What Is Bridge?

A bridge is a smart contract protocol that locks your tokens on one blockchain and mints wrapped versions on another, letting you move assets across different chains. For airdrop farmers, bridges are critical infrastructure—they let you deploy capital across Layer 2 networks, sidechains, and alternative blockchains to maximize eligibility and farming opportunities.

Different bridges serve different purposes in your farming strategy. Arbitrum's official bridge lets you move ETH and tokens between Ethereum and Arbitrum cheaply, letting you farm Arbitrum airdrops without paying Ethereum gas fees. Stargate Finance bridges tokens across chains using liquidity pools instead of wrapped assets, making it useful for farms that require specific token balances on specific chains. Hyperliquid Bridge lets you move USDC to perpetual futures chains for trading airdrops. Jito's bridge connects Solana to other ecosystems for MEV farming.

Why Bridges Matter for Airdrop Farming

Bridges directly impact your airdrop profitability. If you need to farm on Arbitrum but only have capital on Ethereum, a bridge gets your tokens there. Some protocols specifically reward bridge activity—they track cross-chain transactions and include bridge users in eligibility criteria for retroactive airdrops. Arbitrum famously airdropped to early Arbitrum bridge users. Farming multiple bridges (moving assets across different protocols like Stargate, Across, or Connext) can signal protocol adoption and increase your odds of inclusion in future snapshots.

Bridge Risks

Bridges are attack vectors. Exploited bridges have lost user funds permanently (Nomad lost $190M, Poly Network lost $611M). Use only established bridges with multi-sig security and insurance coverage. Never bridge your entire stack through an untested protocol. Wrapped tokens from unvetted bridges may not be accepted by farming protocols, leaving you stuck. Always verify the bridge is officially recognized by the destination chain's ecosystem.