How to deposit USDC on Rocket

What you are depositing into

Rocket is a self-custody derivatives exchange. You connect a wallet, send USDC as collateral, and the protocol margins and settles positions onchain. There is no custodial account, no email login, and no other margin asset. Perps, options and vault balances all sit on that one USDC balance.

The chain Rocket itself lives on is RocketChain. Collateral arrives through a bridge contract on Arbitrum, which is why Arbitrum is the native deposit rail and every other source chain has to get there first.

From Arbitrum: a direct deposit

If the USDC is already on Arbitrum One, the deposit is a transfer into Rocket's bridge contract. First use needs a USDC approval; after that it is a single transaction. There is no third-party bridge fee, and the interface reports the credit as instant once the Arbitrum transaction confirms.

This is the cheapest and simplest path. If you can move USDC to Arbitrum yourself — from a CEX withdrawal, another bridge you already use, or a wallet that holds it there — do that and deposit directly.

From Ethereum or Base: rhino.fi inside the deposit modal

Ethereum and Base are supported as source chains on desktop, on the live environment. They are not native to Rocket, so the deposit modal bridges USDC onto Arbitrum through rhino.fi, then credits the trading account. rhino.fi is a third-party bridge; Rocket integrates it so you do not have to leave the app and complete the hop yourself.

Before you confirm, the quote shows what you send, what you receive, the bridge cost, and an estimated arrival time. On a slow chain such as Ethereum mainnet that wait is measured in confirmations, not seconds — the quote is there so the cost is visible rather than a surprise after the fact.

This path is desktop-only. On mobile the deposit modal is Arbitrum-only, because the bridge hop is a poorer experience on a phone. Polygon, Avalanche and BNB Chain are not live deposit sources.

Withdrawals reverse the same rails

Withdrawals to Arbitrum return USDC to your wallet, signed by that wallet rather than by the delegated trading key. Withdrawals to Ethereum or Base go through a rhino.fi smart deposit address on Arbitrum and then on to the destination chain. A minimum applies to those cross-chain withdrawals, shown in the interface before you submit.

The withdrawable amount respects margin in use — you cannot pull collateral that is backing an open position. There is also a $100,000 daily withdrawal limit.

What this is not

This is deposit-rail infrastructure for funding a trading account. It is not RocketSwap, and it is not a general-purpose cross-chain swap across dozens of networks. Those names appear in search because people use them; there is no swap page, and chains beyond Arbitrum, Ethereum and Base are not supported.

The Rocket Bridge itself — the committee-voted rail between Arbitrum and RocketChain — is what makes the last hop fast and cheap. rhino.fi is only involved when the USDC does not already sit on Arbitrum.