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HackerNoon's DeFi Writing Contest with SORA Network: XSTUSD Use Cases
by Utsav JaiswalAugust 9th, 2022
Too Long; Didn't Read
HackerNoon’s DeFi Writing Contest gives prize money in a stablecoin called - SORA Synthetic USD aka XSTUSD. The prize money is sponsored by a Polkadot Layer-1 for DeFi. How to claim your DeFi prize is to get your wallet from the source - [polkadot.org](https://www.hackernoon.com/defi-writing-contest) If you’re the traveler, get the SORa.A wallet on mobile instead of your desktop - get both!!
HackerNoon’s DeFi Writing Contest, in partnership with SORA Network, gives prize money in a stablecoin called - SORA Synthetic USD aka XSTUSD.
Some of you might be 100% degens and already know what to do.
This post is NOT for those of you.
For the rest, let’s use this opportunity to better acquaint ourselves with the XSTUSD stablecoin, HackerNoon’s DeFi writing contest, and even the Polkadot Network in general. This one’s gonna be an eye-opener!!
HackerNoon’s DeFi Writing Contest Details
By simply writing a DeFi story on HackerNoon, you become eligible to win prize money.
- Read more about HackerNoon Writing Contests here.
- Start writing stories here.
- Learn more about submitting stories on HackerNoon here.
The prize money is sponsored by SORA Network - a Polkadot Layer-1 for DeFi.
How To Claim Your DeFi Writing Contest Reward
If your story wins, you’ll receive an email from our team asking for your Polkadot wallet address and some details such as your name and email address.
There’s always a first time for such warnings and this is HackerNoon’s time.
HackerNoon and/or any of its employees, representatives, and/or contractors shall never ask for your wallet seed, your secret keys, private keys, and/or mnemonics to your wallet. Treat such emails with distrust - as you should any email/SMS that asks for such private information.
Always remember, he/she/they who have your keys have your wallet.
Do not hand out your wallet to internet strangers!!
How to Get Polkadot Wallet on Desktop?
The DeFi degen way is to get your wallet directly from the source - polkadot.js.org.
If you’ve read this far, you’ll probably be best served by clicking on the option that says- extension. This will install a polkadot wallet as a browser extension - kinda like Metamask.
There are options to download for Chrome or Firefox at the time of writing.
On successful download, you’ll be asked to create a new account:
Next, save your mnemonic, give your account a name, and for true-blue polkadot magic, pick - ‘Allow use on any chain.’
Choosing ‘Allow Use on Any Chain’ basically helps this wallet to resolve addresses across any of the Polkadot parachains. SORA Network is one such Polkadot parachain.
Think of parachains as Layer-1 Networks. Polkadot envisions itself as L0 while the parachains such as SORA, Kusama, Astar, etc are L1s.
How To Get SORA Wallet on Mobile?
Alternatively, if you’re the traveler type, get the SORA wallet on mobile instead of your desktop -or get both!!
Now, when you get that email from HackerNoon asking for your wallet address (sent to all winners every month), if you’ve won our DeFi writing contest, pick wallet type as ‘Polkadot Wallet Address’ and then copy-paste your wallet address (available on the browser extension on the top right of your chrome browser).
HackerNoon sends out all payments over the weekend along with an email with the transaction hash to the email address provided by you. If you get that email, it means your XSTUSD has been successfully sent to your wallet address.
What Can You do with your XSTUSD?
You can stake it, convert it into another token and stake that, convert it to another stablecoin, and bridge it to the Ethereum network.
Do note that all of the above-mentioned activities cost GAS (a transaction fee). Therefore, a good idea would be to keep at least 3 XOR in reserve for every transaction you want to perform. XOR is the native currency on the SORA Network, like ETH on the Ethereum network.
Since a lot of you would be first-time SORA Network users, HackerNoon shall send you $10 worth of XOR along with your winnings (by deducting $10 from your winnings) to help cover the first few transactions! This will save you the step of getting XOR first!
How to Stake your XSTUSD on Polkaswap?
- Visit Polkaswap.io and connect your Polkadot wallet to your account
- Click on ‘Staking’ and choose the token that you want to stake
- Since you have XSTUSD, the easiest would be staking XSTUSD but you can also swap your XSTUSD for other tokens (explained later) and stake those tokens instead
Do note that staking is a financial activity that is as susceptible to losses as it is to profits. Please DYOR before staking. This guide is meant for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice, in part or in whole.
How to Swap your XSTUSD to another token on Polkaswap?
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Visit Polkaswap.io and connect your Polkadot wallet to your account
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Click on ‘Swap‘ and choose the XSTUSD in the ‘from’ section
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Enter the amount of XSTUSD you want to swap
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Choose the token you want to swap to in the ‘To’ section
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Click ‘Swap’ and then review the pop up which will look something like this - (I picked DAI in the ‘To’ section for this example)
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Click ‘Confirm’ to complete the swap
How to Bridge my Tokens to the Ethereum Network?
For all the tokens that also exist on the Ethereum network, as they do on the SORA Network, you can bridge them to the Ethereum Network to use them on Ethereum dApps, transfer to Metamask wallets, or simply move them to centralized exchanges for off-ramps to FIAT money.
Do note that transferring assets that do not exist on the Ethereum network may result in the loss of the entire transferred fund.
- Visit Polkaswap.io and connect your Polkadot wallet to your account
- Click on ‘Bridge’ and choose the token you want to bridge over to the Ethereum network
- Connect your Metamask wallet address to Polkaswap
- Choose the asset you want to bridge over to the Ethereum Network
- Pro-Tip: Swapping your XSTUSD to DAI and then bridging over DAI to Ethereum is said to be the best bet due to liquidity constraints on the other tokens
- Click ‘Confirm’ and you’ll be prompted to sign the transaction on both, the SORA and the Ethereum networks (you will need to have some ETH in your metamask just as you need XOR in your Polkadot wallet)
I bridged 2 XOR from SORA to Ethereum, and it was completed in about 3 minutes, costing me $5 GAS on ETH and 0.7XOR on SORA
Click on ‘Add <Bridged_token_name> to Metamask’ to show your bridged token’s balance on your Metamask account. In my example, it was ‘Add XOR to Metamask.’
Further Reading on SORA Network
Check out the SORA Website, Twitter, and, Reddit for more details.
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