When you transfer assets to a centralized exchange you send it to an address provided by that centralized exchange. By default, this is an Ethereum mainnet address and the exchange does not look at this address in Optimism. As a result, assets transferred directly to a centralized exchange that doesn't support Optimism are irrevocably lost, unless the exchange can help you. Don't do it.
Verify that the centralized exchange is supporting Optimism and that it looks at the Optimism account before you send it anything.
There are two ways to withdraw assets from Optimism:
- The Optimism Gateway. We have a list of supported ERC-20 tokens, but you are not limited to them, you can select any token that exists on both Ethereum mainnet and Optimism mainnet.
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Third-party bridges. Those bridges are usually cheaper and faster than our main gateway, but have a more limited list of supported tokens. When the bridge gets low on the asset in the Ethereum mainnet, it sends all of those tokens from Optimism to Ethereum in one gateway transaction. This way: The way this works is that the bridge loans you the relevant asset on the Ethereum mainnet.
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You don't have to wait the normal challenge verification period. The bridge takes the risk that the block with the transaction (or a prior one) is invalid. Bridges run their own verification so it's not a big risk for them.
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The cost of the merkle proof required for a withdrawal transaction is spread over a larger pool of tokens, so the relative cost of the withdrawal is smaller.
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Withdrawals using the Optimism Gateway
Note that this is not the preferred solution. The Optimism Gateway is trustless, which requires it to be slow and expensive. In almost all cases you would be better served by using a third party bridge.
Withdrawals through the Optimism Gateway is a multi-step process:
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Initiate the withdrawal on Optimism
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Wait the verification challenge period, which is seven days from the time the transaction is published on Ethereum. Normally transactions are published on Ethereum quickly, but in the case of an outage it might take longer, in which case it will take longer until you can claim your withdrawal.
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Claim the withdrawal
Initiate the withdrawal
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Click Connect Wallet, select your wallet type, and approve the connection in the wallet itself if asked.
- Select Withdraw.
- Select Using the official bridge.
- Select the asset and amount.
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Click Withdraw.
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Click the check boxes and accept the withdrawal:
- Approve again in the wallet.
While waiting the verification challenge period
There are several ways to see if your withdrawal is ready to be claimed:
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Browse to the gateway and click your address in the top right corner. Then click Withdrawals. This shows you the list of recent withdrawals and their status:
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Search the transaction hash on the Etherscan message relayer. If the withdrawal is ready to be claimed, the Execute button will be enabled.
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You can search for the transaction hash on Optimistic Etherscan. Click the L1 State Root Submission Tx to see when the transaction was written to Ethereum.
Claim the withdrawal
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Once the challenge period is over, the status in the gateway changes to Claim.
- Click Claim.
- Confirm the withdrawal in the wallet.
- Wait until the withdrawal completes.
Note: If there is a problem with the bridge you can also use the Etherscan Message Relayer as a backup mechanism to claim withdrawals.