How to Swap LINK to ETH: ERC20 Chainlink Only, Gas First

To swap LINK to ETH, send Chainlink's LINK token on Ethereum mainnet (ERC20) to the deposit address of a swap order and receive native ETH at your Ethereum address. The provider behind KOT.CASH accepts LINK only as ERC20, the minimum is about 2.46 LINK at the time of writing, and the deposit waits for 6 Ethereum blocks. Because LINK is a token, the send costs ETH for gas — the most common reason the swap cannot even start.

The gas problem, and the easy way around it

An ERC20 transfer is a smart-contract call. LINK's transfer uses roughly 50,000–55,000 gas. At a base fee of 2 gwei plus a small tip that is about 0.0001 ETH, a quarter of a dollar; at 20 gwei on a busy day, around $2.50. Your wallet will refuse to send if the address holds no ETH, showing an error such as 'insufficient funds for gas'.

If you hold LINK but no ETH, get a small amount of ETH onto the same address first — withdraw 0.002–0.003 ETH from an exchange, or ask someone to send it. Do not swap from a different address that has ETH: the gas must be on the address that sends the token. The gas fee calculator shows the cost at the current gwei.

Which LINK is accepted

LINK exists on many networks: natively on Ethereum, and as bridged versions on BNB Smart Chain, Arbitrum, Polygon, Base, Avalanche and others, mostly moved through Chainlink's own CCIP bridge or older third-party bridges. They share a ticker but are different contracts on different chains. This pair takes only the Ethereum mainnet contract 0x514910771AF9Ca656af840dff83E8264EcF986CA.

• LINK on BNB Smart Chain (BEP20). A Binance-issued peg. Withdraw to Ethereum from the exchange or bridge it back before swapping.
• LINK on Arbitrum, Base, Polygon. Bridged tokens; bridge back to Ethereum mainnet first or ask whether another pair accepts that network.
• LINK in an exchange account. Choose the ERC20 / Ethereum withdrawal network.

LINK is ERC-677, and why that does not matter here

The LINK contract implements ERC-677, an extension of ERC20 with a transferAndCall function that lets a token transfer trigger a contract in one step. Chainlink oracles were paid that way. For a swap deposit you use a normal transfer like any ERC20 token — wallets do this by default. The token has 18 decimals; if you ever read a raw value in a block explorer, 2,460,000,000,000,000,000 means 2.46 LINK. The token decimals converter does that conversion.

Staked LINK

LINK staked in Chainlink's staking pools cannot be sent until it is unstaked. Unstaking in the v0.2 pools starts a cooldown of roughly four weeks, followed by a short claim window during which you withdraw; miss the window and the cooldown starts again. Check the pool's own page for the current parameters before planning a swap around that date.

Step by step

1. Make sure the sending address has LINK on Ethereum and some ETH for gas.
2. Create the order: LINK (Ethereum) to ETH, enter the amount above the minimum, and paste your Ethereum receive address — it can be the same address you send from.
3. Choose a floating rate (1% service fee) or fixed (1.5%).
4. Send the LINK to the deposit address. In MetaMask, open the LINK token and press Send; do not send ETH to the deposit by accident.
5. Six blocks take about 72 seconds; the provider's processing estimate is 1–2 minutes. The ETH payout, minus about 0.0003 ETH network fee, follows.

What 10, 50 and 200 LINK turn into

The cross rate is LINK's dollar price divided by ETH's. LINK is not in our live ticker, so check the current figure in the crypto converter or the widget. As an illustration at LINK = $12 and ETH = $2,444: 10 LINK ≈ 0.0491 ETH market, ≈ 0.0483 ETH after the 1% fee and payout fee; 50 LINK ≈ 0.2455 ETH, ≈ 0.2427 ETH received; 200 LINK ≈ 0.982 ETH, ≈ 0.9719 ETH received.

Checking the token transfer on Etherscan

A LINK deposit looks different from an ETH one in Etherscan. The Value field shows 0 ETH, because no ether moved; the transfer appears under 'ERC-20 Tokens Transferred' with the LINK amount, from your address to the deposit address. The To field at the top shows the LINK contract, not the deposit — that is how every token transfer is recorded. If you see the deposit address in the token-transfer line and Status: Success, the order has your LINK.

Mistakes to avoid

• Sending LINK to the deposit from an exchange's BEP20 option. The tokens land on BNB Smart Chain and never reach an Ethereum order.
• Approving instead of sending. Some phishing pages ask you to 'approve' LINK. A deposit never needs an approval — only a transfer.
• Sending the whole ETH balance in a separate step first. Keep the gas on the LINK address until the token transfer is confirmed.