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Exploring Optimism: Bridging & Swapping ETH, Minting Free NFTs

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FarmGirl
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It was a day to explore for me. A time to learn things and "unlearn" some too, especially when it had something to do with the vast crypto space.

This one was something I postponed doing 2 days ago when I read a #thread by JerrytheFarmer which brought me to his post about minting two NFTs for free by completing some simple tasks. And being one who had experienced ignoring things like this made me regret. So this morning, I made sure I visited RabbitHole to learn more about it.

The first lesson being the Introduction to Layer 2 (pertaining to Ethereum) with 3 tasks which requires completion via actual application. Completing these tasks will earn us a "Skill" which unlocks new credentials along the way while we learn to expand our knowledge about Web 3.

Bridging ETH from Polygon to Optimism

One task of 3 is to bridge ETH to Optimism through Hop Exchange. I have a little bit of ETH on my Polygon wallet and decided to bridge it through. And here's to share the process (might be helpful to those who never experienced or tried):

Make sure you have added the Optimism network on your wallet. Here's how to do that (on MetaMask):

  • Go to your wallet's "Settings" and hover over to "Networks" then click on "Add Network" and enter the following on the designated fields:

    Network Name: Optimism New RPC URL: https://mainnet.optimism.io Chain ID: 10 Currency Symbol: ETH

And when it's done, you are now ready to proceed with the bridging:

  • Go to Hop Exchange and connect your wallet. Then input how many ETH (WETH) you are going to send from Polygon to Optimism network then click on the "Approve" button.

  • Approve and the transaction and give permission for Hop to access your Wrapped ETH (WETH).

  • Click on "Send" to confirm and finalize the transaction.

  • And wait a while because it requires 128 confirmations for the transaction to complete. Yes, it's not instant but at least it doesn't take forever.

    Although it was indicated that the bridged asset will take about 10 minutes to be credited from when the transaction is confirmed, it took me just about 6 minutes from the time I initiated the transfer to having the ETH on my wallet on the Optimism network.

    The transaction fees are so minimal and I'm even getting a refund of it by using the bridge. They call it OP Onboarding Rewards. It isn't much on today's price of Optimism token (OP) but it's still a nice treat!

    So that was the very easy bridging process.

Swapping ETH to OP on UniSwap

The second task got me thinking about gas price since it is in UniSwap but I noticed that it's actually very cheap so I went on to trade some ETH for OP. The swap was smooth and Optimism network seems to be real fast.

Minting Free NFTs on Quix

Apparently, Quix is the largest NFT marketplace in the Optimism network and we were to mint the RabbitHole L2 Explorer NFT there. There were three options, re:

  • NFT Explorer,
  • DeFi Explorer and
  • DAO Explorer

I opted for "DeFi" and clicked the "Mint NFT" button.

I was brought to the approval window and the gas fee being $0.11 is surprisingly very cheap.

And after confirming, the minting was finished swiftly and I successfully got one RabbitHole L2 Explorer NFT.

The NFT didn't have much description and trait details but the process of getting it kinda added fun to the learning process.

Checking the Quix marketplace, the Explorer NFTs listed are priced from 0.0001 ETH to 188 ETH.

It seems people are taking the opportunity to learn and also get a piece of these NFTs even if they might be worthless. With that, I was done with the first set of tasks and ready to mint my second free NFT (the so-called RabbitHole Credentials).

Minting was confirmed in just a few seconds.

On checking the OpenSea marketplace, I got #7734 and there was already an offer to buy it for 0.0015 ETH ($2) but I decided to keep it. Who knows if this will give me some magical ETH in the months or years to come, lol!

So there goes the adventure while learning to do basic transactions on the Optimism network. I did "unlearn" the notion that ETH fees are costly. Well that probably applies when transactions are done through the Ethereum Mainnet, but thankfully, it's not the case on the Layer 2 solutions like Optimism.

There are other basic lessons available but to avoid getting overwhelmed, I decided to take one at a time.

If you're interested about what it is, check this post by @jerrythefarmer and let's explore, have fun and learn some things too.

Post is for infotainment purposes only. DYOR.

Screenshots via RabbitHole, MetaMask, Hop Exchange, Uniswap, Quix and OpenSea. Lead photo created on Canva. No copyright infringement intended. 081022/20:40ph

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