How To Convert Polygon Matic Into Polygon ETH (WETH) (2024)

Today, we will discuss What is Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) & how you can convert Wrapped eth (WETH) to Matic.

But first, let's start with some basic concepts:

Altcoin refers to any type of cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. Ethereum is the most popular altcoin, and people use the full name (Ethereum) when talking about the broader blockchain network but Ether (ETH) to discuss the currency itself.

ETH is digital, global money. It’s the currency of Ethereum apps. ETH is a cryptocurrency. It is scarce digital money that you can use on the internet — similar to Bitcoin. ETH is the lifeblood of Ethereum. When you send ETH or use an Ethereum application, you’ll pay a small fee in ETH to use the Ethereum network.

ERC-20 is a standard developed after the release of ETH that defines how tokens are transferred and how to keep a consistent record of those transfers among tokens in the Ethereum Network.

When we talk about wrapped tokens, we mean currencies hosted in the ETH blockchain having the same price as their underlying assets. These underlying assets do not necessarily have to be on the ETH blockchain. Thus, wrapped tokens allow interoperability between them and other digital assets.

There are different kinds of wrapped tokens. For instance, think about Wrapped Bitcoin — it has the same value as a BTC. A smart contract reproduces the price of a BTC in real-time for the wrapped Bitcoin. So you can always trade Wrapped BTC with Bitcoin at a 1:1 ratio.

There are different kinds of wrapped tokens and Wrapped Ethereum is definitely among the most popular ones. But what is it?

Wrapped Ethereum — also called WETH — is the token representing Ether, the original cryptocurrency from the Ethereum Network. WETH is the compatible version of Ether with ERC-20 standards.

The reason behind the creation of WETH is Interoperability. You need “Wrapped” Ethereum to trade ETH for other ERC-20 tokens.

Originally, Ether could not be traded directly with ERC-20 standards without a third party. If all the tokens created on the Ethereum network use the same standard, those tokens will be easily tradable and can immediately work with Dapps that use the ERC-20 standard.

To summarise, the main point of “wrapped” Ethereum is allowing decentralized financial activities without recurring to third parties and greater interoperability.

Wrapped tokens require guardians to hold the collateral. For instance, if you want to wrap Ethereum, a custodian will hold your Ether and give you Wrapped Ethereum in return. Custodians can be merchants, multi-signature wallets, or simply smart contracts. You send your collateral to the custodian and a wrapped version of your coin is minted. For instance, with Wrapped Ethereum, you could simply go to a DEX like Uniswap and swap your Ether for Wrapped Ethereum. The original Ether is converted to Wrapped Ethereum, but the value stays the same, similar to how dollar-pegged stablecoins work.

On the Ethereum blockchain, Wrapped Ethereum is needed to swap between tokens on decentralized applications. For instance, some decentralized applications cannot work with Ether as collateral but only with WETH. While Ether is needed to pay for gas, WETH is an ERC20-token that can be exchanged for other ERC-20 tokens on DeFi applications. Other blockchains may have their version of WETH, thereby creating a mirror image of Ether on their blockchain.

In this step by step guide, we will cover that how you can convert WETH into Matic. We’ll do it with the help of Sushiswap.

So we are going to Sushiswap.

Here you can see that you have different options for swap.

First, you need to connect your Metamask with the Matic mainnet where you have to wrap eth (WETH) on a polygon network.

Now you go to sushi.com and then select the token option because you want to convert it into Matic.

Now select WETH token.

You can select it from common bases or you can select it from the list as well.

Then after selecting the WETH token, you need to enter the amount which you want to convert. For example, let's try this by entering 0.005 WETH.

We’ll get 12.3037 Matic as shown in the above picture.

Now click on Approve WETH option.

The Metamask popup will come. You will need to confirm it. It also requires some transaction fee in like few Matics as you can see in this picture.

It will charge 0.001682 Matic.

Now click on confirm button. It will take a few seconds to approve WETH.

After that, you can view this transaction as well. As you can see the Swap option. This will enable the swap button option.

This is the confirmation message that appeared where you can see 12.1665 of WETH into Matic and this much of fee as you can see in this picture.

Now click on the Confirm Swap.

Again confirmation message will appear from Metamask. Then you need to check that it has some gas.

Then click on the confirm and the transaction has been submitted.

You can view this transaction on explorer by clicking the view on explorer option.

This is the polyscan, where you can view the transaction. Just refresh the page and you will see this transaction has been confirmed.

As you can see the wrapped eth (WETH) is converted into Matic.

You can see this on Metamask as well.

So this is 19.1281 WETH which is successfully converted into MATIC.

In this article, we understood Wrapped Ethereum (WETH), how it works & how they are converted on a polygon network.