Decentralized exchange Uniswap has launched in-app, permissionless cross-chain bridging for its users, with service available across nine blockchain networks.

On Oct. 23, the Uniswap (UNI) team announced that its permissionless cross-chain bridge was now live, bringing the DEX protocol closer to enabling cross-chain swaps. The cross-chain intents protocol, Across Protocol, powers this in-app Uniswap bridging feature, according to the announcement.

Only native assets

With the launch, Uniswap users can now undertake cross-chain transactions across nine networks. These include Ethereum (ETH), Arbitrum (ARB) Polygon (POL) and ZKSync (ZK). Other networks with initial support are Base, Zora, Blast, OP Mainnet and World Chain.

The feature only supports native assets, such as ETH on the Ethereum network or ARB on the Arbitrum network. Bridging will also be available for stablecoins. In terms of functionality, users will perform cross-chain transactions directly via their Uniswap interface and Uniswap Wallet.

According to data from Dune, multi-chain access currently has a cumulative count of over six million Uniswap users. However, cross-chain bridge swaps remain low. The Uniswap Labs team aims to significantly increase this number.

Uniswap recently unveiled UniChain, a new layer-2 chain targeting DeFi and cross-chain liquidity. Announced on Oct. 10, UniChain aims to help the crypto market address DeFi’s challenges. Key to this vision are decentralization, near-instant transactions, and multi-chain swapping.