TL;DR
Across bridges to Base from 23+ chains with under-2-second fills on mainnet.
You pick the origin chain and token and confirm one transaction; relayers front the funds on Base so you skip the finality wait.
USDC arrives as native USDC through Circle's CCTP V2, with single transfers supported up to $10 million.
Across has processed billions in volume since 2021 with zero protocol-level exploits, secured by UMA's Optimistic Oracle and, in V4, Succinct SP1 ZK proofs.
Every asset on Base started somewhere else. Base launched without a token sale and without inflationary emissions, so almost all the capital on it arrived by bridge: from Ethereum mainnet, from another L2, from a centralized exchange, from Solana. The first question most people have about Base is not what to do once they get there. It is how to get there at all. To bridge to Base you move a token from the chain you are on now onto Base, and the mechanism you pick decides whether that takes two seconds or twenty minutes.
Across does it in about two.
Across Pays You on Base Before the Origin Chain Finalizes
Most bridges make you wait for the origin chain to finalize before anything appears on the destination. That wait is where the minutes go. Across runs the order backward. A network of relayers competes to front your funds on Base the moment your deposit is seen, then reclaims that capital later through a batched settlement bundle. You get paid on Base first; the relayer eats the finality risk and settles up behind you.
The fill takes under two seconds on mainnet.
That is what intent-based bridging means in practice. You sign for an outcome, native USDC on Base, and the relayer network delivers it. You never choose a settlement path. Across reads the route and does that part.
It Bridges to Base From 23+ Chains, and the Flow Never Changes
Across supports 23+ chains. Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Solana, and most major L2s can all send funds to Base, and the steps are identical wherever you start.
Go to across.to/base-bridge, connect your wallet, and pick the chain you are coming from. Choose your input token and the token you want on Base. Across reads the route and selects the settlement path for you: a direct bridge when the token exists on both ends, or a swap-and-bridge when you are converting along the way. Confirm one transaction. The funds land on Base in seconds.
Move USDC and what arrives is native USDC, not a wrapped placeholder.
USDC Is the Asset Almost Everyone Moves to Base
USDC is the unit of account for most of Base's DeFi, so it is the token most people bridge over. Aerodrome, the largest DEX on Base, prices much of its deepest liquidity in USDC. Whether you are bridging to trade or just to hold dollars on Base, native USDC is what you want on the other side.
The path depends on size. Smaller transfers fill through the relayer network in under two seconds. Larger ones route through Circle's CCTP V2, which burns USDC on your origin chain and mints fresh native USDC on Base, with single transfers supported up to $10 million. The interface is the same either way; Across picks the mechanism based on amount and route.
The Fee Is Quoted Up Front, and the Math Is in the Batching
Across charges a relayer fee covering the capital and gas the relayer spends filling your transfer, plus a small LP fee. Both scale with size and route, and both are shown before you confirm. There is no protocol markup hidden in the exchange rate. Some routes are sponsored and cost nothing at all, with Across or a partner covering the fee.
The reason the fees stay low is structural. Across batches every fill into one settlement bundle roughly every 90 minutes, so the gas cost of settling is amortized across everyone in the bundle rather than billed per transfer.
One Honest Challenger Is Enough to Stop a Bad Settlement
Across has processed billions in volume since 2021 and has never been exploited at the protocol level. Not once.
That record comes out of the security model. Settlement bundles are verified through UMA's Optimistic Oracle: a bundle is accepted unless someone disputes it, and the proposer stakes capital that gets slashed if the bundle is invalid. A single honest challenger is enough to reject a bad bundle. Across V4 layers zero-knowledge proofs from Succinct's SP1 on top, so settlement now carries cryptographic verification alongside the economic bond.
For a bridge, the security record is the product. A two-second transfer that lands in a compromised contract is not fast. It is gone.
Base was built to be the chain that capital arrives on. Across is how it gets there before you have finished reading the confirmation screen.