A cross-chain swap moves your tokens from one blockchain to another — for example, USDC on Ethereum becoming USDC on Polygon. Here's how to do it safely.
Each blockchain (Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, etc.) is its own separate network. They don't talk to each other directly. To move value between them you need a bridge — a smart contract on chain A that locks your tokens, then releases equivalent tokens on chain B.
Bridges are the most exploited part of crypto. Over $2.5 billion has been stolen from bridge hacks (Ronin, Wormhole v1, Nomad, Multichain, Harmony Horizon). That's why Riverforge only uses bridges that score 90/100 or higher on safety.
Our AI router picks from a small whitelist of safe bridges:
For pure swaps within one chain, we use Uniswap v3 on EVM chains and Raydium on Solana.
On the dashboard's swap card:
From: Click the token selector. You'll only see tokens you actually own — the dropdown reads your connected wallet's balances live. Pick what you want to spend.
To: Pick the destination token. This can be:
Type how much you want to swap. The dashboard shows your wallet balance for that token, so you know the maximum.
Click Find Routes. The AI takes a few seconds to analyze options and returns the safest path. You'll see:
Click Execute Swap. Your wallet pops up with a transaction to sign. Always read what you're signing — the wallet shows the contract you're interacting with and the amount being moved.
For some swaps you may need to sign multiple transactions:
After you approve, the transaction goes on-chain. Riverforge tracks the status in real time.
Cross-chain swaps take longer than same-chain swaps because the destination chain has to wait for the source chain transaction to be confirmed and the bridge message to be relayed. Typical times:
The dashboard updates automatically when your destination tokens arrive.
Your tokens are now on the destination chain. You can swap them, hold them, or use them in any DeFi app on that chain.