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Sending and Depositing Tokens

Sending and Depositing Tokens

This document describes different kinds of tokens that exist in the ZetaChain Athens 3 testnet ecosystem.

Code blocks with hardhat commands show helpful utilities for sending tokens available with the smart contract template.

Native ZETA Token on ZetaChain​

The native token of the ZetaChain is called ZETA. It is a staking token, and is used to pay for transaction fees. ZetaChain node is built with Cosmos SDK framework and the ZETA token is implemented as a sdk.Coin. ZETA is the user-friendly symbol for the token, and the on-chain denom is azeta.

1 ZETA = 10¹⁸ azeta.

To query for account balance you can use the Cosmos HTTP API balances endpoint:

{
  "balances": [
    {
      "denom": "azeta",
      "amount": "10000000000000000000"
    }
  ]
}

To convert the value amount from azeta to ZETA, divide it by 10¹⁸. In the example above the balance is 10 ZETA.

Sending ZETA from ZetaChain to Goerli:

npx hardhat send-zeta --amount 1 --network zeta_testnet --destination goerli_testnet

send-zeta sends native ZETA to the wrapped ZETA contract on ZetaChain, approves the wrapped ZETA to be spent by the connector contract, then finally calls the connector's send method to send the wrapped ZETA to the connected chain.

Wrapped ZETA on ZetaChain​

ZETA can exists on ZetaChain in a wrapped form (WZETA) as a WETH9 token. WZETA is primarily used in internal liquidity pools on ZetaChain paired with native gas tokens of connected blockchains (for example, gETH/WZETA pair).

To wrap native ZETA and turn it into WZETA, send it to the zetaToken contract on Zetachain.

ZETA Tokens on Connected Blockchains​

ZETA tokens on EVM-compatible connected blockchains (like Ethereum, Polygon and BSC) are implemented as ERC-20 tokens. You can find the contract addresses of the zetaToken on a connected blockchain on the testnet page.

Sending ZETA from Goerli to ZetaChain:

npx hardhat send-zeta --amount 1 --network goerli_testnet --destination zeta_testnet

Note that as a result of the send-zeta command above you will receive native ZETA on ZetaChain already unwrapped.

Sending ZETA from Goerli to BSC testnet:

npx hardhat send-zeta --amount 1 --network goerli_testnet --destination bsc_testnet

Acquiring ZETA on ZetaChain​

One way to accquire ZETA on ZetaChain is to swap native gas tokens (like gETH) on a connected chain's (like Goerli) Uniswap for ZETA. Use the zetaToken contract address on the connected chain of choice to add it to Uniswap's UI, swap gETH for ZETA, then send ZETA to ZetaChain using the send-zeta command described above.

Foreign Tokens on ZetaChain​

Native gas tokens of connected blockchains (like gETH, tMATIC, tBNB, and tBTC) are represented on ZetaChain as ZRC-20. ZRC-20 is an extension of ERC-20 that allows depositing tokens to and withdrawing tokens from ZetaChain.

To deposit tokens to ZetaChain, send them to the tss address on a connected chain. To withdraw native gas tokens from ZetaChain, call the withdraw method of the ZRC-20 contract.

Depositing gETH to ZetaChain as ZRC-20:

npx hardhat send-zrc20 --amount 1 --network goerli_testnet --destination zeta_testnet

Withdrawing ZRC-20 from ZetaChain to Goerli as gETH:

npx hardhat send-zrc20 --amount 1 --network zeta_testnet --destination goerli_testnet

tBTC is represented on ZetaChain as ZRC-20 as well. To deposit tBTC to ZetaChain you need to send it to the tss address on the Bitcoin testnet with the recipient's address encoded in the memo. Learn more about this in the Bitcoin section.

Depositing tBTC from the Bitcoin testnet to ZetaChain:

npx hardhat send-btc --amount 1 --recipient <TSS_ADDRESS> --memo <RECIPIENT_ADDRESS>