What actually happened
What happened
Nothing broke. The transaction confirmed normally, the transaction hash resolves in that chain’s block explorer, and the balance sits at the destination address.
The reason it appears lost is that the recipient is watching a different chain. Their wallet or exchange shows nothing because it is looking at a ledger where nothing arrived.
This is almost always an Ethereum-family situation. An address beginning 0x is valid on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base and more, and no wallet warns you which one you selected.
Three scenarios
Scenario one: you control the key
Recoverable, and usually straightforward.
If the destination is your own wallet and you hold the seed phrase, the funds are already yours. The wallet simply is not displaying the chain they arrived on.
Add the network to your wallet
Use the connection parameters the network publishes, entered in the wallet’s settings. The balance appears once the chain is selected.
If the funds are a token rather than a coin
Add the token by contract address as well, since a wallet displays the native coin automatically and everything else only when told to.
Fund the address with native coin
Moving anything requires the chain’s own coin for the fee. Send a small amount to the same address, and the funds become spendable.
Scenario two: the recipient is an exchange
Depends entirely on their policy, and the range is wide.
Some exchanges recover cross-chain deposits for a fee, and the process takes weeks. Some do it only above a minimum amount. Some decline entirely, and the funds remain in their custody with no route back.
The steps are the same in each case: open a support ticket immediately, supply the hash, the sending address, the destination address, the network the funds actually went to and the amount. Do not send anything else to the same address while waiting.
Scenario three: nobody controls it
Unrecoverable, and worth being clear about.
If the destination address does not exist as a controlled address on the chain the funds reached, nothing can be done. This happens when an address format is technically valid on the target chain but was generated for a different one and nobody holds the corresponding key there.
No service can recover this. No fee changes it. The funds are visible on the chain permanently and reachable by nobody, which is the same situation described in the entry on wallet recovery.
Scams and prevention
The scams that target this
The search term attracts them, and the pattern is consistent.
Anyone asking for your seed phrase to recover cross-chain funds is stealing. Recovery in scenario one needs nothing except your own wallet. Recovery in scenario two is handled by the exchange.
Upfront fees for guaranteed recovery are the second pattern. In scenario three no recovery is possible, so any guarantee identifies the fraud.
Prevention
Three habits, and the first prevents most cases.
Confirm the network with the recipient
Ask rather than inferring it from the address, because the address frequently cannot tell you.
Send a test amount first
For anything large, a fraction confirms the destination before the rest follows.
Read the network selector on withdrawal
Exchanges preselect one, and the default is not always the cheapest or the one your destination expects.
Why merchants are mostly covered
For merchants this is largely handled: a payment gateway fixes the network on the invoice, so the customer cannot select one the business does not watch. The setup guide covers which networks to enable.