Orbiter does one thing: cheap, fast transfers between Ethereum layer-2s. A user sends funds to a maker's address on the source chain, and the maker sends the equivalent on the destination chain, minus a small flat fee.
The trust structure
This is not cryptographic bridging. It is a market maker fulfilling an obligation, backed by collateral and a dispute mechanism that can compensate users if a maker fails to deliver. In practice makers deliver because their business depends on it. In principle a maker could fail, and the dispute process is the recourse.
Why people use it anyway
Fees are a fraction of a dollar and transfers complete in under a minute — considerably better than canonical bridges and cheaper than most alternatives. For a user moving $200 between Arbitrum and Base, the trust assumption is proportionate to the amount and the saving is real.
Limits
Transfer sizes are bounded by maker capacity, coverage is essentially Ethereum rollups plus a few others, and there is no protection against sending to the wrong address or exceeding limits — mistakes here are user-recoverable only through support.
Who should use it
Users making frequent small transfers between rollups. For large amounts, use a canonical bridge or a protocol with cryptographic verification.