How to mint a token on the Polygon Network when you can’t code at all.

Prologue | You’ll have to get $ETH. And $MATIC. And then send them over a “bridge.” Sorry. There’s no way around this.

Step 1 | Install MetaMask and add some coins. (Everything in web3 is a transaction. In other words, costs and fees. You will click, click, click “yes” / “confirm” to costs… a lot… in web3.) Option: You can install an extension in Brave Browser (desktop). Don’t skip the part where you are supposed to save (write down) your keys and password.

Step 2 | Get $ETH and $MATIC from the Ethereum Mainnet onto the Polygon Mainnet in the MetaMask wallet. (Oh, you’ll have to add that first.) The good news is that you don’t need a lot. Fifty dollars worth is probably too much.

Step 3 | Install some random programs coders use. (…baby versions of them anyway.) And some plugins that provide pre-written stuff about smart contracts. [Visual Studio Code]- [Solidity Plugin]- [Blockchain Development Kit for Ethereum]. (…ok so truthfully I’m not sure I actually “had to” do this part as I only end up copy pasting some code into the Ethereum magical contract maker online…but I couldn’t handle the angry red underlines that you get when VSCode can’t reference something. Maybe this could’ve been a text file. So there.)

Step 4 | Make the contract. “Make” the contract by copy/pasting some code, with your brilliant idea for a coin name.

// SPDX-License-Identifier: Unlicensed
pragma solidity ^0.8.0 <=0.9.0;

import "@OpenZeppelin/contracts/token/ERC20/ERC20.sol";

contract GlymmerPolygonToken is ERC20 {
    uint constant _initial_supply = 1000000 * (10**18);

    constructor() ERC20("GlymmerPolygonToken", "GLYMR") {
        // Mint 1000000 tokens to msg.sender
        _mint(msg.sender, _initial_supply);
    }
}

Step 5 | Go to Remix Ethereum and mint the coin. See the transaction recording on PolygonScan.

Step 6 | The token is on the blockchain. Make it visible to the MetaMask wallet by using the “Import Token/Custom Token” feature.

Step 7 | (I dunno - share them?) Anyway, it’s complete.

Epilogue | I named my token “Glymmer” / $GLYMR since I constantly use an emoji that looks like one. ✨

I later found out that the word “gly” means a unit of a billion lightyears. Or an abbreviation for a sweet crystalline solid in biochemistry. Both sound random and shimmery. I like.

Anyway, this demo could be one of the world’s most simplistic smart contracts so it probably has issues that come with something not at all robust. But I would love to do something with these tokens, like make a $MATIC / $GLYMR faucet or something. We will see if I bother.