It was just recently that I found myself ready to explore the L1 ecosystem. My crypto worldview was Ethereum only, and I still consider it my home network today.

I assumed other platforms didn’t matter — but I was wrong for sure.

Gas is the fee you pay to make a transaction on a blockchain network. On Ethereum, transaction fees are outrageously expensive at times. That reason alone is getting people to move to different networks, but switching networks is a foreign experience for most people.

Blockchain interoperability is a new world endeavor. It connects smart contract platforms via the tokens on the network.

One of the ways to connect networks is using a “bridge”. A bridge is a portal that enables users to move their tokens from one network to another. A bridge enables blockchain interoperability.

In this tutorial, we’ll go over a bridge that can move your tokens across 7 different blockchains — including Ethereum, and Solana.

The bridge was built by Wormhole, and it’s called the Wormhole Bridge.

Let’s check it out.

Tutorial

To start, I want to share my reason for using Wormhole’s network bridge.

I’m collecting aliens.

Seriously, I wanted to transfer some Ether to the Solana network in order to mint some more decentraliens (https://www.invisiblecollege.xyz/) — a great community of web3 learners and builders!

So, I used Wormhole Bridge to transfer Ether (ETH) from my Ethereum wallet over to wrapped ETH (WETH) on Solana. Then I swapped the WETH on Solana for some SOL, and minted a few more aliens.

For this tutorial there are a few requirements in order to use Wormhole Bridge:

• A wallet and account in the source network. In this tutorial I use Ethereum and the MetaMask wallet (https://metamask.io/).

• Tokens you want to transfer from the source network, plus gas/transaction fees — I send ETH, which gets wrapped into WETH. Gas fees on Ethereum are paid in ETH.

• A wallet and account on the target network. My target network is Solana and I use the Phantom wallet (https://phantom.app/).

• Gas/transaction fees in the target network — I need SOL for this tutorial. Phantom has ways to buy SOL — view the options by choosing Deposit on the main screen. I used Coinbase to buy SOL previously.

Once you’re good on the pre-reqs, there’s a few steps to do:

1. Connect the bridge

2. Make the transfer

3. Redeem the tokens

We’ll cover each step below.

A note to remember before jumping in: transactions are the most important thing.

Transactions are hard to read for humans, but they are everything that blockchain nodes need in order to execute web3 contracts — as a web3 user, it helps learning how to use block explorers like Etherscan and Solscan.

If you get stuck during the process or aren’t sure what step you’re on, check your transaction history. If you don’t see any recent transactions then you probably haven’t approved anything. If you see a transaction that’s pending, wait for more confirmations before giving up and trying again.

Let’s go!

Steps

• [00:00 - 00:38] Connect the bridge.

  • Open the portal.

    • Go to wormholenetwork.com - then choose Portal.

    • Choose your source network (where your tokens will come from; Ethereum), then choose your target network (where your tokens will go to; Solana).

    • Web3 connect your source wallet.

  • Input the amount of the token you want to transfer (I chose Ether; ETH).

  • Connect your Solana wallet.

    • Web3 connect your Solana wallet (I used Phantom in the tutorial).

      • If you have any trouble connecting, you can refresh the page or navigate away and come back at this point.

    • Choose Create Associated Token Account.

      • Web3 approve the transaction.

        • My Solana transaction - create associated account.

• [00:32 - 01:06] Make the transfer.

  • Click Next, then view the bridged tokens amount and what account the tokens will be sent to. Then click Transfer.

  • In the next view, click Transfer, then Confirm in the popup.

  • Web3 approve the transaction from your wallet — this requires paying a gas fee.

  • Wait for the transaction to propagate on chain. This can take time. You can view the transaction details in your wallet — the tutorial transaction wraps ETH and transfer it.

• [01:06 - 01:56] Redeem the tokens.

  • Verify recipient address is correct, then choose Redeem.

  • Web3 approve the redemption transaction.

    • In this case, since my target network is Solana, I approved four transactions in order to complete the process. In the fourth transaction I see the 0.1 ETH I bridged specified in the transaction details.

      • My transactions: transaction 1 - transaction 2 - transaction 3 - transaction 4.

  • Wait for final transaction to confirm, then open Solana wallet to verify tokens are in your account.

Done!

Review

Throughout my experience using Wormhole Bridge, I felt confident that things worked as expected. I didn’t feel like I was being scammed at any point in the process, even with the few hiccups along the way.

