Bridging ETH to Cosmos via Gravity

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I bridged some ETH to the @cosmos ecosystem via the @gravity_bridge to learn about it and get some experience. I also swapped it to ATOM and staked it. Below a thread of what I learned and the steps I took for you to replicate 🧵👇

First you need to decide on what bridge you want to use. There are some EVM compatible Cosmos chains such as @cronos_chain and @EvmosOrg. This makes it easy for existing EVM-based bridging providers such as @MultichainOrg or @ConnextNetwork to integrate them.

However, I wanted to get the full Cosmos experience and decided to use the @gravity_bridge. The gravity bridge is its own fully decentralized, trustless blockchain in the cosmos ecosystem and acts as neutral ethereum to cosmos bridge. Now let's get started!

The first step you have to take is wrap your ETH into WETH using any AMM like @Uniswap. Then move to spacestation.zone/ to access the gravity bridge.

You need to connect your Ethereum wallet and any Cosmos wallet like @keplrwallet. After that you can already use the gravity bridge by specifing an amonut and confirming two transactions.

You might have to wait a couple of minutes for the briding operation to complete. If everything worked out, you should now see your WETH in your Keplr wallet. Make sure you are on the Gravity Bridge network.

Now that you have your WETH in the Cosmos ecosystem, you probably want to do something with it. Let's try to swap it to ATOM and stake it!

First you have to find an AMM that actually offers a pair for gravity bridged WETH. Remember: There are many bridges so not every WETH is the same! It depends on what bridge was used. That's why our WETH as a postfix: WETH.grv.

For example, @osmosiszone only supports @axelarcore bridged WETH so that won't work. One AMM that does have gravity bridged WETH pairs is @CrescentHub.

As typical for the Cosmos ecosystem, Crescent lives on its own blockchain. We can again use the gravity bridge to move it there. Under the hood this is just an IBC transfer. Fortunately, you don't need to pay a TX fee for this.

Quick disclaimer: When bridging, it is always advisable to have the native token of the destination chain so that you can pay the fees for follow up transactions. So usually you might want to bridge that token first! Continue...

On Crescent we do have to pay TX fees so we need the native token which is CRE. You can get some free CRE from the faucet: faucet.crescent.network/ Once you got it, navigate to app.crescent.network/swap to acces the swap interface.

Unfortunately, there is no direct ATOM - WETH.grv pair so we have to take a detour and first swap it to bCRE. What is $bCRE you ask? Read more about it here: docs.crescent.network/introduction/crescent-dex/coin-pair TL;DR: It's a token specific to the Crescent AMM implementation.

Now you can finally swap your bCRE for ATOM 🎉 If you want to stake your ATOM however, you still need to move it to the CosmosHub via an IBC transfer. You cannot stake it on Crescent. Let's see how we can do that 👇

In your Keplr settings, enable "Show Advanced IBC Transfers". Then click on transfer and add the CosmosHub as a new IBC Transfer Channel (see image). You can find the correct Channel ID for Crescent and all other chains here: mintscan.io/cosmos/relayers

Now you only have to follow the steps in your Keplr wallet and send the ATOM to your CosmosHub address. After the transfer has completed, you can again use the Keplr wallet UI to stake your ATOM by delegating it to a validator of your choice!

And that's it! 🎉 You moved ETH via the @gravity_bridge to the @cosmos ecosystem, swapped it for ATOM and staked it on the @cosmoshub. Congrats! If you enjoyed this little walk through, I would appreciate a like or retweet! 😊

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: typefully.com/nickstracke_/uyAXvED