Polygon: the cheapest EVM chain supported by OpenSea

The NFT space has embraced the multichain future, with thriving ecosystems on alternative chains like VeChain, MultiversX, Harmony, and so forth. XP.NETWORK NFT bridge supports 24+ of them. 

NFT transactions require several checks and changes of the contract storage, so on older-generation networks they result
in high fees and slow processing if the priority fees are not set to high. No wonder that project teams look for faster, cheaper chains to launch metaverses and Play2Earn games. Some blockchains have special token standards that are much better optimized for NFTs than ERC-721, and the minting fees are close to zero. 

However, launching a game on a lesser-known blockchain creates a marketing problem. The chain can have a very active NFT community of its own, but how do you make your project known outside of that community? It’s not easy to bring in users from the outside and motivate them to try a new chain.

Traditionally the best way to access big NFT audiences and liquidity is to list a collection on OpenSea. Even with the explosive rise of Blur in 2023, it’s still the second-biggest in the world by volume. 

The issue is that OpenSea supports only a few networks: Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Optimism. So if your collection resides on a chain that’s not on the list, you’ll need to bridge it to list on OpenSea. 

Expanding a collection to a new chain isn’t a problem: XP.NETWORK allows you to bridge hundreds and even thousands of NFTs at once and save on fees. But which of the chains on OpenSea is best? 

Polygon is a logical choice. An NFT transfer on Polygon costs less than $0.01 vs. $5-6 on Ethereum and $0.5 on BNB Chain. It’s also very fast. Sure, Solana is fast, too, but Polygon is an EVM chain (in fact, it was built as an Ethereum sidechain), so many Ethereum users are familiar with it. 

Polygon isn’t the fastest: it takes a couple of minutes to fully confirm a transaction, in spite of the high TPS. Still, considering the fees, a large ecosystem, and a global exposure on OpenSea, it’s a good alternative to Ethereum. We receive a lot of requests to bridge NFT collections to Polygon, including from non-EVM chains. Below we’ll list some of them.

3 NFT projects bridged to Polygon that you should check out 

We’ve selected three projects to demonstrate the variety of blockchains from which projects are bridged to Polygon. 

Rocket Monsters 
Bridged from: Harmony One 
 
Rocket Monsters is a Play-and-Own universe filled with playable NFTs: characters, weapons, virtual land, etc. The game is created using Unreal Engine 5. You can build structures, engage with other users in PvP battles, etc.