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Base Chain and Bridging Tokens

squirrel_hatJan 23, 2025, 12:41:08 AM

Minds has implemented Base Chain technology into the website. Tokens are now supported on Base Chain, and they will have SIGNIFICANTLY reduced fees going forward. Let me explain this change and how you can take advantage of it.

Last updated

03/02/25

Objective

Bridge your Ethereum and MINDS tokens over to Base Chain to receive reduced gas fees.

Concept

Cryptocurrency requires computational power to operate. Every time you send some crypto, there are computers out there processing that transaction. This processing is not free; it requires electricity to power those computers, after all. So built within cryptocurrency technology is a way to pay the people running those computers. Those are the transaction fees charged with every crypto transaction.

MINDS tokens are no exception. As long as the tokens are off-chain and on the Minds servers, the fees are minimal and ostensibly covered by the Minds devs. Tipping someone with your engagement tokens is never going to cost you anything. However, if you ever wanted to transfer those tokens on-chain and into your wallet… well, that was going to cost you a pretty penny.

MINDS tokens are a certain form of crypto called ERC-20 tokens. They are based on and derived from Ethereum. Because of this, ERC-20 token fees are always charged in ETH. This is called a gas fee. You need enough ETH to “fuel” a token transaction. No matter how many tokens you have, they are never going to pay the transaction fee. Without ETH, your transaction will be stuck and you won’t be sending tokens ANYWHERE.

This adds a bit of notoriety to token transactions, because you need a completely different cryptocurrency to use them. However, that’s not too bad, right? Just hold a little ETH in your wallet and you should be good to go.

If only things were that easy. ETH gas fees are notably high among crypto fees. And gas fees for MINDS tokens are EXORBITANTLY high. Not only do token transactions cost ETH, but they cost a LOT of ETH. If you didn’t have ~0.02 of ETH in your wallet, you were basically locked out of token transactions. This meant no transferring your tokens to your wallet, and no investing your tokens in Holding or Liquidity Rewards. This issue was basically locking down the entire MINDS token economy.

Well, the crypto developers at Coinbase have fixed this problem with Base Chain. Base Chain is a “Layer-2 solution serving as a foundational blockchain that elevates Ethereum’s capacity for handling transactions.” I do not FULLY understand the Base Chain technology, but I can give you the gist of it.

Ethereum and MINDS tokens reside on the mainnet Ethereum blockchain by default. But now you can “bridge” them onto Base Chain blockchain. This provides additional advantages. The only analogy I can make is with the Pokemon videogames. Let’s say you have a Pikachu in Pokemon Red. If you transfer that Pikachu to Pokemon Silver, the following generation game, that Pikachu will have everything that it had before, but it can now hold an item. Held items were not programmed into the games in Pokemon Red, but they were present in Silver. Once transferred, the pokemon will have access to the new options in the new game.

This is just like tokens or Ethereum going onto Base Chain. It will work just like it did before, but with added functionality and advantages. Your crypto is the same; it is stored in the same wallet and effectively works the same way. It will just have decreased gas fees as well.

As a matter of fact, the utility of Base Chain crypto is so great that Minds now uses it by default. Minds will pay out rewards in Base Chain tokens instead of default mainnet tokens from now on. And Minds will require Base Chain ETH to cover Transfer gas fees.

Even though Base Chain Ethereum is required, it’s definitely the better option regardless. Where transferring your tokens on-chain before would have cost you ~0.02 ETH (~$60 at the time), it will now cost you a negligible fee of around a couple cents.

This will eliminate the high cost of entry into holding and investing tokens. Base Chain will allow you to transfer and invest your tokens if it was too expensive before.

Requirements

A Minds-compatible Web3 crypto wallet
MINDS tokens and/or Ethereum (ETH) in that wallet

Getting your crypto onto the Base Chain network doesn’t require very much at all. All you need are the crypto you wish to bridge in a Web3 crypto wallet. That’s it.

You don’t need to verify with a unique phone number, you don’t need a Minds+ subscription, you don’t even need a Minds user account.

The bridge function on Minds is powered by Superbridge, a public web browser app. If for some reason you aren’t using the Minds website, you can just go to the Superbridge site directly. You don’t even have to be on Minds at all.

Unfortunately, bridging mainnet Ethereum will require one more moderate gas fee. It will be ~15% of the amount you are bridging.

Guide For Desktop Web Browser

Have your Web3 wallet accessible. If it’s a phone app, open it and unlock it on your phone.

If it’s a browser extension, open it from the Extensions option on your web browser. It should be on the top right of your browser if you are using a Chrome-based browser. It will be represented by a little circular symbol specific to the wallet you are using. There should be some text to indicate the extensions you have, but if anything is unclear, mouse-over any browser buttons to reveal their names. Click your wallet extension to open it, and unlock it with your password in the popup window that appears.

