Swell Opens Claims for Tokens Left Stranded After Swellchain Shut Down

Swell threw open the doors on Nov. 2 for anyone whose tokens got trapped on Swellchain, the project announced: claims are live on Ethereum for SWELL, swETH and rswETH left behind when the chain shut down. Holders connect the wallet they used on Swellchain, check the claimable amount, and get their tokens back on Ethereum mainnet.

The pile is real. Swell's recovery account reports it clawed back 72.77 million SWELL, 100.994705 swETH and 55.282269 rswETH after teaming up with LayerZero. Using CoinGecko prices at 5:09 a.m. ET on Nov. 2, that pool was worth roughly $446,000.

Getting there took some surgery. The tokens ran on LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token standard, which locked assets in Ethereum contracts and minted matching supply on Swellchain. With the chain gone, that escrow needed a new way out. Swell first stripped Swellchain as a trusted source on the Ethereum bridge contracts so the same funds couldn't be released twice.

Then it minted temporary tokens on BNB Chain matching the stranded Swellchain supply and bridged them to Ethereum, freeing the escrowed assets into Swell's multisignature wallet. Those BNB Chain tokens were a tool, not a gift — Swell says they're valueless and have no further use, and it disconnected the route afterward. Transaction records cited by the project show the peer entries being cleared from all three Ethereum bridge contracts.

The whole mess traces back to Swellchain's June 23 closure. Swell, the team behind an Ethereum liquid-staking protocol, had flagged the sunset back in April, saying it wanted to pour resources into Faro. That notice carried a blunt warning: bridge your funds out before the withdrawal deadline, or risk losing them for good.

For anyone who missed that memo, the claim pages are now the only door back in. Three separate pages, three tokens, one rule in common — the returns land on Ethereum mainnet.