How do I bridge assets to Polygon?
Q: Why would you move assets to Polygon or other scaling solutions?
In general, investing on Ethereum is costly, and when congested can also be slow. With the growth of scaling opportunities, interacting in DeFi is increasingly cheaper and faster.
Q: How does someone move assets to Polygon and what happens when they are moved?
To move assets from Ethereum to Polygon they must be “bridged”. When assets are bridged, they are first locked on Ethereum, followed by minting them on Polygon. When they are withdrawn back to Ethereum, the assets on Polygon are first burned, followed by the locked funds being released to your wallet on Ethereum.
Wallet — A web3 wallet app to interact with the blockchain. Metamask is highly suggested. ETH — You will need ETH to pay for the transaction to move assets from Ethereum to Polygon. MATIC — You will need some MATIC to pay for transactions with your assets going forward on Polygon.
The following steps will set up your Metamask wallet to interact with the Polygon Network.
Click on the network selection button on the top of the app.
Click on the “Custom RPC” to add the Matic Mainnet information.
Select “Custom RPC”.
Input the Polygon RPC
New RPC URL: https://rpc-mainnet.matic.network
Chain ID: 137
Symbol: MATIC
Block Explorer URL: https://explorer.matic.network/
Navigate to https://wallet.matic.network/ and select “Move funds to Matic Mainnet”
Select the asset you wish to bridge to Polygon from Ethereum
The process to move funds to Matic involves two transactions, an Approve followed by the Deposit.
After approximately 7–8 minutes when your funds have been transferred, your assets will reflect in your Matic Wallet dashboard.
The Polygon network, similarly to the Ethereum network, has a native token utilized for transaction payments, to reward people in liquidity pools, and for those securing the network.
There are two ways to acquire MATIC:
Sushiswap or similar DEX — swap ETH or other assets for MATIC, then use bridge to move that MATIC to Polygon.
Faucet — this is my preferred method as faucets are totally free and you can take the small amount to purchase more MATIC with your bridged assets.
Polygon Faucet A faucet is essentially a pool of funds donated so that people who need access can get a small amount that will help them participate in the network.
There are a few faucets for Polygon but we suggest using https://matic.supply/ as it is simple and straightforward.
After you connect your wallet address, make sure you switch to the Polygon network and then request the funds.
It will take a short amount of time to receive the MATIC. The faucets generally have spam prevention and limits the amount of requests that can be made globally or by an individual wallet, so it can take a few minutes.
If you are feeling generous after using the faucet, it is a good thing to return some funds back to the pool address if/when you have extra.
Congratulations! You have successfully moved your assets and can now interact with DeFi on the Polygon Network.