Now that your Web3 wallet is open, go to your Wallet Page on Minds. From any Minds page, click Wallet in the left sidebar.

Under the Token tab at the top, select the Move to Base Chain tab. This will bring up the bridge app via Superbridge. It has to load, so don’t fret if it takes a moment.
There should be a blue button at the bottom that says “Connect wallet.” Note that Superbridge and Minds are two different sites. Just because your wallet is connected to Minds already, that doesn’t mean it’s connected to Superbridge as well. You will have to connect here even if your wallet is already connected to Minds.

Click the button and a popup window will appear. Select the wallet app you are using.
If your Web3 wallet is installed as an extension on your browser, the page will attempt to open it in a popup window. If you haven’t already unlocked it, it should prompt you to put in your password. The wallet window will then prompt you to connect to Superbridge. Hit “Connect” in your wallet.

If the page does not see a wallet extension, it will present a QR code. Scan the QR code with your phone wallet app to connect your wallet app to Superbridge.

Now that you are connected, the first thing you want to bridge is your Ethereum. Ethereum on Base Chain has much cheaper gas fees. But aside from that, Minds now only uses Base Chain Ethereum for Transfer gas fees. Default mainnet Ethereum no longer works, so you are going to need to bridge your Ethereum anyway.
The left form in the bridge app is the blockchain you are starting with. Select “Ethereum” because we want to bridge crypto that’s on the Ethereum mainnet chain.

The right form is the chain we are bridging to. Select “Base” because that’s the chain we want to bridge our crypto onto.

The bottom form is the actual crypto we want to bridge. There are multiple cryptocurrencies on the Ethereum mainnet chain besides just Ethereum itself. MINDS tokens are one of them. However, we want to do Ethereum first, so select ETH/Ether.

As stated before, you will need to pay one more moderate gas fee to bridge your ETH onto Base Chain. Luckily, any ETH you bridge is going to take you a long way, so you won’t need much of it. You can bridge $1 worth of ETH which will cover 30 token transactions, and it will only cost you $1.15 in ETH.

Because of this, you don’t need to bridge all of your ETH. But there’s no harm in bridging more of it. Base Chain ETH has only advantages. It will also cover fees for other ERC-20 tokens as well, for example. So I don’t really see a need for mainnet Ethereum anymore. If at some future point you do need mainnet Ethereum, you can use Superbridge again to take your ETH off Base Chain. If you want to be cautious, just bridge around $10 worth.

Crypto bridged to Base Chain will be differentiated from crypto that isn’t bridged. So if you have some Ethereum bridged and some not, there will be two separate ETH designations in your wallet. You can tell which ones are bridged to Base Chain because they will have a little Base Chain marker in the corner of the token symbol.

Now, when you want to Transfer your tokens on-chain, the gas fee will deduct from your Base Chain ETH instead of default ETH, and at a much lower rate.

As for Base Chain tokens, here’s the great part. Minds will transfer Base Chain tokens to your wallet from now on. You won’t have to bridge tokens every single time you get a payout.

However, any previous on-chain tokens you received from Minds will need to be bridged if you want them on Base Chain. I recommend doing this because only Base Chain tokens will count towards Holding Rewards. Default mainnet tokens will be excluded from rewards calculations from now on. But you can bridge them just like you bridged the ETH.

Navigate and connect to the bridge app just like you did before.
As you can see, I have zero MINDS tokens available to bridge. That’s because all of my tokens have already been bridged, and I don’t have anymore mainnet tokens.

If you have any mainnet tokens, the bottom form of the Superbridge app will inform you how many you have. Feel free to bridge all of them. Base Chain tokens are going to be the standard from now on and you won’t really need mainnet tokens anymore.

Once you bridge any holdover mainnet tokens, you shouldn’t need to bridge tokens anymore. Any on-chain tokens you receive from Minds will be on Base Chain from now on, so you won’t have to bother with this step again.

Once you have bridged some ETH and all of your tokens, you will be good to go. You will have everything you need to continue your token investment.

Workaround

There shouldn’t be any reason why you can’t access the Superbridge app from Minds. If you are reading this article, you are already on the Minds website. However, if there is some reason why you are not using Minds, you can simply go to the Superbridge site directly.

https://superbridge.app/base

Here you can follow the same steps to bridge your ETH and tokens, and do it all from the original dedicated site.

Pros

Bridging your Ethereum onto Base Chain will reduce your gas fees from ~$60 to a few cents. Bridging tokens onto Base Chain will make them available for Holding and Liqudity Rewards.

Cons

Despite how much cheaper this makes gas fees, this adds one more step to investing in tokens. Unfortunately, this will filter out some people who are worried about going through a long, complicated process.

Links

Banner artwork by @slightlyoffkey

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