HOW TO GUIDE: Getting Funds onto Polygon to Prepare for Launch of Honeyswap

🐝 Community Learning
#1

Goal: Enable readers to move funds onto the Polygon network, so that they can be ready to provide liquidity (LP) on Honeyswap on Polygon after launch. Some time after launch, LPs will be rewarded with pCOMB tokens.

Reading time: 5-10 min

Effort: ½ - 1 hour

Assumptions:

  • You are familiar with cryptocurrency
  • You are familiar with Ethereum, have an Ethereum wallet and wallet browser extension, e.g., Metamask
  • You are familiar with 1Hive, Honeyswap and the upcoming Honeycomb liquidity mining rewards

If you are not familiar with these core concepts, the guide will not be terribly interesting.

What is Polygon?

Polygon (very recently known as Matic, they rebranded in Q1 2021) is an Ethereum sidechain, sometimes referred to as a Layer-2 or L2. Polygon features low transaction fees, adoption amongst many popular Ethereum dApps, and a large amount of total value locked (TVL) on the network. As of writing (Q2 2021), Polygon TVL was ~$7B USD. For comparison, xDAI TVL is ~$75MM USD.

The Tulip swarm has decided to launch Honeyswap on Polygon with the intent to increase interest, participation and liquidity in the HNY economy.

Polygon supports most Ethereum ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens. Importantly, transactions must be paid for in MATIC, in the same way that ETH is used for gas on Ethereum mainnet and XDAI is used for gas on the xDai sidechain.

How do I get funds onto Polygon?

Step 1. Add the Polygon network to your browser wallet extension

  • MATIC documentation on how to do that
    • Alternatively, you can go to Chainlist and search for MATIC mainnet. Click Connect Wallet and follow prompts.
  • This will be necessary in order to receive your tokens from the Polygon bridge and conduct transactions on the Polygon network.

Step 2. Move funds onto your Polygon wallet

Option A: Bridge assets from Ethereum to Polygon

  • Upside: cost-efficient (as long as gas prices are low)
  • Downside: manual steps, can only be done cost-effectively when gas prices are low

If you already have enough on-chain liquidity with Ethereum, you can skip to step iii

i. Purchase ETH on the centralized exchange of your choice, e.g., CoinbasePro or Binance. Cost will vary by exchange. As an example, CoinbasePro charges 0.5%

ii. Transfer ETH to your Ethereum wallet.

NB: Cost will vary based on gas prices - it is recommended to wait until gas prices are low. You can monitor gas prices on Etherscan and specialist sites like gasnow dot org . At the time of writing (Q2 2021) Ethereum gas prices < 100 are considered “low”, gas prices < 50 are considered “very low.”

iii. Sign in to the MATIC wallet app on Ethereum. This will require a wallet signature.

iv. Transfer ETH to the Polygon network using the MATIC wallet bridge. This will cost gas, so keep an eye on gas prices.

v. Once the Ethereum bridge transaction has been confirmed, you should verify receipt of funds on Polygon by switching networks on your browser extension to Polygon. And you’re done!

Option B: Bridge funds from xDai or Binance Smart Chain (BSC) directly to Polygon

  • Upside: cost-efficient
  • Downside: requires that you already have liquid assets on xDai or BSC already, limited to stablecoins

If you have funds on xDai, BSC or Fantom that you’d like to transfer to Polygon, you can use the xpollinate.io bridge to transfer DAI, USDC, or USDT to Polygon.

Thanks to @curlybracketeffect we all have a video tutorial to walk you through the steps (Cheapest way to bridge from xDai to Polygon - YouTube).
Don’t forget to like and subscribe!

Connext team has said that they will add support for xPollinate.io bridging from xDai directly to Polygon for other tokens (including HNY and AGVE) in the near future (June 2021), so keep an eye out.

xPollinate bridge capacity may be limited by liquidity in routers. I’d recommend seeking help from 1Hive community members if you’re not familiar with xPollinate.

