howdy frens

Welcome back to another installment of your favorite series - Crypto Noobs! It's the series where I, a stoner NFT collector, show you how to do different shit with crypto and NFTs. In the last post, I showed you how to move CUB from Hive Engine to BSC so check that out here. Everyone's getting their CUB staked in preparation for the PolyCUB airdrop and launch so this is to kind of tie that together so you'll be ready to go. The final piece to the puzzle here is Polygon.

What the hell is Polygon?

Polygon is primarily a layer 2 solution for Ethereum. It is capable of connecting Ethereum compatible blockchains and supporting a multi-chain Ethereum Ecosystem. Again, the primary focus here is scaling decentralized applications (dApps) on Ethereum. Simple enough? Let's dig a little deeper here. Ethereum is an amazing blockchain and one of the most commonly used because of its well-established nature. It does have some challenges though, at least until the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade come out whenever that may be. These challenges include - low throughput, poor user experience due to gas fees, and network congestion risk.

Polygon provide solutions to these problems and much more.

Take a look at the stats. Here's where it gets good for the average users. A standard ETH transfer can cost well over $20 in gas, but that same ETH transfer on Polygon will cost less than a penny. NFT collectors know the pains of ETH gas fees - averaging over $50 just to transfer an NFT (JUST USE WAX!), but still less than a penny on Polygon. Wanna trade on Uniswap or whatever DEX? Those complex transactions cost over $200 in fucking gas! Not on Polygon, you're looking at about 1 penny. Wanna list an NFT on Opensea? Get ready to drop like $500 on gas just to list. Do the same on Polygon for a few cents. Get the idea?

That's the most of it for average users, developers you're on your own. Go check the Polygon website for all the technical shit that would confuse us Apes. There's a wealth of information and tools to help you deploy your dApp on Polygon in just a few minutes. Amazing what you can do with a multi-chain compatible scaling solution. Now you might be asking at this point... Polygon sounds good, but how do I use it? I gotchu fam. Let's get you plugged in.

Step 1:

Configure Metamask. If you don't have Metamask, download the extension and come back. Click the Network drop down menu, select Custom RPC.

Step 2:

Enter the Polygon Network information as follows.

Step 3:

Click save, and you're now able to connect to Polygon via Metamask. Now you need some MATIC for gas fees. There's a few ways to get MATIC such as bridging from Ethereum here or buying MATIC directly on chain with Fiat. Keep in mind - if you're bridging you will need ETH for the indane gas fee to do so. I recommend using Moonpay to buy with fiat.

Not really a step.

Need just enough MATIC to interact with dApps? Visit the faucet shown here to get enough MATIC to transact for free! you can use the faucet 3 times a day. Literally all you do is connect your wallet and click Receive to get 0.0005 MATIC in a few seconds. This is plenty to do some transactions and use the network. You can also get FREE MATIC every day on Pipeflare by clicking claim.

Congrats!

You're now all set for the PolyCUB airdrop and have enough MATIC to use the platform!

Thanks so much for reading. Next time I'll show you some dApps!