How to Bridge to Polygon (Matic)

With gas fees sky-high on the Ethereum network, Polygon is a great choice for more price-sensitive DeFi investors looking for high yields. The Polygon network (formerly known as Matic) is built on top of Ethereum and has a great ecosystem of dapps, including many of the big names from the Ethereum ecosystem such as AAVE and Curve. The key difference with Ethereum of course is the cost, and on Polygon you can enjoy negligible transaction fees and high network speeds (albeit at the cost of decentralisation).

So, with so many great opportunities on offer, how can you bridge your funds over and get started?

Preparation

It’s worth quickly mentioning that before you start bridging, you’re going to need a Polygon wallet address. Happily, Polygon is compatible with MetaMask, so it’s easy to get started straight away without having to download and set up a new wallet. We already covered adding BSC to MetaMask in an earlier article, and for Polygon the steps are identical. If you don’t have a MetaMask wallet, you can follow this simple guide.

In MetaMask, simply go to Settings > Networks > Add a Network.

Enter the following information:

​Network Name: Polygon (or anything you want)

New RPC URL: https://rpc-mainnet.maticvigil.com/

ChainID: 137

Symbol: MATIC

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

Now that you’ve added Polygon, you’re ready to start transferring funds.

Method 1: Withdrawing From an Exchange

Probably the easiest way to get funds to the Polygon network is to withdraw the MATIC token from an exchange. Specifically, Binance and KuCoin both offer MATIC withdrawals to the Polygon network (note that other exchanges such as Coinbase and FTX do not).

Taking Binance as an example, all you have to do is convert your funds to MATIC and then withdraw, making sure to select the Polygon network. The steps will be very similar to the guide we did for getting BNB on Binance and sending to BSC.

Once you’ve converted, go to your wallet and pick withdraw.

The fee will be low, and the transaction should be quick. Note that your Polygon wallet address on MetaMask will be the same as your Ethereum address (and indeed your BSC address), so it’s absolutely essential you select Polygon from the Network dropdown.

Once you receive your MATIC on Polygon, you can use Quickswap or another DEX to convert it to whatever you want (remembering to always leave a little bit of MATIC for fees!).

Method 2: Using a Bridge

Assuming you already have some funds in the world of DeFi, using a bridge is the quickest way to transfer your assets to Polygon. There are a huge number of bridges that support Polygon, some of which are listed below:

Celer C-Bridge: https://cbridge.celer.network/

AnySwap: https://anyswap.exchange/

Official Polygon Bridge: https://wallet.matic.network/bridge

Note that the official bridge only supports the Ethereum network, while the likes of Celer support a huge number of networks.

Let’s take Celer as an example.

All you need to do is connect your wallet (in the top right of the screen) and make sure MetaMask is set to the correct network (the network you’re sending from).

At the top select the network you are sending from, and at the bottom select Polygon. The transfer fees are very low, but remember you’ll still need to pay gas, so on Ethereum that might be pricy.

The number of tokens that can be sent on Celer is quite limited (just those in the image above), but it includesthe most common stablecoins.

When transferring, you’ll need to approve the token in MetaMask for a small gas fee.

After this, you can then submit the transfer.

Note that in this case you don’t enter a receiving address because your MetaMask account uses the same address regardless of network. The bridge will simply switch the assets to a different network within the same wallet address.

Limitations of Bridges

Although bridges seem incredibily convenient at first, in reality transferring funds cross-chain is rarely a seamless process. For a start, only a select number of tokens can actually be bridged, so it’s not like you can just move your entire portfolio intact (not all tokens are supported on all networks).

In the images above we transferred some of the BUSD stablecoin to Polygon, but without any of the MATIC token at the other end, it would be stuck there. On Polygon, you need MATIC to do anything, and it’s not always easy to get hold of from DEXes on other networks.

Therefore, after transferring your funds via the bridge, you may still need to go to Binance or KuCoin to withdraw a little bit of Matic.

Given this limitation, it might be easier just to make a single transfer of MATIC from the exchange, and then swap it on Quickswap or SushiSwap (as described in Method 1).

Faucets

To solve the annoying problem of being stuck with no tokens for gas fees, there is such a thing as a “faucet”, which purports to give you a small amount of a token for free on completing a captcha (a fraction of a cent each time). Unofficial faucets can be unreliable or even unsecure, so always exercise extreme caution with these.

That said, we tested the one at Mac&Cheese Finance and it worked (even if the captcha took multiple attempts). It’s much better to transfer your own funds though, and faucets really should be seen as a last resort to get you out of a tight spot.

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