Cost-efficient Unwrapping of Serum (ERC-20) to Serum (SPL)
With Bitcoin breaking its previous all-time high ($64K+ as of today - 10/20/21) there's tremendous exuberance in the crypto space. Unfortunately we continue to be hassled with high gas fees on ETH - even simplistic smart contracts or token transfers are high cost affairs. The situation is tolerated and the hall pass extended with ETH 2.0 PoS on the horizon, but other L1 protocols are definitely gaining attention, notably Solana.
Which brings me to the topic of my posting - I had a few Ethereum ERC-20 wrapped Serum which I wanted to unwrap and utilize natively on Solana SPL. Selling for a stable coin like USDC or USDT followed by one or more transfers and repurchase is a route, but inefficient and also results in a taxable event within the US. Googling was fruitless, yielding ideas like connecting Sollet to Metamask and paying high gas for the privilege.
It then hit me - I recalled that some exchanges provide dynamic wrapping on withdraw, where the destination chain can be specified. Quick, value efficient, and non-taxable maneuver.
The workflow is as follows:
- Deposit into your exchange wallet via ERC-20 (I won't name names here as I don't promote specific crypto exchanges)
- Await confirmation
- Initiate a withdrawal
- Select Solana/SPL as the target chain
- Enter target address
- Execute withdrawal
Hopefully this will save some you out there time and tokens!