A few highlights

• It works! It’s definitely not easy to implement a token portal like this, so major props to the team that built the bridge.

• Nice UI for a very complicated service. The app has a fairly fool-proof UI, limited to a set of actions you can take, and each one is exactly where you think it should be on the page. I appreciate the effort to keep the app simple.

• Well placed messaging. The app uses flash messages to share status of checkpoints in the process. Also, there are a couple highlight notes placed in key locations on the page — e.g., it was nice that they shared a note about being able to resume the swap if you navigate away from the page.

A few wishes

• More enthusiastic design. This app feels like it needs a designer’s eye for touch and polish. Sure there’s only three tabs and one UI block in the entire app, which makes using it simple enough. However, even with those few pieces, it all feels disconnected.

• Smoother UX. Wormhole’s portal bridge is clunky. I faced a lot of hiccups while bridging my tokens. I dealt with having to connect my account multiple times, refreshing past an endless loading state, and even clicking in and out of tabs in order to trigger the UI to re-render.

• Share more information. It’d be nice if these apps mentioned how many transactions you’re going to approve - and what each one does.

Outro

It’s essential for interoperability in crypto to have a tool like Wormhole Bridge. Wormhole built a critical infrastructure tool that seems trustworthy on most accounts. That being said, even established tools like this can have their issues.

Just one month ago, in February 2022 Wormhole suffered from a major incident. An attacker exploited a vulnerability in the Wormhole network and minted 120k Wormhole-wrapped Ether on Solana. That’s a whole lot of money and there was a negative media cycle for crypto.

From what I can tell, Wormhole has been transparent and held themselves accountable for the exploit. They published an incident report on their blog, and launched a bug bounty program on Immunefi.

Cases like that show the dangers of cryptocurrency; though, they definitely shouldn’t be deterrents.

As we all continue expanding our crypto toolkits, it’s important to explore diverse sets of tools and ecosystems on our journeys.

Using a portal like Wormhole Bridge to send tokens across networks is a great way of getting started on new frontiers like Solana and the other networks Wormhole Bridge integrates with — e.g., Avalanche, Terra, and Polygon, to name a few.

Hopefully, just like it did for me, this tutorial inspires you to continue exploring the worlds of web3.

Ratings

Scored in the categories: Product and Presence. Each category is out of 10.

• Product - 7

  • Wormhole company page

  • Basic, non-flashy UI that gets the job done.

  • Product seems trustworthy and safe to use.

• Presence - 7

  • Presence on typical web3 community platforms

    • Twitter

    • Discord

  • Documentation is available but not displayed prominently.

    • Docs

    • Blog

When I first stumbled upon Manifold Studio while thumbing through Twitter, it definitely caught my attention.

It is February 2022 and NFT mania is real. While a bubble this size can be dangerous when it pops, it is not all bad. On the positive, it is: (i) giving artists digital means to grow their brands, (ii) onboarding a horde into the web3 ecosystem, and (iii) creating more communities of people across the world.

As a metaphor: it is like we are walking through a worldwide digital art exhibit, and we are all trying to mint our way into the most exclusive clubs of degen high society (and I mean this in the most endearing way).

Well, Manifold Studio is here to help us do just that.

Manifold Studio enables web3 creators to creatively own and mint NFTs across the NFT world.

Back to the metaphor: it is like a way too powerful smart canvas, that both new and veteran digital artists can use to become the next Basquiat, Kahlo, or Da Vinci of the metaverse.

With Manifold Studio, creators and developers can produce an NFT collection, and commercialize it, with only a few button clicks.

Without writing a single line of code, a user can create and deploy ERC721 or ERC1155 contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, and have full ownership over their assets.

That’s big time for sure, so I wanted to see if I could use it myself. Here’s how it went.

Getting up and running in Manifold Studio is simple enough—as long as you have the right tools to get started. Like most web2 apps, you register and verify your email address in order to activate your account. Also, like most web3 apps, you sign a transaction in order to connect your blockchain account to it—for this tutorial, we use an Ethereum account, and the MetaMask wallet browser extension, to handle our web3 interactions.

During the signup flow, you must upload and input an ASCII mark. This was a new concept for me (there’s always something new in the wild west of web3), but it is an essential step. Your ASCII mark acts like a digital signature for your smart contracts, making it unique to you.

For my test drive, I pretend to be a DAO for Animal and Earth Conservation, and my first NFT smart contract would be for a Sea Turtle Community, which wants to mint some NFTs for its biggest donors and activists.

