Fees and gas allowance

April 18, 2026 · View on GitHub

Platform fee is 0%. The facilitator never takes a cut of the payment. The only deduction is a fixed gas allowance that reimburses the on-chain transactions the Facilitator submits on behalf of the buyer and seller.

For runtime quotes, call GET /bridge/fees — that endpoint is authoritative. The table below is the current static schedule and may lag.

How the allowance is deducted

The buyer signs an authorization for the gross amount. The facilitator pulls it, retains the gas allowance in USDC, burns/transfers the net, and the seller receives the net.

Buyer pays:      \$1.000000 USDC
Gas allowance:  -\$0.000500 (fixed per route)
Platform fee:   -\$0.000000 (0%)
                  ─────────
Seller receives: \$0.999500 USDC

In MPP charge mode, the buyer broadcasts the transaction directly and pays the chain's own fee — nothing is deducted on the relay.

Current schedule

Values are in USDC base units (6 decimals on EVM / Solana, 7 on Stellar) and converted to USDC for readability.

RouteGas allowanceSeller receives on $1.00
Base → Stellar$0.000500$0.999500
Stellar → Base$0.000500$0.999500
Base → Solana$0.000800$0.999200
Solana → Base$0.001200$0.998800
Solana → Stellar$0.000800$0.999200
Stellar → Solana$0.000800$0.999200
Base → Base$0.000400$0.999600
Solana → Solana$0.000800$0.999200
Stellar → Stellar$0.000006$0.999994

Routes not listed inherit the cost of the source chain for same-chain settlement, or are resolved at runtime by GET /bridge/fees for cross-chain pairs.

Why fixed, not estimated

  • No gas oracle. Oracles add a dependency and a failure mode.
  • Predictable math. The buyer and seller can compute the net amount locally from the schedule.
  • The facilitator takes the variance. If actual gas is lower than the allowance, the difference stays in the Facilitator wallet. If higher, the Facilitator absorbs it. Allowances are chosen to be slightly above median gas so the Facilitator is rarely out of pocket at scale.

CCTP itself charges nothing — burn/mint is 1:1 native USDC.

Platform fee (configurable, currently 0)

The relay reads PLATFORM_FEE_BPS (basis points) at startup. Default 0. Increase only if the 402md business model changes — see product philosophy for why the default is zero.

When non-zero, the platform fee is computed in base units as (amount * PLATFORM_FEE_BPS) / 10000 and is deducted in addition to the gas allowance.

Cost comparison with percentage-based rails

GET /bazaar/cost-comparison?buyerNetwork=…&sellerNetwork=… returns a three-tier comparison ($100K, $1M, $100M USDC) against a baseline of 1% + $0.10. At high-value tiers the flat allowance is orders of magnitude cheaper.

Amount402md (Base → Stellar)1% + $0.10 baselineSavings
$100,000$0.000500$1,000.10~$1,000
$1,000,000$0.000500$10,000.10~$10,000
$100,000,000$0.000500$1,000,000.10~$1,000,000

Same allowance for $1 or $100M — ideal for machine-to-machine micropayments and for large B2B settlements alike.

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