How to use MetaMask and Polygon (MATIC) – No Bridge Needed.

May 1, 2021 | Community Guides

The DeFi summer of 2020 was a beautiful thing. Lot’s of Ethereum based projects sought to solve problems centralised finance caused by removing the middlemen and replacing them with smart contracts and decentralised applications (DApps).

This is great on many levels; philosophical, technological and (what most people are here for) economical, AKA show me the money.

The pillars of the 2020 DeFi summer were:

  • Automated Market Makers and DEX – Uniswap and Sushi Swap

  • Lending and borrowing protocols – AAVE and Curve.

  • The one that stole the show, the OG yield aggregator, yearn finance.

As mentioned, all these protocols are built primarily on the Ethereum mainnet and as such, caused an awful lot of traffic on Ethereum which led to further congestion on the network.

Gas prices (fees for transacting on Ethereum; paid in ETH) rose and often marginalised the average retail investor and degen pricing them out of trades which could cost anywhere from $50-100 per transaction.

If I was to use Ethereum as I now use Binance Smart Chain and Polygon, based on the 700+ transactions I have done, it would have cost me anywhere between $35,000-70,000… I don’t know about you but, the amount of capital I am investing, with these fees I would hardly be profitable.

In stepped the Binance Smart Chain which saw extremely great usage and has since surpassed the number of transactions of Ethereum per day. That being said, opportunities in BSC are dwindling, added to the fact that the congestion is starting to play a role in making transactions very “clunky” to say the least.

It is still very usable and I use it probably every other day. I must admit, I am half the problem as I have begun to up the Gwei to 7-10 if I need a quick transaction on BSC. If others begin to do the same, we may get to a situation where nodes that secure the network are consistently prioritising the higher Gas prices and again, we exclude the smaller retail investor.

I believe this is a way off but the main point I am trying to make here is this: If you missed DeFi Summer and you missed the beginning of the BSC boom, fear not the third time’s a charm.

I wrote an article for Polygon (formerly known as Matic) recently following their recent rise after their Coinbase listing. When I started researching the project I immediately reinvested. Yes, I have paper hands and I have sinned.

I got involved in the Matic IEO, got complacent and like an idiot, sold very early. But, as I said, I bought high and plan to sell higher. That is how you do it, right?

If you are interested in the article that convinced me to get back in, HERE it is.

What is Polygon (MATIC)?

Polygon provides a second layer on top of Ethereum which is compatible with the main Ethereum blockchain. This is known as Layer 2.

This helps handle transactions off of the Ethereum mainnet, whilst still having the interoperability and connection to the gold standard blockchain that is Etheruem.

Polygons plasma chains are their own blockchain that runs on a proof of stake. This is different to the current proof of work consensus mechanism that underpins the Ethereum mainnet.

I had been interested in projects building on top of Polygon ever since writing that previous article and I kept a close eye on them.

Last week is when I knew it was time to dive in and the Polygon ecosystem had started to take off. There were a few factors that I believe catalysed this:

  • First, BSC started being clunky. This could be caused by a few things such as moon boy season happening over there with things like Safemoon and Rocketmoon etc. Pancake swap migration to V2 was happening and finally, an overall increase in BSC holders addresses, made for not a pleasant user experience.

  • AAVE hit $1bn total value locked in their Layer 2 protocol. This at the time was 1/10th of all funds locked in AAVE. It is now up to $2bn and 1/7th of all funds! I am not a mathematician but this thing is growing.

  • Curve also just crossed over $100m TVL.

The big players on Ethereum are sensing that they can also deploy on Ethereum compatible chains such as Polygon and they will pull in some huge numbers.

As much as I love AAVE and Curve, I believe the short term plays are expanding and emerging markets. I know that sounds ridiculous to not class AAVE and Curve as emerging but they have been around a while in crypto terms now and the value has been and went for early-stage investors. Long term… they are both excellent investments in my opinion.

But, here at blocmates, we like to get in on the ground floor. That does come with associated risk but also great rewards. We are early investors in Beefy Finance at $75/BIFI and Auto Farm when it was around a $4m market cap.

Believe me, when I say this, I believe there is something special happening in the Polygon ecosystem and there are some first movers who are taking advantage.

Become a Patron!

Opportunities currently on Polygon –

As this is a very new ecosystem being built the best idea would be to take a look at other players on Ethereum and BSC and see who succeeded then find the best protocols with a similar product and go from there.

DEX on Polygon – QuickSwap

The fastest-growing decentralised exchange on Polygon is Quick Swap. With a market cap still sub $200 m at the time of writing, if you missed UNI and you then missed CAKE do yourself a favour. Not financial advice…

Yield farms on Polygon – Polywhale (KRILL)

The earliest came from the likes of Pancake Swap directly which allowed users to stake their bought CAKE in a pool to earn more CAKE. No brainer right?

