YGG is one of two tokens earned through participating in one of the many YGG Guilds with Splinterlands. (The other is YGGSPL, and I published a similar guide about it yesterday. See it here). There are 1Billion of these tokens, and you can read about the distribution in the whitepaper (here).
I am personally in YGG-Niflheim, one of the YGG Brawlers guilds. While I joined the guild for the people (and I have stayed for that as well), the ability to earn tokens with real value by doing the things I'd do in Splinterlands already is the cherry on top.
Earning some YGG is what prompted this guide. The season 2 rewards from YGG were recently distributed, and found interacting with the token a little more difficult than a lot of Splinterlands related things, largely because YGG is on a blockchain other than hive. So I developed this guide to hopefully help others like me who found it kind of confusing.
I joined during the second "Season" YGG ran. I'll speak to that season, with the knowledge that things may change in future season. During the season, there were a number of quests. Each quest had a pot of YGG attached, and everyone completing that quest evenly shared the pot. For example, one quest was to participate in 60% of the brawls during the season. Another quest was to do well in sponsored tournaments. There were a large variety of quests which allowed people to pick and choose which ones they wanted to focus on and played to a variety of personalities and strengths.
At the end of the season, the rewards were divvied out accordingly. Personally, I earned 715 YGGSPL (7e-5% of the total, much less relatively than I earned for YGGSPL, as YGG is used across multiple games).
While you may have earned YGG during the season, it is not a token on the hive blockchain, so claiming it requires a little extra work. First, you need a YGG badge. This is required to earn season rewards. To do so, go to https://yieldguild.io/ and connect your wallet. You can then click to mint your badge which will only cost you the ETH gas fees.
And then you'll have your badge. Here's mine. So pretty!
Now that you've got your badge, you'll be eligible for YGG rewards.
You can see the rewards you earned by going to https://yieldguild.io/tokens. The token will be in the ETH mainnet and you can do what you want with it.
You might now be asking, "great, I've gotten all these tokens. What do I do with them?" So far, the major use I've found for YGG is staking it. You can stake it on certain games' "reward vaults" for a period of time and earn the game-specific YGG token (e.g., YGGTHGP for Thetan Arena). To do so, go to https://yieldguild.io/reward-vaults, switch over to the Polygon network in metamask, sign the page to move your YGG there and stake as you wish. Although an extra step, having YGG in Polygon is advantageous because the fees for transactions of <1% the fee for ETH transactions, so staking and unstaking is really cheap!
There will also likely be future use that the guild hasn't even thought of, which will be voted on and added YGG expands.
But now you say "YGG sounds dumb. I want to sell mine! Give me [insert currency here] instead!" To which I say: I'd hold it. But if you insist, you can of course sell it as it is your token. Full disclosure, I sold mine, as I am more invested in Splinterlands and the ecosystem and don't really want to expand into other games at this time.
So far, I've shown you how to import your token. But now we want to see how to sell it. If it's still just sitting in your account from when you earned it, you can pretty easily go to sushiswap and exchange it for ETH or another currency. Simply go to https://yieldguild.io/tokens, and click "Trade" by YGG. This will take you to sushiswap, and you can trade through the liquidity pool.
If you, like me, first staked some YGG before moving it around, selling it is a little more complicated. You first need to bring it back to the main net. To do so, go to https://wallet.polygon.technology/login?redirectTo=%2Fpolygon%2Fbridge%2Fwithdraw and switch your wallet to the Polygon Network. If you haven't already, import the YGG token into the network by clicking "import token", adding the address (0x82617aA52dddf5Ed9Bb7B370ED777b3182A30fd1) and clicking "import". (If you want more images of importing a token, consult my YGGSPL guide - here.)
On the polygon website, click on the token you're withdrawing then type "YGG". If you've imported it into the network, it should appear and your balance should show up as well.
Then enter the amount and click "Transfer", and your YGG will go back to the mainnet. You can now transfer it via sushiswap just as if you had it there originally.
You can now do whatever you want with your YGG rewards! (I sold mine and turned them into YGGSPL, as I don't plan on switching games anytime soon.)
Interested in Splinterlands? Want to join a YGG guild and earn YGG? Use my referral link here and shoot me a message. I'll set you up with some early cards and try and get you in to one of the YGG guilds for a great community from day one!
