$5 of USDC Was Stuck on Base With Zero ETH. We Rescued It Cross-Chain for $0.21

An agent burner wallet held 5 USDC on Base mainnet and exactly 0 ETH — a trap: ERC-20 transfers need native gas the wallet can't pay. On 2026-10-24 we ran the rescue live: a ~$0.17 gas refuel, then Circle CCTP Base→Arc. Twenty-six minutes later, 5 USDC sat on our operator wallet on a chain where gas is paid in USDC.

The trap

Burner 0x3bF7…b89f: 5 USDC on Base, 0 ETH. Every exit needs ETH gas — approve + depositForBurn for CCTP, or a plain transfer. The strategy: refuel ETH via a bridge aggregator paid in USDC from Arc (where USDC is gas), then CCTP the funds out.

Plan A died on a provider minimum

GasZip via LI.FI quoted nicely (0.5 USDC → 0.000211 ETH) but the RPC rejected: insufficient funds: have 0.190 USDC, want 0.504. Probing showed LiFi's GasZip floor is ≈0.5 USDC — our operator had 0.19.

The pivot: Relay

Relay Protocol (api.relay.link) accepted 0.185 USDC → ERC-20 approve + deposit on Arc → 0.0000691 ETH on Base in ~11 seconds, fee ~0.02 USDC.

• approve 0xf30737…c601, deposit 0x7a01bc…f00f5b (Arc)

CCTP burn → attestation → mint

• approve 0xb37458…5af1, burn 0x2c6009…bc8c (Base, mined 11:00:50 UTC)
• Iris attestation ~24 min (script timed out at 20 — resume mode re-polled, nothing lost)
• receiveMessage permissionless — a second wallet paid mint gas (operator was drained by refuel)
• mint 0xe9057f…b8ea (Arc, 11:24:43 UTC)

The ledger

Item	Value
Rescued	5.00 USDC → operator on Arc
Total cost	~0.21 USDC (~4%)
E2E time	~26 min (24 of them = attestation)

Friction table

Spec implied	Production wanted
GasZip takes dust	Floor ≈0.5 USDC
Refuel = 1 tx	Relay: approve+deposit
Attestation ~15-20 min	~24 min — build resume, don't re-burn
Operator pays mint	Any funded wallet can (permissionless)

Why Arc matters here: gas is paid in USDC — rescued funds can never fall into the zero-native-token trap again.

Full report with all txhashes, raw logs and terminal screenshots: https://agentbadge.xyz/blog/usdc-rescue-base-to-arc