Guide to Matic: Setup, Swapping and Liquidity providing on Polyzap
Intro
Matic, now Polygon is a L2 blockchain network. It is an off/side chain scaling solution for existing platforms to provide scalability and superior user experience to DApps/user functionalitiesSource
The Polygon vision is to become the protocol of the Internet of Blockchains for Ethereum. We can take a similar look at Polygon as we take on Cosmos but within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Similar to working with Binance Smart Chain, all existing Ethereum based tools work today provided they have support for changing the chain.
To make sure you understand the material I am going to provide some primer on Metamask, changing chains, the notion of using multiple chains in Metamask and so on. If your a pro, skip all that shit and go to ‘demo’
Changing the chain
Ethereum is a network protocol and there are multiple networks that follow the protocol. The ‘mainnet’ term put simply is the production environment of Ethereum, the grand stage.
There are also multiple test networks where developers can build their contracts without spending real ether. With this in mind wallets such as Metamask support changing the network so that transactions can be sent to either the main network or any of the test networks.
Additionally there exists an option to set your own network. Setting your own network could be needed if you wanted to work entirely with your own geth node. We can also use it to define the parameters to work with Matic chain.
It’s possible to maintain wallets for the Polygon, Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain networks all within Metamask. This can become a bit tedeous to manage but it provides a unified gateway to each of the chains.
In order to be able to switch to the Matic/Polygon chain, select the network, select custom RPC from the network dropdown and enter these details:
If the above makes no sense, open this article in a new window which has alot more of a step by step on adding a network.
Provided the Matic chain params are configured and saved, when you select the Matic network option, the base currency will change to Matic.
Demo — Exchange to Eth to Matic to Farming
For the rest of this I will provide a step by step guide assuming you are starting at an exchange. If you already have eth skip the first section.
Getting matic on the right chain
At the time of writing most entities still use the ERC20 Matic token which is on the Ethereum network. There is a point of confusion here which I’ll try to clear up:
On the polygon network there is Matic; the native token of the chain and WETH. This is similar to on Ethereum where ETH is the native token and you have WETH
When you deal with Matic on an exchange you most likely are dealing with the ERC20 Matic token on the eth mainnet. To get your funds to polygon chain you need to transfer funds via a bridge. Once you get from the Ethereum mainnet to matic via a bridge, similar to leaving the EU you now have to use a different native currency of exchange. Where you paid Ether for gas in the mainnet, on the Matic chain you pay for gas in Matic.
To bridge the funds I use Matic Wallet
To begin the bridge process select Move Funds to Matic.
You will be given a UI to select what asset to bridge over and a series of info panels on how long it will take. On the final modal before you confirm in metamask you will have an overview of the transfer
When I bridged .5 ETH to the Polygon network, I seem to have gotten a tiny portion of Matic also to facilitate transactions. Your milage may vary here and you may need to also bridge some Matic if you experience different.
Enter the amount of ETH to bridge and review the costs. Gas is involved and you will pay a variable charge here. Once confirmed it takes roughly 5–15 minutes for the ETH to show on the other chain.
Depositing liquidity and farming with the LP
In order to benefit from the zap farms on Polyzap; the Uniswap of Polygon network you will first need to provide some liquidity to a pair on Polyzap, which will in turn, return to you some LP tokens. These LP tokens can be staked in the Zap Farm.
In my example I am going to provide liquidity on the MATIC-PZAP pair and the tokens I get back (matic/pzap) will be staked in the appropriate farm.
Because I used Eth for this tutorial, I am going to transfer half of the eth into Matic and the other half into Pzap.
On the Zap Farms page [link] find the farm which is compatible with your lp token, in my case the pzap — matic pair.
First approve that specific contract and then click stake where you can select how much LP tokens to deposit.
When the tokens make it into the farm you will start to see the “PZAP Earned” field going up in realtime. Note the lockup period of each farm if you intend to use the gains for more farming.
Conclusion:
Polyzap is familiar if you used Uniswap or Sushiswap and the current yield opportunities look good. It could be a good space to get involved if you think the Polygon ecosystem has growth. As always I just want to see the fellas winning.
Heres a ref for Polyzap if you want it.
