Stellar-Polygon Bridge

While blockchains brought about a revolutionary way of creating decentralized databases with tokens that can be more secure than in any traditional monetary system, a major problem is that each blockchain is typically completely isolated, with no way to communicate with other chains.

In today’s world, where there are many different blockchains with different use cases - some optimizing for institutional use, others for decentralization or speed - it’s become necessary to bridge this gap and allow users of one chain to transfer tokens or data to another chain, and that’s where our token bridge comes in.

What the bridge allows is for anyone that holds XLM tokens on their native Stellar blockchain to bring them over to Polygon in the form of wrapped XLM (wXLM), where they can be traded and used in Polygon’s rapidly growing DeFi ecosystem. These wXLM tokens represent XLM tokens at a 1:1 ratio and can always be redeemed back for native XLM through our bridge.

Simply put, the Stellar - Polygon token bridge allows you to swap your XLM on Stellar for wXLM on Polygon, where you can trade it on decentralized exchanges or use it in DeFi protocols, just like any other token on Polygon. You can also swap wXLM back to Stellar XLM at any point, and the transactions in either direction only take up to a minute to complete (depending on network congestion).

Because both Stellar and Polygon have very low transaction fees, the fee for swapping between XLM and wXLM is only 5 XLM, regardless of transaction size. The fee is used to cover the gas fees, as well as the independent Chainlink node that monitors the swap wallets to make the process as secure as possible.

Stellar and Polygon are two extremely popular ecosystems, but they have very different use cases, with Stellar focusing on cross-border value transfers and institutional adoption, while Polygon is leading the way in scaling EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine)-based DeFi. With our bridge, you don’t have to choose between holding XLM and taking part in Polygon’s rapidly growing DeFi ecosystem: you can swap your XLM for wXLM on Polygon and back again for XLM on Stellar at any point and in a matter of seconds!

The bridge utilizes a variety of security mechanisms to make sure that your funds are always safe, such as different nodes that transmit the transaction data from one chain to the other and Chainlink’s Proof of Reserve feature, which constantly tracks the token balances on the swap wallets with an independent node. Furthermore, the bridge has been audited by Proxima, and you can find their audit report here.

Nevertheless, do keep in mind that DeFi in general is an emerging field, and this brings higher rewards as well as higher risk. While we’re committed to providing the highest level of security that is currently achievable, NewsCrypto is not responsible for any losses incurred in connection with smart contract bugs or third-party software.

We’ll create a detailed video tutorial soon after the bridge is live on mainnet, and we’ll add a link to it here. Overall, though, the process is very simple: enter the amount of XLM or wXLM that you want to swap, copy and paste your destination wallet address, and follow the directions shown on the screen to complete the swap.

Just make sure that your Ethereum-compatible wallet is switched to the Polygon network in order to use the bridge. To configure the Polygon network in your MetaMask, refer to the tutorial here. Then, add the wXLM tokens to your wallet by clicking on “Add Token” and pasting the following contract address: 0xf854225caaef5a722884a68a23215dfa5386751e.