TL;DR
You bridge USDC to a new chain, your balance shows up, and then nothing moves: you hold none of that chain's native token, so you cannot pay gas to do anything with it.
The fix is to specify what you want to receive on the destination. With the Across Swap API you set an output token and a minimum output amount, and that output can be the destination chain's native gas token.
You land with gas already in your wallet, so you can approve a swap, mint, or stake on the first try instead of hunting for a faucet or sending a second transfer.
Across fills most routes in roughly 2 seconds, across 20+ chains, with relayers fronting the funds and settlement handled by UMA's Optimistic Oracle.
Some chains attack the same problem from their own side: Plasma, a stablecoin-focused L1, runs a protocol-level paymaster so users can pay gas in USDT.
You bridge 200 USDC to a chain you have never used. The transfer confirms, your wallet shows the balance, and you go to swap a little of it for something else. The wallet asks you to approve the token first. You hit approve, and the transaction fails before it even broadcasts: insufficient funds for gas. You have 200 dollars sitting on the chain and you cannot touch any of it, because moving anything requires the chain's native token to pay for the transaction, and you have none of it.
This is the cold-start gas problem. It is the most common way a first bridge to a new chain goes wrong, and it is a chicken-and-egg trap: you need the native token to make any move, including the move that would get you the native token. It is also avoidable. The fix is to arrive already holding gas.
The trap is structural, not a mistake you made
Every transaction on an EVM chain costs gas, and gas is always paid in that chain's native token. Arbitrum and Base charge gas in ETH. Polygon charges in POL. A stablecoin balance, however large, cannot pay for its own transfer. The fee has to come from the native asset.
When you bridge a single asset like USDC to a chain where you hold nothing else, you end up exactly one token short of being able to do anything. You cannot swap, because the swap needs an approval and the approval needs gas. You cannot send the USDC back, because that send needs gas too. The funds are there and they are stuck, and the only escape routes are a second bridge transfer for a sliver of the native token, or a faucet, or asking someone to spot you a few cents of gas. All of that is friction you hit after you thought you were done.
Arrive with the native token by asking for it as your output
The cleaner answer is to receive the chain's gas token as part of the same crosschain transfer that moves your assets. Across is built around intents. You declare the outcome you want on the destination, and the protocol delivers it. That declaration is where the gas problem gets solved.
The Across Swap API takes an input token on the origin chain and an output token plus a minimum output amount on the destination chain. The recommended trade type is minOutput, which reads as "I want to receive at least this much on the destination," and the API works backward to compute the input required. The output token you name does not have to match what you put in. It can be the destination chain's native token.
Set the output token to the chain's native gas token, and that is what lands in your wallet. You arrive with spendable gas in hand, ready to transact, without a separate top-up step. The cold-start trap never gets a chance to form, because the first thing you receive on the new chain is the exact asset every later transaction needs.
A relayer advances the destination funds and fills the route in about 2 seconds on mainnet. The gas shows up about as fast as the rest of your balance. Settlement happens afterward through UMA's Optimistic Oracle, which reimburses the relayer once the deposit is verified. Across has run this model since 2021, across 20+ chains, with no user funds ever lost.
How to arrive with gas, step by step
The shape of the flow is the same whether you use the hosted app or call the API directly.
Pick your origin chain and the token you are sending, for example USDC on Arbitrum.
Pick your destination chain and set the output token to that chain's native gas token, for example ETH on Base.
Choose a minimum output amount. Enough native token to cover the handful of transactions you plan to make first is usually plenty.
Confirm the quote, which shows the expected fill time and fees before you sign.
Sign the deposit on the origin chain. The relayer delivers the native token on the destination in about 2 seconds, and you are ready to act.
If you want to split the arrival, you can run the transfer so part of your balance lands as the asset you are holding and part lands as gas. The point is that gas is something you decide to receive, not something you scramble for afterward.
Some chains solve it from their own side
Arriving with gas is the route-level fix, and it works on any chain Across supports. A few chains attack the same problem at the protocol level. Plasma, a stablecoin-focused L1, runs a built-in paymaster that lets users pay gas in USDT and makes simple USDT transfers zero-fee, so a stablecoin balance can move without the holder ever touching a separate gas token. That is a chain-side answer to the cold-start problem rather than a bridge-side one, and the two compose cleanly: you can still arrive on such a chain with its native token in hand if you want the full range of actions open to you.
What to do once you land
With gas in your wallet on arrival, the first transaction on the new chain is just a transaction. Approve a token and swap it. Deposit into a lending market. Mint, stake, or claim. Nothing is gated behind a missing fee asset, and you are not bouncing back to the origin chain to scrape together a few cents.
For developers, the same mechanism extends further. Across supports embedded crosschain actions through the MulticallHandler, so a transfer can land the native token and then run a follow-on action in the same flow, which means an app can onboard a user onto a new chain with gas and a first action handled together.
The cold-start gas problem only exists because people treat gas as something to sort out after they arrive. Name the native token as part of what you receive, and there is nothing left to sort out.
