We now eliminate withdrawal transaction fees to Polygon, offering the quickest and most affordable way to get your currency into the DeFi ecosystem.
We’re the first regulated U.S. exchange to launch support for Polygon (formerly Matic), a full stack scaling solution giving access to Ethereum to allow faster and less costly access to decentralized finance protocols. You’ll now be able to withdraw from your Okcoin account directly to Polygon, saving some of the transaction fees you’d normally pay.
Polygon is growing very quickly: The value locked on the protocol was $500 million in mid-April and has reached ~$7 billion today, a 1400% increase in one month. The first step of our partnership with Polygon is this integration to provide an easier way to withdraw ERC20 tokens and ETH from Okcoin into Polygon, eliminating the withdrawal transaction fee. That means fewer fees and more tokens for you.
Note: We’re working with Polygon on creating a bridge back to enable deposits from Polygon to Okcoin — it’s coming soon. Only withdrawals from Okcoin to Polygon are currently enabled.
What’s the difference between “layer 1” and “layer 2” in crypto?
Different layers refer to different protocols. Layer 1, also called the “base layer”, is the primary blockchain where transactions are settled — the largest being Bitcoin and Ethereum. This is why transactions occurring on the layer 1 of a blockchain ecosystem are sometimes called “on-chain transactions”. With increasing usage, layer 1 chains can quickly become congested.
Layer 2s are secondary protocols built on top of layer 1s, usually with different properties and trade-offs. For instance, a layer 2 solution might have lighter decentralization requirements than its layer 1 and, for that reason, be able to provide faster and less costly transactions. This is the case of Bitcoin for instance, where the layer 1 is the Bitcoin blockchain itself and layer 2 solutions like the Lightning network allow for quicker transactions, for a fraction of layer 1 transactions price. Okcoin was also one of the first exchanges to implement the Lightning network, offering you near instantaneous and up to 99% cheaper Bitcoin transactions. Polygon provides in some ways a similar solution to Ethereum.
The aim of layer 2 solutions is to increase the base layer’s scalability: the ability of the blockchain to settle orders of magnitude more transactions, serve a much wider audience, and grow the ecosystem by reducing gas fees on the base layer. For us, it also aligns with our decentralization ideals. You shouldn’t be trapped on our platform. You should be able to access all the services crypto offers, whether it be Lightning-powered video games or cutting-edge finance protocols via Polygon.
Faster and cheaper access to decentralized finance protocols
With skyrocketing adoption, transactions on Ethereum’s first layer have become slow and expensive. This is why development on layer 2 solutions is considered a priority in the ecosystem while Ethereum continues on its transition to Eth 2.0. However, there are still hurdles to access them: Currently, you have to go through layer 1 first, and then access layer 2 from there, which takes time and incurs extra fees from the network.
Our integration removes the need to go through layer 1 to access Polygon.
How it works
Instead of having to pay a fee to withdraw the token from the exchange to a wallet on Ethereum’s layer 1, and then having to pay another fee to take the token from the layer 1 wallet to Polygon, simply withdraw from Okcoin directly into Polygon.
This helps you:
- Save on transaction fees and time
- Transfer tokens directly to Polygon applications, without having to go through Ethereum’s first layer
- Swap assets built on Ethereum (called ERC20 tokens) across other blockchains — with low fees
These benefits apply to ETH and the following ERC20 tokens: USDT, LINK, MKR, USDC, DAI, USDK, COMP, YFI, SNX, YFII and UNI.
Get started
We’ve worked hard to make access to Polygon as simple as possible. Here’s how to do it on Okcoin, in three steps:
1. Access your withdrawal dashboard
On your Okcoin account, click the Withdrawal button under the Assets scrolling menu.
2. Select your Ethereum withdrawal network
Under the ETH withdrawal network menu, select ETH-Polygon.
3. Select your withdrawal options
Add the address you want to withdraw to as well as the amount of tokens you want to withdraw and click Continue.
Start using Polygon now
