Understanding Tron and Ethereum USDt fees in AQUA

AQUA offers native support for Tether USDt on the Liquid Network, however, due to the transaction volume for USDt on altcoin chains such as Tron and Ethereum, we have also added additional compatibility to both receive and send USDt via these networks so that users can rely on AQUA for all their needs.

Support for USDt transactions via Tron and Ethereum is deployed via a third-party service, namely Sideshift.ai. When AQUA users enter the receive screen for Tron/Ethereum USDt they will see a single-use expiring address for their network of choice, along with minimum and maximum amounts currently enabled by Sideshift's liquidity. Lastly, they will also be assigned a Shift ID that can be used to contact Sideshift customer support for troubleshooting purposes.

By tapping the "Powered by SideShift. Service Fees Apply" text, AQUA users will be redirected to Sideshift's website, where they can better visualize a breakdown of the fees that will be subtracted from their transaction. When you receive USDt via Tron or Ethereum in AQUA, Sideshift will deduct a 1% service fee, plus the corresponding network fee in USDt as seen in the example transaction below.

	Inbound	Outbound
Transaction Amount	$100	$100
1% Service Fee	$1.00	$1.00
Liquid Network Fee		$0.11-0.19 (200-450 sats)
Tron/ETH Network Fee*	$1.95*	$1.95*
Net Amount	$97.05	$97.20

*Please note that Tron and Ethereum network fees are highly variable, so always make sure to check Sideshift's estimates before sending or receiving USDt.

As seen above, when you send USDt to a Tron/Ethereum address, the process entails very similar fees, plus an extra Liquid Network fee (as low as 0.0000025 L-BTC) for when your L-USDt is sent to Sideshift's address. Similarly, the send preview screen will contain this same information before you confirm the transaction:

On this screen, the 2.49 USDt fee encompasses both the 1% service fee (0.50 in USDt) and the 1.99 estimate Tron network fee that is settled at the exact time the transaction is processed. Be aware that Ethereum networks fees are usually much higher than Tron networks fees - USDt transactions will always be cheaper using Liquid natively, whether you do it in AQUA or not.

Remember that when you send USDt to a Tron/Ethereum address, you can check the resulting Liquid Network fee on your Layer 2 Bitcoin transaction history. These fees will be easy to spot as small L-BTC outgoing transactions, such as the two pictured in the screenshot below: