Getting funds onto Polygon (matic) without paying huge fees
I'm bullish on this one.
Ethereum without the fees, BSC without the centralization. Mark Cuban is already singing it's praises. Every coin with a billionaire cheerleader seems to do ok. My mode of operation is to not invest in projects unless I plan on using them. I am guilty of flipping in and out of things to make (or lose) a satoshi, but by and large, if I don't use it, I don't own it (except ethereum... I plan on using ethereum when gas prices go down cough).
So, I did some side work building a fence on a day when there was nothing happening with my "real" job, and I got paid in MATIC. Pretty sweet deal. I have said it before, and I will say it again... I love working for crypto. It feels like you are getting paid for your work, and then getting paid more in the future. In the "real" world, it seems to be the other way around. You get paid, your money vanishes, and if you managed to save some, in a year it buys half as much as it would have in the past. As you can see, I know which economy I want to be in full time... and, we are getting there one step at a time.
(I know it is not done yet, but it doesn't look too bad!)
So, you got the Matic, now what?
I planned on finding a Defi Platform to pool a little bit and try out the chain, but first I need to get the funds onto the chain.
It (the matic) was on binance. I gave a BEP2 address with a memo so that the funds could just switch binance wallets without actually moving (or paying a transaction fee). You can't really use anything that is sitting on binance, although they do let you stake coins (likely to trade and make bank off of) now.
I need to get my Matic onto its own native blockchain. Sounds easy enough.
Nope, but the canary (me) made it out of the cave
So, you need to set up metamask (what I recommend) to run on the Polygon blockchain. There are lots of tutorials for this online. Here is one.
Once you have the wallet set up, it is time to get some funds on it.
Using BSC and a Bridge
If you send things directly from Binance, you are using the Ethereum network and paying $20 plus fees. No thank you.
I did a lot of reading and messing around. I spent a few transaction fees extra because I needed a do-over. I will let you know everything that I learned. You can send your funds to the Binance Smart Chain and then take a fairly cheap bridge over to the Polygon Chain. Withdrawing funds from Binance to the Binance Smart Chain is virtually free, and the bridges I found are pretty decent too.
First, I found Matic on CUB, so I withdrew the Matic as a BEP20 token on the Binance Smart Chain. There was no liquidity. I could only buy 1 bLEO with 150 Matic!!! So I sent the Matic Back to Binance and traded it for BNB and sent it back to my BSC wallet. This way I can actually get funds to the other side.
First, they say that xPollinate.io is the cheapest bridge. It's limitations are that you can only send stable coins (DAI, USDT, USDC). So, I tried to set that up first. It is very easy to buy stable coins on Cub Finance. For whatever reason, BSC was not supported yesterday. I tried it again today before writing this, and it worked like a charm. I sent $3 in DAI from BSC to Polygon for 0.00145 DAI in fees. I bet I could have sent $20000 in DAI for not much more. They tell you the fees before you send, so it is all good.
Since that bridge was not working yesterday, I found another bridge that worked. The "Orbit" Bridge. This bridge let's you send a few key coins from one chain to another.
The fees were 0.1% and no bridging fee!
There were only a few coins to select from.
So, I took some BNB and I sent it across the bridge. It worked!
Issue # 1
On Quick Swap (a decentralized exchange on the Polygon Chain) and on PolyZap (another decentralized exchange on the Polygon Chain) there is no PBNB (the Polygon wrapped version of BNB) to trade.
So, I sent the PBNB back across the orbit bridge to BSC and traded it for AUTO on CUB Finance. I checked the pairs on PolyZap and, indeed, there is a pAUTO that you can trade on it.
So, I sent the AUTO across the Orbit Bridge. It landed on the Polygon side of my metamask wallet in seconds.
Trading
So, I was able to trade some pAUTO (the polygon wrapped AUTO) for some Matic, and then some PZAP and some BUSD. I set up a little farm on the PolyZap platform between these two pairs. @shortsegments tells you how to do that here. I know the risks of jumping in on these early DeFi platforms, I am more interested in testing out the Polygon Chain. Things all seem to be in order on PolyZap, but, you know how things go in this space. I am hoping for the best but ready for the worst.
Holy Cheap Transactions Batman!
My gas fee was 0.000163 Matic. That is 3 thousanths of a cent for anyone who is counting.
I was bullish on Matic, but nobody will need any Matic to do transactions. This just means that there is a lot of room to grow!!!
Free Matic
I believe I got a free 0.001 Matic when I clicked "add Pzap" to my metamask (on the PolyZap farms page). I was worried about gas fees when I was trying to exchange the pAuto and get started. That was 8 or 9 free transactions that I got. Not bad.
Conclusion
There is a lot of potential on the Polygon Blockchain. It seems like the blockchain for DeFi until the Hive Sidechain that @klye is working on comes to fruition. As it stands, I am super bullish on the Matic token for its obvious use case and the fact that it is filling a much needed void.
I am farming heavy on CUB for obvious reasons. I think it's future is very bright. Don't let the lows it currently is at get you down, I see things moving up with kingdoms launching. I now have a small farm on PolyZap where I am likely going to trade a lot of my farm rewards for Matic. I think it will be a top 10 (5?)coin soon. Not financial advice, just my opinion.
Moving funds from BSC to Polygon via a bridge is likely the cheapest way to fund your experience on Polygon, it is not easy, but if you learn from my mistakes, you will have an easier time than I did. If your funds are on the ethereum network, you will have an easy, but costly time.
