How to Swap ADA to XTZ: Cardano to Tezos, tz1 Addresses

To swap ADA to XTZ, open the ADA to XTZ page, paste a Tezos address starting with tz1, tz2 or tz3, and send ADA from your Cardano wallet. The provider credits the deposit after 15 Cardano confirmations and pays XTZ with a network fee of just 0.01 XTZ. At the time of writing the minimum was 135.53 ADA, about $30. With ADA near $0.22 and XTZ near $0.31, 1,000 ADA is roughly 700 XTZ before the service fee.

Check your Tezos address before anything else

Ordinary wallets give you a tz1 address. A KT1 address is a contract: some contracts accept incoming XTZ, some reject it, and a transfer to a contract that rejects it simply fails. Exchanges typically give tz1 or tz2 deposit addresses and do not ask for a memo on Tezos.

The Tezos 'reveal' fee, explained

A new Tezos account can receive XTZ immediately. The first time it sends anything, the wallet adds a one-off 'reveal' operation that publishes the account's public key to the chain. It costs a small extra fee — a fraction of a cent to a few cents of XTZ — and happens once per account. If your wallet shows two operations on your first transfer, that is why. Nothing about the swap payout depends on it.

Swap checklist

• Amount: at least the minimum shown in the widget (135.53 ADA on 21.10.2026).
• Rate type: float (1%) follows the market until your ADA is confirmed; fixed (1.5%) locks the XTZ amount for the payment window.
• Address: a tz1/tz2/tz3 address from your own wallet or your exchange's Tezos deposit page.
• Send ADA only: from Yoroi, Eternl, Lace or a hardware wallet. Native Cardano tokens in the same wallet stay where they are.
• Exchange withdrawals: the amount after the exchange's fee must equal the order amount.

Timing

Fifteen Cardano blocks at an average of 20 seconds each is about five minutes. Processing on ADA routes was quoted at 8–10 minutes in total. Tezos itself produces a block every few seconds since its 2024–2025 protocol upgrades, and a transfer is considered final after two blocks, so once the payout is broadcast the XTZ is in your wallet within a minute. If you send the XTZ on to an exchange, it will wait for its own number of confirmations; the provider waits for 10 when it receives XTZ.

After the swap: delegating or staking XTZ

Tezos lets you delegate your balance to a baker without locking it: the XTZ stays in your account, spendable at any time, and rewards are paid by the protocol. Since the Paris upgrade in 2024 you can also stake XTZ with a baker for a higher share of rewards; staked XTZ has an unstaking delay of a few days before it becomes spendable again. Both are done in the wallet, not in the swap. The staking calculator converts quoted APR and commission into real numbers.

Neither delegation nor staking gives anyone control over your coins, but staked funds can be partially slashed if the baker misbehaves. Delegated, unstaked balances are not at risk.

When ADA to XTZ is the wrong route

If you need XTZ only to pay a Tezos fee, the minimum swap buys far more than you need. If you plan to move between Cardano and Tezos often, compare the round-trip cost: two service fees plus two payout fees. For one-off moves the single swap is simpler than selling ADA on an exchange and buying XTZ, which takes two trades and a withdrawal.

Fees you will see on Tezos

A simple XTZ transfer on Tezos costs well under a cent. The fee has two parts: a baker fee proportional to the operation's size and gas, and a storage burn when the operation creates new data on chain, such as a token balance for an address that never held that token. Wallets estimate both. If you only hold XTZ, expect the baker fee alone; storage burns appear when you interact with tokens, NFTs and contracts.

Getting XTZ onto an exchange afterwards

If your goal is an exchange balance, you can paste the exchange's Tezos deposit address directly into the swap form, because Tezos deposits do not use a memo. Check that the exchange lists the Tezos network for XTZ deposits (not a wrapped XTZ on another chain), and expect it to wait for its own confirmations before crediting. The provider's payout counts as final after two Tezos blocks, so the exchange's wait is the only delay on that side.