What are Bridge and Octus Bridge

About the Bridge

Octus Bridge is a decentralized cross-chain bridge between the Everscale, Ethereum, Fantom, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche and Milkomeda blockchains. In addition, Solana and TRON should be added in 2022.

The advantages of this bridge are speed, decentralization, and an absence of fees.

Decentralization means that Octus Bridge is a network between networks with independent validators. Anyone can become the bridge’s validator; the minimum stake size is 100,000 BRIDGE tokens.

What’s more, the bridge doesn’t charge a fee for transactions, and a transaction from one blockchain to another takes about 10 minutes. This is fairly quick compared to other blockchains.

In this article, you’ll learn how to transfer assets from Binance Smart Chain to Everscale and back, as well as how to refund most of the network's fee when withdrawing assets from Everscale.

You’ll need the MetaMask browser extension to work with EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) networks, and Ever Wallet to work with Everscale.

MetaMask

You can download MetaMask from metamask.io.

1. When you click "Create a wallet," on the next page you can refuse to provide your personal data. 
2. You should then create a local password that will work only on the device you are using. Please save your seed phrase in a safe place. Read more about how to store seed phrases in our article. 
3. Next, you need to put the words in the correct order to make sure that you have correctly saved the seed phrase.
4. By default, MetaMask works in the Ethereum network. To switch to another EVM network, click on the network’s name at the top of the extension and enter the requested data to add the network.
5. To display a new token, click the "Import tokens” button and insert the root contract’s address.

Ever Wallet

MetaMask supports EVM-compatible blockchains, but Everscale is different, so you need a browser extension for it –Ever Wallet. There are instructions for creating a new account in Ever Wallet.

Save your seed phrase when creating a wallet. We have published all the options for storing the seed phrase in detail in an article. You should then create a local password and an account for the seed phrase. You can find the information about the types of accounts in our article.

How to use the Bridge?

Imagine you don't even have any EVER to pay the fee and only have some assets in another network. What should you do?

1. Go to octusbridge.io and connect both wallets.
2. Then, choose the blockchain that you’re going to transfer assets from and the blockchain that you’re going to transfer them to. Please note that even if you transfer assets, for example, from Ethereum to Polygon – you need to connect the Ever Wallet, because the assets pass through the Everscale blockchain.
3. Next, you should select the token, specify the number of tokens, and make your transaction.
4. If your Ever Wallet hasn't been deployed and there are no tokens, the lending system turns on automatically. This means that all fees in the Everscale network will be charged for the tokens being sent.
5. On the next page, you need to specify whether to allow the bridge contracts with MetaMask to withdraw only a certain number of tokens or an unlimited number. Permission for unlimited withdrawals is less secure, but the fee for this permission only needs to be paid once. If you allow only a certain number of tokens to be debited, then the next time you will need to pay gas for the transaction again.
6. Once the inter-network transfer window is opened, click "Transfer” and confirm the transaction in MetaMask.
7. The transaction will be completed within 10 minutes.
8. To see how much USDT is in your wallet, you need to enable the display via the "Select assets" button. Note that you need to deploy the wallet to be able to send tokens.

Now let’s get the assets back. Also, let’s see how we can get most of the fee refunded.

1. You simply need to make the same steps on the Octus Bridge in reverse order.
   1. First, select the network, the token, and the number of tokens.
   2. Then, click "Prepare”.
   3. Sign the transaction in the Everscale network.
   4. Please note that 6 EVER will be debited, most of which we will be able to refund.
2. After the relays (nodes which receive / forward messages) have verified the transaction, click "Release” and confirm the transaction in MetaMask.
3. Done. We have transferred USDT from Everscale to Binance Smart Chain.

Now we are ready to get the fee back to Everscale. 

1. We will need the address of the event. You can find it in the first line on the transaction page. If you close the transaction page, you can find your transaction in your transaction history.
2. Now we have to transfer 0.5 EVER from our wallet to the event address. Note that you need to specify the following comment in the transaction: te6ccgEBAQEABgAACAVriBQ=
3. After that, within a couple of minutes, more than 5 EVER will be refunded. Don't forget to get the fees refunded, but remember that you only need to do this when you send assets from Everscale to another network. When you top up assets in EVER, the fee is refunded automatically.