Check out the screen recording video below, along with the a breakdown of steps I followed to make it happen:

• [0:00 - 0:12] Connect your web3 wallet by signing the request

• [0:12 - 0:18] Sign up by inputting user name, email, and Ascii art signature

• [0:18 - 0:22] Generate Ascii Art and copy-paste into sign up form — use a tool like TextEditor

• [0:22 - 0:32] Finish sign up: submit form and perform web2 email verification

• [0:32 - 0:40] Start a new contract. Keep the type as ERC721, and input contract name and token symbol

• [0:40 - 1:34] Deploy contract to the Rinkeby TestNet

  • [0:42 - 1:02] Switch the network from Ethereum MainNet to the Rinkeby TestNet — first, update MetaMask settings and enable the Show test networks toggle

  • [1:02 - 1:24] Add Rinkeby TestNet ETH to your wallet by using a faucet — we used the Chainlink faucet

  • [1:24 - 1:34] Deploy contract to TestNet and confirm web3 write transaction to the Rinkeby TestNet — we pay gas fees because this is a write/send transaction

• [1:34 - 1:42] Review and Finalize contract

  • We didn’t do this in the tutorial. Only do this step when you are ready to Deploy to MainNet

• [1:42 - 2:22] Mint a new NFT

  • [1:42 - 1:48] Go back to My Contracts page and click the more actions button next to the contract you created in the previous step. Select tokens from the menu

  • [1:48 - 1:58] On the Tokens page, click mint a new token. Then upload your token image, title, and other details about the token — including the number of editions you will mint of the NFT

  • [1:58 - 2:06] Click Mint to TestNet and confirm web3 write transaction to the Rinkeby TestNet — we pay gas fees because this is a write/send transaction

  • [2:06 - 2:12] View your newly minted NFT on websites like Rarible and OpenSea

  • [2:12 - 2:22] View contract transactions on Etherscan — here’s the smart contract used in this tutorial

Review

Using Manifold was fairly pleasant. The UI and UX were very minimal. Even as an average crypto user, it took me some time and fumbling around to get used to things (e.g., the ASCII mark), but once I did it was a smooth experience.

A few highlights:

• Short and simple UX, and an easy to navigate UI. While the product feels a bit unpolished, that is understandable given it was launched fairly recently. and how much functionality is packed into it. I think the Manifold team was very thoughtful in their product design.

• Documentation, with tutorial videos! This is great to see from an early stage product. It signals understanding of its market and user base.

• Robust feature set. Along with contract creation and deployment, there are settings for royalties, approving admins, and more. It seems like this product aims to give you full ownership and control of your smart contracts, without the need for code or in-depth knowledge of web3 infrastructure. No code solutions are starting to trend in the world of web2, so it’s nice to see someone bringing the practice into web3.

A few wishes:

• More suggestions and tips. This is the early days, so many people who want to create NFTs aren’t web3 ready. In order for users to have a better new user experience, it’d be nice for the documentation and user guides to be more visible and integrated into the main UI.

• Clarification on what ownership means. What is the user getting from this product actually? In one of their community posts, they mention being a protocol and not a platform. I’d like to know more about that as I’m using it.

• Bugs. At the time I recorded this tutorial, there was an issue with the contract verification process. I think that’s why I couldn’t see the contract code in Etherscan after my Rinkeby TestNet deployment. That being said, it was nice that they were transparent about the issue, posting a message at the top of the page.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Manifold is a remarkable tool for creators and makers in the web3 space, especially given how early we are in this journey. Manifold seems to cover a lot of ground right now, giving so many people who want to create smart contracts and NFTs a way to do so that’s core to web3: real ownership.

I’m excited to see how it evolves!

Ratings

Scored in the categories: Product and Presence. Each category is out of 10.

• Product - 8

  • Lots of functionality baked into a simple and minimal design, UI and UX

  • Unique and original value proposition that aligns with web3 principles

• Presence - 8

  • Established presence on typical web3 community platforms

    • Twitter

    • Discord

  • Published content and docs for users

    • Substack

    • Documentation (including how to videos)

Resources

• Manifold home page

• Manifold Studio release blog post

• My smart contract on Etherscan from the tutorial

What’s Next

So what’s next? I want to start with a project that focuses on the new and upcoming web3 apps, products, and services that are driving user value—the projects that are changing the game for web3 connectivity, big and small.

To start, I have a few product tutorials that I’ll publish here soon.

Stay tuned!