High Ethereum gas fees are what make many Gods Unchained players drop the idea of spending some money on the game. In 2021, when ETH was high, people reported ridiculous fees like 30-50$ for a transaction. And take into account that you have to make two transactions for transferring ETH from a crypto exchange to your balance on Immutable X. Sounds frightening when you suppose to send several dozen dollars only.
You can also buy crypto directly on Immutable X by means of Moonpay but paying fiat isn't the best option for many of us. Let's say you have earned $HIVE as a blogger on peakd.com and want to buy some NFTs in Gods Unchained, our favorite play2earn blockchain game. Sending this crypto to your bank account to buy crypto again looks weird and expensive.
So how it is to transfer ETH to Immutable X in June 2022? Read my step-by-step review with screenshots.
Watching Gas Price - Step 1
First, I was watching the gas price in gwei on Etherscan:
https://etherscan.io/gasTracker
Too many numbers on the page but I needed only gweis - the lower, the better.
I was watching it during the day and found out that the low spectrum was falling on prices below 30 gwei. Those days, ETH was bearish, crypto buyers were shocked by the recent grand fall of the market so there were not many transactions, everybody was waiting to see what would happen next - a fall or rise.
ETH/USDT 4H chart on June 17, 2022, price 1076 USDT - binance.com
Later at night (by Central European Time), I noticed even lower gas prices: 12-14 gwei.
From Crypto Stock to Metamask - Step 2
I started on Kucoin exchange with 100 USDT.
I bought 0.0926 ETH for that money (1080 USDT for 1 ETH).
I paid 0.0050 ETH fee on Kucoin for transferring this ETH to Metamask:
As the result, I received 0.0876 ETH in Metamask (Ethereum Mainnet).
Binance is Cheaper
Better I sent from Binance. They say that they take lower fees for ETH withdrawal: 0.0016 ETH for Ethereum (ERC20) - check the rate on this page.
To transer crypto from an exchange to an exchange, I use $TRX - a transaction costs only 1 TRX on Binance and most exchanges (around 0.06 USD). I buy TRX on exchange A, send TRX to exchange B, and, then, sell TRX for USDT to buy crypto I need - ETH, HIVE or anything.
✔️ Check alternative crypto exchanges in advance
Transfering ETH to Layer 2 of Immutable X - Step 3
Ok, I got ETH on Metamask but this wasn't the end of the story. Then, I needed to send that crypto to Layer 2 of Immutable X. I did this with the help of tokentrove.com interface.
When you already have ETH in your Metamask, click the green button Deposit on tokentrove.com:
Again watching the gas price
I was watching ETH gas price on https://etherscan.io/gasTracker and waiting for the best moment.
These days gas fees are much lower than they were when the ETH price was at its peak. So I waited until I saw the gas fee below 30 gwei and clicked Deposit on tokentrove. And this appeared next:
A small trick is here. If you choose to deposit all ETH you have in Metamask ("max" Amount), Metamask will say that you have no crypto to pay the gas fee - "Insufficient funds". So you need to choose a smaller amount to transfer in order to leave some ETH in Main Chain for paying the gas fee. On the screenshot above, I chose to leave 0.004564 ETH in order to allow Metamask to take gas fee from this money.
You never know what exact gas fee you will have to pay, but you will know the estimated number on a later stage in Metamask:
Metamask refreshes the data so you can wait until Metamask shows a suitable gas fee to click "Confirm" to transfer your funds to Layer 2.
First, I tried to deposit the max and, then, I saw "Insufficient funds" and found out what approximate amount of ETH I should have left in Layer 1 for paying a gas fee.
If you are not sure what I mean, check this video:
Ok, I did it, I clicked "Confirm" and this is what I saw:
The link on the screenshot was useful. This is where I learned that the gas fee was only 0.003331 ETH (3.5 USD at the time) and the gas price was 26 gwei.
How Long ETH Goes to Layer 2 IMX
It was another uncertainty. Somebody on Reddit said that the transfer from ETH L1 to L2 IMX sometimes takes a day. Perhaps, this info is outdated. Because in my case, it took only 5 minutes. 🙂 On tokentrove.com, they announce this:
Depositing usually takes less than 15 minutes but occasionally takes longer. If having issues, please visit https://support.immutable.com
As a result, I received 0.083 ETH in my Tokentrove balance (And 0.0012 ETH left on Ethereum Mainnet).
Of course, I found the same sum on market.immutable.com:
Thus
💲 From crypto exchange to Metamask: I paid 0.005 ETH as a fee on Kucoin. (Binance takes less as I said above).
💲 From Main Net to Immutable X Layer 2: I paid 0.003331 ETH as the gas fee (the gas price was 26 gwei at that moment).
I spend 100 USD for ETH on my crypto exchange and I got 90 USD in my IMX balance. (Plus, I have 0.0012 ETH on L1 in Metamask.)
Thank you for stopping by!
I'll share what GU cards I bought with this ETH in the next post 🤠
The header image: pexels.com