Staking Wrapped Banano (wBan) on the Polygon Network Part 1: Wrapping

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When I first learned about Wrapped Banano (aka wBAN), I went through the usual stages of learning about a new technology: Confusion, Excitement, More confusion, Swearing, and Acceptance. It sounds to simple – take your Banano, wrap them up inside another token, then use that token to stake and earn interest. So simple!

But then I tried actually doing it, and ended up so confused and angry about having to pay gas fees that I nearly gave the whole thing up. But as is often the case, once you push through the difficult stuff, it seems easier in hindsight and gives you new skills to add to your tool chain.

I know that a lot of you are either in this situation, or champing at the bit to try it, so to help out, I’ve put together the steps that you will need to take to finally make the most of your Banano.

: This process is going to be challenging and different to what you are used to, but once you wrap (haha) your head around this process, the concepts here will open a whole new world of opportunity for you to buy and use a huge array of other tokens.

Before you start

Before we get into it, there are a few things that you need to know. We’re not in Banano anymore, and the world of DeFi (Decentralised Finance), dApps (Decentralised Apps), and gas fees is very big and very scary when you’re used to the comfy jungle. Before you set out, here are the basics that you will need to know about. A warning, a lot of this will be daunting, so re-read this section until you understand it. The steps to wrapping and staking rely on these concepts:

1. You need a wallet. Unlike Kalium or Banano Vault, the wallets used for DeFi are more generic and allow you to add a ton of different tokens to them. This flexibility comes at a cost, which is the learning curve for understanding them. This tutorial uses MetaMask, the most popular DeFi wallet, but Trust Wallet is similar and some find it more user-friendly.
2. You need to add Networks. This is explained in more detail, but basically wBAN is listed on 2 networks: BINANCE Smart Chain (BSC), and Polygon. These are networks that sit on top of the Ethereum network and are largely there to help reduce gas fees. At the time of writing, BSC transactions are about 10x cheaper than Ethereum, and Polygon are about 10x cheaper than BSC. We’ll be using Polygon in this article.
3. You need to add Tokens. Like adding networks, you also need to add Tokens. In this case we will be adding 4 types of tokens:
   1. wBan: Because ethat’s why we’re here
   2. wEth : Because you need to have 2 types of token for staking (on the BSC network, you will add BNB instead, which is used for liquidity and gas fees)
   3. MATIC: For gas fees (see below)
   4. LP: LP tokens (Liquidity Pool tokens) are what you get in return for adding liquidity pairs (don’t worry, this sentence will make sense soon).
4. Gas Fees. So you have probably heard about gas fees. They suck big time, but are essential to the Ethereum chain, as they are what are used to pay the miners who mint the coins. They are designed to get higher as the network gets used more, to keep transactions quick – higher fees mean fewer people wanting to transact. Gas fees will be needed for every action on the network, including swapping, adding liquidity, approving tokens…you name it. Again, this is why we are using Polygon. NOTE: YOU WILL NEED SOME MATIC BEFORE YOU CAN START WRAPPING. Once you have METAMASK set up, use the browser function to navigate to https://matic.supply/ and/or https://macncheese.finance/matic-polygon-mainnet-faucet.php to collect some free Matic to use.
5. MetaMask Browser. While learning how to wrap and stake your Banano, you will be interacting with several dApps. These look like regular websites but they are special, and you need to open them from within MetaMask. There’s a built-in browser in MetaMask that works like a usual browser, but when you go to a dApp site (eg: polygon.banano.cc, sushi swap, etc), you will be able to connect your wallet to it, which allows you to transact.

Part 1: Wrapping your Banano

Finally we’re at the good bit!

Wrapping Banano basically means that we’re taking Banano (Ban), and converting it to a different token  (wBan) that lives on Polygon. From there we can use our wBan on the Polygon network to do fun stuff like staking and farming. (Note that this process is almost exactly the same for Binance Smart Chain if you want to go that route, just with different sites and tokens).

In the whole process, the actually wrapping bit is the easiest bit. It takes a little bit of setup up front, but once that’s done, you can swap back and forth between Ban and wBan as much as you want (for a small gas fee).

Set up MetaMask

Before we do anything, we need to:

Set up MetaMask:

1. Download and install
2. Polygon Network
3. Add wBan and wEth to MetaMask:
   1. In the Wallet section, select Polygon Mainnet from the list of networks at the top
   2. Below the list of tokens, click Import Tokens
   3. Enter the token addresses below, 1 at a time. The Token Symbol and Token Precision values should populate automatically if the first field is correct
   4. • Token Address: 0xe20b9e246db5a0d21bf9209e4858bc9a3ff7a034
      • Symbol: WBAN
      • Precision: 18
   5. • Token Address: 0x7ceb23fd6bc0add59e62ac25578270cff1b9f619
      • Symbol: WETH
      • Precision: 18

Get some Banano

You probably already have some, but if not, you really want to buy or accumulate at least a few hundred to make this process worthwhile. Like a regular investment, the more you put in, the more interest you make. This process works best using Kalium rather than Banano Vault, so I highly recommend using it.

Link your wallet

Now that you have your MetaMask wallet set up, and your Kalium wallet filled with Ban, we can go to polygon.banano.cc to start wrapping some Banano. To do this, you need to link your Kalium wallet. To do this, you pretty much follow the prompts, but here are the steps:

1. Open MetaMask
2. Change the network to Polygon (if you haven’t already)
3. Click the hamburger menu (3 lines top left), and select Browser
4. Navigate to polygon.banano.cc. (Tip: The Brower has tabs, so you can keep your favourite sites loaded)
5. Click Connect
6. If you haven’t linked an account yet, a prompt will appear and you will be given a ban_ address to link to. Click on it to open Kalium, and send 1 ban to the address. Once received, your account is linked
7. To add more Banano, click the hamburger menu for the site (top left), and a menu will slide out. Click Deposit Ban, which will give you the address to send more ban to
8. Now just put how much Ban you want to swap into the From field and the number of wBan will be calculated automatically. Click Wrap.
9. You will get a prompt at this point to pay gas fees. It should be a small amount of MATIC. Go ahead and accept, and your swap is complete!
10. Congratulations! You’ve wrapped your first Banano!

End Part 1

Phew, that’s a lot to process. You’ve done amazingly well if you have managed to follow along and wrap your first Banano. Part 2 will be available soon, where we will go through the process of staking and farming your wBan for fun and profit!

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