WalletConnect + Decentraland

WalletConnect, the open protocol for securely connecting mobile crypto coin wallets to dApps, is now fully supported across all of Decentraland’s dApps.

How does this benefit you?

WalletConnect is another secure way to connect all of your devices and assets across the metaverse, easy and fast.

And nothing needs to be installed! Whenever you log in to one of Decentraland’s dApps, you’ll have the option of selecting WalletConnect to display a QR code. Just scan this code with your mobile device to connect one of the (many) supported wallets and you’re done.

Click here for a full list of compatible wallets, but remember that WalletConnect does not support smart contract wallets.

Native Polygon Support

Platforms like Decentraland tie together a lot of different apps (e.g. the Builder, Marketplace, and Explorer). Whatever you’re doing in the metaverse, interacting with all of these apps on a daily basis results in a whole heap of microtransactions. Each of these transactions incurs a gas fee, which can add up to a notable amount.

Enter Polygon: the sidechain Decentraland uses to provide fast and extremely low transaction fees. Back in April of this year, a Polygon bridge was released for Decentraland that allowed users to easily transfer assets between Polygon and Ethereum. While the bridge made it easy to transfer MANA to Polygon, any time users wanted to use Polygon for a transaction, they still had to execute a “meta-transaction”.

Meta-transactions are transactions where the data is put together off-chain and signed for by the user before being sent to a third-party that actually executes the transaction and pays for the gas fee.

While meta-transactions have allowed people to use Polygon with Decentraland’s apps, they still rely on a centralized server. This is why Polygon meta-transactions are free for users. While gas fees on Polygon are extremely low, they are still present, so the gas fees for any meta-transactions submitted to Decentraland are subsidized.

Meta-transactions are beneficial to improving the UX of interacting with Polygon: it’s faster and easier to just sign a message rather than configure your MetaMask wallet to switch to Polygon.

But, for users who are willing to take a few extra steps, it’s now possible to interact with the Polygon network from Decentraland’s dApps in an entirely decentralized way.

Introducing native Polygon support

Now, all of Decentraland’s dApps natively support interactions with Polygon!

What does this mean?

Instead of submitting a meta-transaction where you sign a transaction using your wallet before sending it off trustingly to a centralized server, you can now switch your wallet directly to the Polygon network to submit your own transactions.

Switching your wallet to Polygon requires you to add it to your list of optional networks. For an example of how to do this with MetaMask, check out this tutorial.

Remember that when submitting transactions directly to Polygon, you will have to pay the (admittedly small) gas fees in MATIC since you won’t be using the meta-transaction server that pays for the gas for you. You can get MATIC on most major exchanges.

What are the benefits of native Polygon support?

The biggest benefit of native Polygon support is the removal of any reliance on centralized servers. If (for some reason) the meta-transaction server used by Decentraland were to fail or be shut down, you can still switch to Polygon in your wallet to submit your transactions yourself.

For users who do want to keep using meta-transactions, have no fear: Decentraland’s meta-transaction server isn’t going away anytime soon.