Introduction
Estimated Cost: Free
Estimated Time: 30 minutes
"Shardeum is an EVM-based, linearly scalable smart contract platform that provides low gas fees forever while maintaining true decentralization and solid security through dynamic state sharding." They are on their final testnet, Sphinx, which is the last step before mainnet launch; This is an incentivized testnet. The alphanet, Liberty, tested EVM compatability and sharding features. Sphinx simulates the mainnet environment, ensuring production readiness and allowing safe application testing. Needless to say, we want to be active before mainnet launches.
You'll need to follow their Twitter and join the Discord in order to claim free testnet tokens.
Wallet Setup
Before we can start interacting with the chain, we need to configure it within Metamask. If you don't know how to add custom networks to Metamask, check out my guide here. Most dApps are still using the Liberty testnet, so we'll want to setup both networks. The chain information for Shardeum Sphinx and Liberty are as follows:
Network Name: Shardeum Sphinx
RPC URL: https://sphinx.shardeum.org
Chain ID: 8082
Currency Symbol: SHM
Block Explorer URL: https://explorer-sphinx.shardeum.org
Network Name: Shardeum Liberty
RPC URL: https://liberty20.shardeum.org
Chain ID: 8081
Currency Symbol: SHM
Block Explorer URL: https://explorer-liberty20.shardeum.org
We can now start to fund these networks using Shardeum's faucets. Follow the instructions on Sphinx Faucet and Liberty Faucet and you should receive your tokens within a few minutes. These faucets can be used every 12 hours. You can also request SHM through Discord, via the Sphinx Faucet channel or the Liberty Faucet channel. Type "/faucet 0xYour-Wallet-Address" and the bot will send some to the provided address. We'll use these funds for transaction fees, and the farming itself.
dApps
We're going to be interacting with a few dApps, to ensure we have on-chain activity for various transaction types. As mentioned before, most dApps are still using the Liberty network, so we want to set our Metamask to that chain. You should have received 200 SHM if you used the Twitter and Discord faucets, so let's put it to use.
Swapped Finance (Liberty)
We want to start by trading 50 SHM to SWPD, and then using that to provide liquidity for other traders. You can chose another token if you like, but I went for SWPD since we're using their dApp. Once you have your tokens, go to the Pool tab and Add them to the pool. This will earn you a small share of the trading fees, but more importantly its a good measure of on-chain activity when the snapshot rolls around. Continue to trade small amounts of tokens from time to time, you want your wallet to be considered active.
b) 101
101 is a website that will teach you about various protocols, and reward you with an NFT badge on the Polygon network for completing the course. They have a course for Swapped Finance, which only takes a minute to complete. This is entirely free, but you will need to sign-in and submit your answers using your wallet. If you aren't actually interested in the course, fret not - just click through it until you reach the 3-question-quiz at the end.
The answers are "Shardeum", "0.3%", and "0.21675%". Submit with your wallet, and your NFT will be minted to you.
c) Zealy
Another community building tool for Swapped Finance, which lets users earn xp for completing various quests, like joining Swapped Finance's Discord, Telegram, and Twitter pages. You might as well claim these rewards and stay in the loop with their socials.
ChainHash (Liberty)
ChainHash is the first DEX aggregator on Shardeum, fetching liquidity from other DEXs to find the best price. It's probably a good idea to run a few swaps through here as well.