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Gas free trading of NFTs on OpenSea with Polygon
Why you want to buy NFT on Polygon, and How.
If you have ever bought or sold any NFTs, you know you have to pay gas. Gas is the transaction fee that we, as users, have to pay the miners for maintaining the Ethereum network.
Recently, I bought the follow piece from artist Michael Chuah for 0.015 ETH (~$49)
For this transaction, I have to pay 0.017 ETH (~$57) in gas. Bring the total to 0.032 ETH (~$105)
That’s right! The gas fee is 113% of the item price!
The high gas fee gave a lot of collectors pause on buying NFTs.
Note that this happens on the minting side also, Michael had to pay gas when minting this piece.
This is why I am encouraging all artists and collectors to look into trading in the Polygon chain instead of the Ethereum chain. With the Polygon chain (a layer-2 blockchain), you can mint and buy NFT at zero gas fee.
You are still transacting using the ETH currency, it’s just that the money is deposited into another blockchain. The 2 blockchains are pretty much like 2 separate banks. Ethereum is a bank that charges high transaction fees, while Polygon is like a bank that does not charge transaction fees.
In the above example, if Michael minted the art in the Polygon chain, he would not have to pay gas while minting, I also would not need to pay gas when buying.
OpenSea has done a great job in making Polygon trading a seamless experience. One can start with relatively low friction.
With no gas fee, artists can mint more art and collectors can buy more art. A win-win situation.
Bridging ETH to Polygon
As a collector, you start by depositing money into the Polygon chain. A process known as ‘bridging’. Polygon is a separate blockchain from the Ethereum blockchain, moving ETH from Ethereum to Polygon needs to go through a bridge.
The easiest way to do that is to use the OpenSea interface. Inside OpenSea, click the top right hand…
