like yours truly. The UI is very simple and easy to navigate.
Before making my first transaction, I first checked which other protocols it supports for the withdrawal and I was glad to see that aside from its own bridge, it supports other bridges too like Hop Protocol, Synapse, Across cBridge by Celer and Connext. At least I was a bit familiar with the Hop Exchange having used it before so I didn't hesitate to do the bridge transaction.
My first transaction was bridging ETH from the mainnet to Optimism. And I was glad that the fees were at least very minimal. I have to actually wait for a while and check the rates before confirming the transaction. The initial fees on my first try was 0.0034ETH (over $6 at the current ETH price) and with an estimated processing time of 20 minutes. But I waited for some moments for the network to get less busy and voila, the fees dropped to 0.00079 ($1.55) with an estimated transfer time of 1 to 2 minutes. Of course I didn't hesitate and went in fast.
That was a fascinating learn for me today to be honest. I always feel unhappy with the ETH gas fees but today, it felt just okay.
I can say that I had the smoothest bridging experience through Optimism and won't hesitate to use it again.
Initially, I didn't have any plan on what I'm going to do with that ETH I just bridged on Optimism but I thought I would take half of it to Polygon and perhaps do something good out of it. The PolyCUB-WETH LP's APR is looking juicy at 94+%. But oh! The market is dwindling down even more!
And for those who didn't catch the latest update, the pSPS-PolyCUB LP went live on Polycub last night (my timezone) and the early players are now enjoying an APR of 107+%.
I'm curious, what other bridge applications have you used that are good and has minimal fees? Hope to read them on the comment box below. Thank you :)
Photos are screen captures from Optimism and Polycub. No copyright infringement intended. 190522/11:15ph
