Bridge transfer stuck what to do when your claim never arrives

02 September 2026

You sent tokens across a bridge. The source chain shows a completed transaction. The destination wallet shows nothing. This happens more often than most people admit.

The solution is not to panic. It is to work through a diagnostic flowchart, systematically, until you find the specific failure point. Most stuck transfers have one of three causes, and you can fix two of them yourself.

Step one: check the source transaction

Go to the block explorer for the chain you sent from. Find your transaction hash. Look for the status indicator.

If it says "Failed" or "Reverted", your transfer never left because the bridge contract rejected it. Common reasons: insufficient gas, a slippage setting too tight, or a rate limit that throttled you mid-flight. You will need to retry the bridge transaction. Your funds remain on the source chain.

If it says "Success", the bridge accepted your deposit. The problem is downstream.

Step two: check the bridge explorer

Every major bridge runs an explorer that tracks its internal state. The source transaction succeeded, but the bridge's own relay may have stalled.

Wormhole Portal users should check wormholescan.io. Enter your source transaction ID and look for a "VAA" (Verified Action Approval) status. It should say "Signed" or "Ready". If it says "Pending" for more than 30 minutes, the guardian set is slow; wait longer.

LayerZero users go to layerzero-scan.com. Look for your "message status". It should be "Delivered". If it is "In Flight" or "Retrying", the Ultra Light Node relay is still working, and this can take hours during network congestion.

Axelar users check satellite.money. Click "Transactions", paste your hash, and look for "Status: Executed". If it says "Pending" for the destination chain execution, the Axelar validators have not yet approved the message.

If any explorer shows your transfer as completed on their end but nothing arrived in your wallet, move to step three.

Step three: did you forget to claim?

Many bridges require a second transaction on the destination chain. You deposited. The bridge minted or released the tokens, but they are sitting in the bridge contract, waiting for you to execute a claim function. This is the single most common cause of a "stuck" transfer: the bridge explorer shows completed, your wallet is empty, and the claim step never happened.

Hop protocol manual claim

Hop uses a "Settle" or "Withdraw" function for certain routes, especially to L2s. If you bridged to Arbitrum, Optimism, or Base via Hop and the auto-claim failed:

1. Go to the Hop bridge contract on the destination chain.
2. Call the settle(address recipient, uint256 amount, uint256 bonderFee) function, or the newer withdraw(bytes32 transferId).
3. Provide the transfer ID from your Hop transaction details.
4. You need ETH or the native gas token in your wallet to pay the claim transaction fee. The amount varies but expect at least 0.001 ETH.

Without the destination gas token, the claim transaction will revert. Bridge some gas first using a centralized exchange or a gas faucet. If you do not know your transfer ID, look it up on the Hop explorer (hop.exchange/transactions).

Across protocol manual claim

Across uses a "Fill" mechanism. For most deposits, the relayer fills automatically. If it did not:

1. Go to the Across bridge contract on the destination chain.
2. Call fillRelay(address depositor, address recipient, address destinationToken, uint256 amount, uint256 realizedLpFeePct, uint256 relayerFeePct, uint256 depositId, uint256 message, uint256 maxCount).
3. You need all the parameters from your deposit event. Fetch them from the Across event logs using the Across explorer (across.to/transactions).
4. The destination gas requirement is roughly 150,000-200,000 gas. That is about 0.005 ETH on Ethereum mainnet, less on L2s.

If the fill was already attempted but failed, you can call relay with a higher gas limit.

Arbitrum native bridge manual claim

The official Arbitrum bridge (bridge.arbitrum.io) has a two-step process for L1 to L2 transfers. The first transaction burns your L1 tokens; the second transaction, called "Outbox Execution", claims them on Arbitrum. If the auto-claim failed:

1. Go to the ArbRetryableTx contract at 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000070 on Arbitrum One.
2. Call redeem(bytes32 ticketId).
3. Your ticket ID is the keccak256 hash of the L1 transaction hash and the unique sequence number. You can find it on the Arbitrum bridge UI by clicking "Transaction History" and looking for a "Manual Claim" button.
4. Destination gas requirement: at least 300,000 gas on Arbitrum. If you have no ETH on Arbitrum, you cannot claim. You must transfer a tiny amount of ETH via a third-party bridge or ask someone to send you 0.01 ETH.

If Nothing Worked

Contact the bridge's official support. Do not trust DMs from anyone claiming to be support. Use only the links from the bridge's official website. Provide your source transaction hash, the bridge explorer status, and whether you attempted a manual claim.

Some transfers genuinely get lost in edge cases. Most do not. Work the flowchart. You will find the failure.

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