How to Easily Move your Funds from Ethereum to Polygon (MATIC) and Begin Saving on Gas Fees
It’s no secret that one of the biggest problems currently facing Ethereum is the high fees to do anything more than just sending coins. A simple swap on Uniswap can cost upwards of $50 in fees during high usage times, and it is a major barrier to entry for many users. For months, people have been proclaiming layer 2 solutions as the current fix until Eth 2.0 becomes a reality, but a lot of this advice can seem superficial. I myself am guilty of proclaiming the benefits and ease of layer 2s like Polygon or Loopring long before I actually took the time to learn how to connect and begin using those platforms.
For people just joining the space who are already having a hard time wrapping their heads around the sheer number of cryptocurrencies and DeFi applications, an additional step to interact with a layer 2 side chain can seem like just too much. The good news is that it’s really easier than you think. We’ve put together a simple tutorial here to hopefully guide you on your way to near zero fees while taking full advantage of decentralized finance solutions.
For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll assume you already have a Metamask wallet, which would be set to connect to the Ethereum Mainnet as the default.
1) To begin, you will want to click on where it says “Ethereum Mainnet” at the top of the Metamask Extension and click on the option in the dropdown that says “Custom RPC” and you will want to enter the following information:
Network Name: Matic Mainnet New RPC URL: https://rpc-mainnet.maticvigil.com/ Chain ID: 137
Currency Symbol: MATIC
Block Explorer URL: https://explorer.matic.network/
This will allow your Metamask to connect to the Polygon network.
2) You’ll now want to navigate to https://wallet.matic.network/ which will then ask you if you want to connect your Metamask. Select that option. You will then see a banner showing that you have a $0 balance and an option to move funds from your Ethereum Wallet to the Polygon Wallet.
3) Select “Move Funds to Matic Mainnet” and on the next screen, make sure the Transfer Mode is set to “PoS Bridge”. Select the token and how much you want to move over, and then click “Transfer”
4) Click Continue through the the next few screens which are just confirmations of gas fees and your intended transfer. The fee here is an Ethereum network fee and will be the only major fee paid for moving your assets to Polygon. Once on the network, fees are near zero.
5) After you do this, go to your Metamask, click on where it says “Ethereum Mainnet” at the top, then click on the Matic Mainnet option we set up in the beginning.
Now you can navigate to any dApp that has integrated Polygon’s Matic layer 2 solution such as Aave, or Quickswap.
Cheers, and thanks for reading!
JefeDix
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Migrating to Layer 2 was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.