Whenever you use SideShift in AQUA, you will only pay a 1% service fee, plus the respective network fees. This is where it can get a bit complicated, so let’s break down the difference between sending and receiving.
Sending:
When sending to altcoin chain addresses, a 1% service fee will be deducted from your transaction, along with the tiny Liquid Network fee in AQUA. However, you must also pay the altcoin’s network fees because you are sending funds to an altcoin chain.
For example, if you send $100 in USDt over the Ethereum network, a 1% service fee will be applied ($1), around $0.11 in Liquid fees, and $10 in Ethereum gas fees, resulting in $11.11 worth of fees.
Receiving:
When you receive USDt through the Tron or Ethereum networks, either from another wallet or exchange, you or the other party will need to pay for the network fee of that send transaction. Once SideShift receives the funds the 1% service fee will be applied to the total amount received, and a new altcoin network fee will be charged because SideShift has to sweep from the deposit address to their main wallet. There are no Liquid Network fees involved.
For example, if you receive $100 in USDt over the Tron network, the sender (someone else or an exchange) would pay a $2 gas fee on Tron for that transaction, and assuming you received the full $100 USDt, a 1% service fee will be applied ($1) and $2 in Tron gas fees would be charged by SideShift to sweep that incoming transaction from the deposit address.
Remember, in AQUA you only hold Liquid USDt, so any time you make a transaction involving altcoin networks, your funds are being converted to or from Liquid USDt. As there are altcoin network fees involved, it’s best to do larger amounts per transaction since you’ll always have a base network fee to pay.
Using USDt natively on Liquid will ALWAYS be cheaper as fees are ˜$0.11-0.19 or 200-450 sats. Also, with the upcoming Operation Tsunami optimizations on Liquid network, the fees on Liquid will be even lower!
