Polkadot Basein one signature

Polkadot to Base: the Snowbridge fee, paid in $DOT on Asset Hub, plus a small Asset Hub transaction fee. The exact amount is shown before you sign; it follows Ethereum gas prices and is usually a few $DOT. Wormhole charges nothing extra. The last step on Base needs a little ETH on Base, less than a cent. Base to Polkadot: a small Base fee, Ethereum gas for completing the transfer and sending it home, and the Snowbridge fee in ETH, each shown before you sign.

Polkadot to Base usually takes 30 to 60 minutes: about 10 to 40 minutes for Snowbridge to reach Ethereum, then about 15 to 20 minutes for Wormhole's guardians to confirm, then one Base transaction to finish. Base to Polkadot is similar, plus the time you take between steps. Snowbridge can occasionally take longer, for example after a Polkadot upgrade; transfers wait and then complete.

Nothing is lost while it waits. Every step is recorded on chain and can be completed later. On this page, the tracker shows where your transfer is. Once Wormhole confirms it, press Finish on Base to complete it for a tiny Base fee. There is no deadline. If the bridge ever refused a transfer, the route contract sends the $WUD to your own address on Ethereum instead.

Snowbridge V2 can deliver tokens and call a contract in the same message. Your $WUD lands at the route contract on Ethereum and is passed into the Wormhole bridge in that same transaction, so there is nothing to sign on Ethereum. The final step on Base is one small Base transaction.

For Polkadot to Base the bridge fee is paid in $DOT. You need a little ETH on Base, less than a cent, to finish the last step yourself. The first time a Polkadot account bridges to Base, it also needs an agent contract on Ethereum, created once with MetaMask for a little ETH. Base to Polkadot needs a little ETH on Base and on Ethereum.

There is no bridge minimum. Amounts are rounded down to 8 decimals, which the Wormhole bridge requires. Because the fees are fixed per transfer, very small amounts are not worth bridging. Moving $WUD from Hydration to Asset Hub needs at least 20,000 $WUD.

That Etherscan page is for $WUD on Ethereum, the token Snowbridge creates whenever anyone brings $WUD from Polkadot to Ethereum. Its total counts all of it: the $WUD locked in the bridge that backs Base, plus $WUD other people hold in their own Ethereum wallets. The number that matters for Base is the bridge's balance, shown when you open the Verify link, and it always matches the $WUD on Base. The question mark next to the name only means no token profile has been filled in on Etherscan yet.

On Uniswap, 1% is the standard fee tier for newer and more volatile tokens, and it is paid to the people who provide liquidity. Polkadot works differently: Asset Hub pools charge a fixed 0.3%, and Hydration's Omnipool uses a dynamic fee that rises and falls with trading activity. On every pool, the size of the pool often matters more than the fee, because a large trade in a small pool moves the price. The more liquidity the Base pool holds, the cheaper trading gets for everyone.

On Polkadot: Talisman, SubWallet, Nova Wallet and Polkadot.js, including Ledger accounts through them. On Base and Ethereum: MetaMask or any wallet that works in your browser. You can send to any Base address you control, but never to an exchange deposit address.

No. The team holds no admin keys. Base $WUD is renounced and its only minter is the bridge. Native $WUD has had no admin since April 2024. The bridge keys belong to Wormhole's governance contracts.

Wormhole's guardians, acting together through governance (13 of 19), can pause or upgrade the bridge, as they can for every Wormhole token. That lets a hack be stopped or a bug be fixed. They cannot move $WUD outside the bridge's rules without a governance action signed by a supermajority of guardians.