Option C: Onramp directly from fiat to Polygon

  • Upside: fast, simple
  • Downside: more costly than bridging funds
    • NB: Users in the US and other countries may not be allowed to purchase directly for Polygon

There are several crypto purchase processors that enable you to buy crypto and send it directly to a wallet on the Polygon network, including Transak. Full list on MATIC documentation

i. Go to payment processor website

ii. Select MATIC (or any other token) as currency to purchase and specify amount

iii. Provide Polygon / MATIC wallet address

iv. Provide payment information and know-your-customer (KYC) information (if required by processor)

v. Complete purchase

The primary benefit of using this method is that you will be able to spend fiat currency using a credit/card or bank transfer and receive MATIC directly to your Polygon wallet. This is the option that requires the least manual intervention.

The price you pay for this convenience is very steep. The payment processor will charge up to 5-6% in processing fees and up to 8-9% in exchange rate premiums, e.g., if the market-wide price for a crypto is $100 / token, then the payment processor will sell it to you for $109 / token. In total, you’re looking at paying a 10-15% premium. If you have the means to use Option A, it will be significantly more cost effective.

Option D: Onramp from exchange to Polygon

  • Upside: fast, simple, cheap
  • Downside: currently only available from a limited number of exchanges

Some centralized exchanges, e.g., Ascendex, allow for withdrawals of MATIC directly to the Polygon network. Check if your exchange of choice has this option, as this will almost certainly be the most cost-effective.

Step 3. Prepare for Honeyswap launch on Polygon - slated June 2021

Once you have ETH on Polygon, you will need to swap it for some MATIC so you can continue to pay for gas. All Polygon users get 0.01 MATIC as free dust to start so you can pay for gas without having to explicitly bridge MATIC.

You may also want to consider holding your funds as a stablecoin, e.g., Dai, until Honeyswap is launched and you’re ready to provide liquidity. You can use Curve, Sushiswap, and several other dexes that are available on Polygon for swapping.

Tip for optimizing your experience on Polygon: in times of congestion it’s possible to experience delays in connecting to the network using public Remote Procedure Call (RPC) nodes. In order to avoid this delay, Polygon provides a free-tier custom RPC. It’s mainly intended for developers, but anyone can use it. Therefore, users who are more technically proficient can get a custom RPC URL through https://rpc.maticvigil.com/

Keep an eye out for the upcoming announcement of the Honeyswap launch on Polygon, slated for mid-June 2021. These will be publicized in #general and #honeyswap channels on the 1Hive Discord, as well as the forum and twitter.

…
This guide is a work in progress. If you have feedback, or would like to collaborate on this or other guides, I’d love to work together. Possible TODOS include: adding links back in (I’m only allowed 2 links per post as a new user), adding screenshots and/or a video tutorial.

23 Likes
GUIDE: How to Maximize your pCOMB Rewards
#2

Mate… great work and just in time. I hope you get around to adding the links and a video tutorial. This will be very handy for any new beez that land and start looking for information on how to bridge assets across chains.

3 Likes
#3

As some suggestion I will leave these here for you to consider:

  1. I think you may want to put like a $$$ value on each option. As xDAI chain attracts a lot of smol players, I assume it will make it easier for them to choose the option that costs the least $ to bridge across.
  2. You could also list typical stuff like Binance - as this could be the easiest and simplest way as they allow direct withdrawal of MATIC.
  3. In my opinion, xPOLLINATE is a winner in these options but the issue is liquidity in the routers, so you may need to add a warning and give info on how to check liquidity and provide relevant links/screenshots.
  4. I am not sure if multichain.xyz is an option but could be investigated.
  5. Also not sure if popular wallet aggregators like zapper offer services to bridge?
5 Likes
#4

Nice tutorial, i would suggest using https://chainlist.org instead of sushi for adding the Polygon or Xdai network.

