PancakeSwap Opens New Stargate Bridge - But Why Only One Way?

Introducing: PancakeSwap Bridge

The year so far has been marked by multi-chain expansions by several Decentralized Exchanges (DEX). Leading BNB Chain DEX PancakeSwap is joining the party.

On Aug. 23, the exchange announced the launch of PancakeSwap Bridge, its native asset cross-chain bridge that is powered by Stargate Finance.

Through the PancakeSwap Bridge, in a single transaction, users can bridge in native assets from other chains to BNB Chain. According to the blog post, the users can bridge assets including USDT, USDC, BUSD, and STG from the Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Fantom blockchains.

Interestingly, at the moment, the PancakeSwap Bridge only functions in one direction. It only supports one-way bridging from the supported chains to BNB Chain, not vice versa. According to the blog post, the reason for this design by PancakeSwap is for the DEX to grow the ecosystem on BNB Chain. This has, however, elicited some criticisms from Twitter users who think a one-way bridge defeats the entire purpose of blockchain bridges.

Each bridge transaction executed using PancakeSwap Bridge carries a 0.1% fee, broken out as follows: