Sweet Elyse: StarSwap | An evolution of Uniswap
I first heard of Uniswap earlier on in the year but didn’t really pay much attention to it initially — why? well with the world in turmoil I was putting my focus elsewhere, I really didn’t want to waste time with others when there could have been bigger fish to catch.
However, after a little bit of reading up on it, I realised just how much potential it had and how much it could impact the cryptocurrency world.
Uniswap, in essence, is a trustless ERC20 token swapping protocol where, instead of using traditional methods to exchange (i.e. use of order books), users can trade against liquidity pools that are pooled into smart contracts. Anyone can add liquidity to a token pool and earn fees accumulated by the protocol. Fees are given to liquidity providers through a 0.30% charge on all trades made on the platform, so ultimately there is a huge incentive to add liquidity.
My first interaction with Uniswap was when I was trying to get rid of some tokens that had been sitting in my wallet for over two years that had been airdropped randomly, this happens sometimes and can be a nice surprise. Anyway, the tokens were worth around $10 and I was happy to finally be rid of them.
This is where my gripe with Uniswap, and the Ethereum network for that matter, started — Gas! (or Gwei -a denomination of Ethereum), the name used when referring to a transaction fee when sending a transaction over the network, is used on every trade and if the gas prices are high at that given time, you will be paying a lot of money to get your transaction through. Needless to say, I gave up trying to sell my tokens as a $6 dollar gas fee was far too much to get the $10 for my tokens. Obviously, when the gas price is lower, you will not be paying a huge gas fee and the platform works really well, but what if you didn’t have to pay that gas high gas fee? For the record, I’m not anti-Uniswap, I use it on a regular basis, but as a penny-pincher, I watch the gas prices like a hawk.
☆ ★ Introducing StarSwap ☆ ★
StarSwap is a self-confessed evolution over Uniswap, with instant transactions and next to zero gas fees. It uses a layer 2 solution (A protocol built on top of an existing blockchain) called the Matic Network to achieve this.
In order to start using StarSwap, you will need to move your tokens to the Matic Network. This can be achieved using the Matic Wallet. Once you’ve connected your wallet to the website, I use Metamask, you will be able to send your tokens from the Mainnet to the Matic network by clicking on the Switch to PoS button.
Make sure that the Matic Wallet button is highlighted and then click on deposit. Once open, you’ll be greeted with a number of options.
Once you are happy with what you’ve entered, you can go ahead and press the Deposit button. As with anything wallet related, you will need to confirm the transaction. Once you have approved the transaction, you will need to wait sometime until it is available on the Matic network. I waited about 8–10 minutes for mine to go through which in reality feels way longer than it actually is…
Assuming all is well and the transaction has confirmed, you can check your newly transferred tokens by adding the Matic network to Metamask. This is as easy as opening the Metamask plugin and clicking on the Ethereum Mainnet button, selecting Custom RPC and then adding the following into the forms.
Now that you’ve added the Matic Mainnet, you should now be able to check your wallet on the Matic explorer, and any of the tokens you have sent over.
With all of that setup, you can now navigate over to the StarSwapApp and trade, add liquidity or farm to your heart’s content!
Originally published at https://www.sweetelyseblog.com.