Exactly. If you had entered one of Pancake Swap’s early CAKE pools and farmed it since the beginning, you would be up around 40x plus the interest gained during that time. I wouldn’t even like to put a number on it but it will definitely be above 200x returns.

So where is the Polygon opportunity… glad you asked…

Introducing Polywhale (KRILL) – We are big fans of KRILL and their #KRILLIONAIRES hashtag on Twitter. We have spoken with the team directly who are good guys and very helpful.

There are some excellent farming opportunities for your KRILL but also for the QUICK token too.

A very clean and familiar user interface on Polywhale which I believe I will write a full article on in the coming days so make sure to follow us on Twitter @blocmates and on Instagram @bloc.mates to be updated first when this comes out.

Or equally, join our free Telegram community for a chat with fellow like-minded crypto-nauts.

Yeah, upon writing this I think we will do a deep dive into KRILL and maybe put out a video on YouTube too.

So the only hurdle to access these projects is that they are not on a tier 1 exchange like Binance, Acendex or AAX… yet.

So you have to buy them through a DEX, in particular a DEX on Polygon. This is where Quick Swap comes in.

But first, you need funds to buy and when you are using the Polygon network you buy using MATIC.

The problem with cross-chain bridges. 

For now, cross-chain bridges are slow, clunky and if you are coming from Ethereum to Polygon EXPENSIVE.

A cross-chain bridge allows you to cross over from one network to another with your tokens. So, for example, if you had MATIC in your MetaMask (Ethereum Mainnet) but you wanted to buy QUICK or KRILL on Quick Swap, then you are going to have to get your MATIC from the Ethereum mainnet to the Matic Chain (Polygon ecosystem).

Think of each ecosystem as a planet and to transact on a different blockchain you need some form of bridge to get there. So you put your MATIC in a rocket (cross-chain bridge) and send it to another planet.

Before you even attempt this you need to configure your MetaMask to MATIC network.

If you don’t have MetaMask you need to download it using google chrome and add it as an extension. MetaMask link https://metamask.io/

Next, you need to configure your MetaMask to the Matic Network using the steps in the video below.

Config info –

Network Name: Matic Mainnet

New RPC URL: https://rpc-mainnet.matic.network

Chain ID: 137

Symbol: MATIC

Block Explorer URL: https://explorer.matic.network/

The post in the video was taken from our Patreon which I posted a tutorial over a week ago on this. More content like this is released early in there and it is less than the price of a pint of beer a month. The link is HERE.

How to load a Matic wallet?

Bridging from ETH or BSC –

Sending funds from your other ETH or BSC addresses can be very slow if you use a bridge but some seem to do it this way.

You can do this and there are several places to do it. Including https://wallet.matic.network/

Now… before you do this, I nearly went grey and broke using the bridge…

Other bridges include apps like AnySwap or xpollinate. When using a bridge please ensure there is enough liquidity there to migrate your tokens from one chain to another.

If you don’t want to lose your hair and a lot of ETH in the process you can do what I did.

If you have an Ascendex account (formerly Bitmax) you can send funds to your Acendex wallet, buy MATIC and then withdraw MATIC using the Matic network to your newly configured MetaMask wallet.

Please note – If you have just signed up to Ascendex today, you will have to wait 24 hours to withdraw. So for those who already had an account on Bitmax/Ascendex this is the best option.

Top tip – When sending funds to Ascendex you can use BNB (BEP20) to save fees or you can use the Tron Network to send USDT for roughly $1 as opposed to $20 sending it on ETH (ERC20).

If you don’t already have an Ascendex account you can sign up HERE for reduced trading fees.

A final tip when using Polygon (Matic) to find and explore contracts and projects you can use this  explorer tool – https://explorer-mainnet.maticvigil.com/

This is similar to Etherscan and BSCscan and if you are having problems finding the contract address to buy on Quick Swap then you will need to use this.

Here is a quick video of how to use the explorer to find tokens that are not already listed on QuickSwap.

That’s about it for now, we are definitely going to do a few more articles on Quickswap and Polywhale.

If you are reading this Quickswap (or any other projects for that matter) get in touch we would love to work with you on more content like this!

[email protected]

We are looking to start building a YouTube channel with walkthroughs and Podcasts with those in the industry. If this sounds like something you would like to be involved in, give us a shout, we would be happy to have you on.

Want access to my portfolio?

We have a Patreon page which is the price of a pint per month. It lets you know what we are buying and selling and when. It also has full access to my portfolio. You won’t get this access anywhere else.

We also have a live Early Retirement Index on there. A list of coins we believe will perform excellently over the next few years.

You can join HERE

We hope this helps and has been useful. If you have any questions just get in touch and we will be more than happy to help. Please remember to sign up using the referral links to help support our platform.

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