Being relatively new to crypto I struggle with how to move coins from place to place, especially cross chains. Is there an app or something where you can enter a “from” and “to” and it will tell you which dApps, protocols, wallets etc are to be used?
Or even something that just does it for you?
For example, I have exchange, metamask, trustwallet, station wallets. I want to take USD at my exchange account and deposit UST for anchor. My current exchange doesn’t support UST.
I’m not looking for that specific answer, I’m actually wondering what tools exist to help?
Thanks
This is a bit of a complicated question as it highly depends on the combination of tokens/exchanges/chains. Essentially you need to:
1. figure out an exchange that supports both your tokens (e.g., uniswap)
2. move all your assets to a network that supports the exchange you found in step 1 (e.g., polygon), it’s possible that this will require you to first exchange your assets into an intermediary token (e.g., ETH)
3. perform the exchange
4. optional: move assets back by reversing step 2 if the bridge supports your target token
The moving in between chains is doing through something called a “bridge”. Bridges only support a handful of tokens to be bridged, hence the necessity to go to an intermediary token. Various different bridges exist, some with questionable security. My recommendation here would be to always check the official website of the chain first to see if they recommend any. E.g, polygon has an official ethereum => polygon bridge on their website.
As you can see it can get quite complicated … and costly. This is why you probably want to stick to 1 or 2 chains that support a wide variety of tokens and exchanges.
Allbridge is your friend