4 Likes
#5

In addition to this, I would also advise people to get themselves a custom RPC URL using this:

https://rpc.maticvigil.com/

The free plan should be enough for many to perform most of their transactions.

5 Likes
#6

Replaced the sushiswap recommendation with chainlist recommendation

1 Like
#7

I’m sorry, I don’t know enough about custom RPC URLs to make a credible recommendation. If you provide me with the text, I’m happy to insert it into the guide

2 Likes
#8

For sure, it’s not actually a necessity. It’s for “just in case” :smiley:

“Although most public RPC nodes work, in times of congestion it’s possible to experience delays in connecting to the network. In order to avoid, Polygon provides a free tier custom RPC for you to use (mainly for developers, but you can also use it). So, for those who are relatively more tech-savvy, we can also recommend getting a custom RPC url at: https://rpc.maticvigil.com/”

4 Likes
#9

Added the suggested text!

2 Likes
#10

Thank you for the suggestions. I added some more notes about xPollinate.

  1. I considered this, but the $ cost fluctuates with gas prices AND the price of ETH, both of which have been extremely volatile in the past couple months. Unfortunately, I’m forced to conclude that users will just have to check gas estimates before they transact and decide if they’re willing to pay. : /
  2. Does Binance enable direct withdrawal to Polygon? Or just mention it as a possible C-exchange that has MATIC withdrawals?
  3. Added
    4-5. I’ll take a look
2 Likes
#11

Agreed bud, you can estimate it at set prices like 50 gwei. I think the cheap gas we have now is not going to last on main net. The other options will most definitely come in much cheaper than bridging from mainnet. My experience of using binance was that i had to spend like 2$ to move $1000 and xPollinate charges even less.

What i meant was that Binance allows withdrawal of MATIC to polygon… one way is to just convert whatever you want to MATIC and then send direct to a wallet and convert back to other assets using one of the DEXs on polygon like sushiswap, paraswap or quickswap. I guess the risk is volatility in MATIC … but if done within a few minutes … unless extremely unlucky for small amounts I would say the chance of incurring a loss is minimal.
Thanks for keeping up with the comments and making the changes dynamically. Great job!

2 Likes
#12

Great point about xpollinate bridging from BSC. I’ve updated to reflect.

I appreciate the encouragement!

#13

So I actually made a video on how to bridge from xDai to Polygon recently as part of a tutorial for completing the latest RabbitHole Quest. I talk about the Quest in this forum post But here is a link to the video if you want to add it to your lovely, well written, and very thorough guide above.

Feel free to like and subscribe if you feel so inclined. There will be more tips, tricks, and walkthroughs to come :relaxed: :pray:t4:

9 Likes
#14

Hell yeah - updated the guide with video link

3 Likes
#15

I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, but adding Polygon to my Metamask is on my shortlist.
More feedback soon.

1 Like
#16

Good to see more beez lining up to land on polygon. I have been around Polygon for a month and have to say it is pretty slick! Waiting for our farms to land on polygon and see how we fare against the other DEXs. Meta would be interested to see what your thoughts are and where you end up locking your monies on Polygon!

#17

Thanks for this man, as i told you on the #general channel on Discord, I’d just add a few screenshot to guide even more then newcomer, but this is very nice and clear. Awesome

1 Like
#18

Currently as far as i know, there is one exchange that supports MATIC assets deposits and withdrawal. The exchange is also supports for xdai deposits and withdrawal. The exchange is AscendEx (formerly known as Bitmax.io) might be worth to add the exchange to your guide as a reference. Shorter low cost route than onchain bridging.

#19

Thanks a lot for writing this. Really helpful and informative.

1 Like
#20

@mrtdlgc hey mate… so i signed up for the service using an email. Not sure how to get a custom RPC. Is there instructions somewhere how to do this? Would really appreciate if you are able to type up a few steps if its easy enough? thanks.