Destination gas is the native fee balance your wallet needs to use the asset after it arrives. A plain ETH transfer uses 21,000 gas, but a contract call such as a token swap or approval needs more; receiving a token does not automatically give your wallet the currency to pay that fee.
Why can the swap finish while your wallet is still stuck?
A bridged swap has distinct costs and execution stages: your source transaction pays fees on the source chain, while the destination chain charges for its own transactions. A route may arrange execution of the destination swap, yet leave the resulting token in your address without native gas for whatever you want to do next.
If your pending order is a bridged swap, a cross-chain relay bridge can route and swap assets across networks in one flow; check the destination transaction before assuming the transfer failed. The source transaction can be confirmed while a later route stage is pending, and a completed destination swap can still leave you unable to transfer or trade the received token.
On Ethereum, the fee is paid in ETH; on Arbitrum One, it is also paid in ETH. Arbitrum Nitro accounts for both L2 execution and the transaction’s share of data posted to Ethereum, so an estimate based only on the contract’s execution can understate the fee. Solana transactions instead pay in SOL, even when the token being transferred is USDC.
What should you check before retrying?
Start with the transaction record on the destination chain, using the destination address and any destination transaction hash shown in the route’s status. That separates a transfer that has not reached its destination from one that arrived but failed during a follow-up action.
- No destination transaction yet: the route may still be waiting for source confirmation, liquidity, or destination execution. Sending another transfer can create a duplicate.
- Destination swap succeeded: check the wallet’s native-token balance as well as the token balance. A token balance alone cannot pay an EVM network’s gas fee or Solana’s transaction fee.
- Destination transaction reverted: read the failure reason. An insufficient-balance error differs from a contract revert; a revert after inclusion can still consume fees.
For an EIP-1559 transaction, the sender needs enough ETH for the value plus the gas limit multiplied by maxFeePerGas at submission. The actual charge uses the gas consumed and the applicable base fee and priority fee; unused gas and the unused fee cap are not charged. A fee cap below the base fee can keep a transaction from being included, while a gas limit too low for the call can make execution fail.
How much gas should you add, and what if it failed?
Estimate the exact next action in your wallet: a token transfer, approval, and swap have different execution costs. For example, Ethereum’s 21,000-gas figure applies to a basic ETH transfer, not an ERC-20 transfer or swap; on Arbitrum, the wallet’s estimate must also account for the L1 data charge. I would fund a modest buffer above the wallet’s current estimate, then check the fee currency and balance again before signing.
On Solana, the Solana documentation specifies a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, with an optional priority fee calculated from the requested compute-unit limit and price. Creating a token account may also require rent-exempt SOL; the required amount depends on the account’s size. A failed Solana transaction can still charge its fee, so check the fee payer’s SOL balance before retrying.
If a destination transaction failed for insufficient gas, first confirm whether the bridge’s destination swap completed and where the received asset sits. Then add the chain’s fee token to the same wallet address and retry only the failed on-chain action; if no destination transaction exists, use the route’s status information to determine whether execution is still pending.