Welcome to BackedBy!
This guide will walk you through everything you need to do to start supporting your favorite creators on the blockchain. If you’d like to learn more detail about how BackedBy works, click here.
Note: Remember to do set your wallet to the Polygon blockchain, not Ethereum.
You will need 3 things:
1. A wallet connected to the Polygon network
2. $MATIC tokens to pay for transactions
And if you’re a backer who wants to support their favorite creators, you’ll need one more thing:
3. $USDC “stablecoin” tokens
Setting Up Your Wallet
Your wallet is your way of interacting with the blockchain. It’s your login and password, it holds all of your tokens securely, and it gives you access to content. Wallets work by storing your private key securely and letting you sign transactions on the blockchain, similar to running your credit card through the machine.
There are a lot of wallets available. We recommend Brave, MetaMask, or Rainbow.
You can install your wallet on either your you browser or your phone (and you can move it later), but we recommend installing it on your phone. You can still approve transactions on your phone even if you’re using your desktop browser, and most people take automatic backups of their phone, so the risk of losing your wallet is lower.
Once your wallet is installed, click connect on your desktop browser and scan the QR code with your phone to connect with your wallet app. Or use the browser built into your wallet app to connect to BackedBy. If want to use BackedBy with a browser extension on your desktop, install the extension and click Connect in the upper right of your browser.
Whenever you use BackedBy, look for this button in the top right corner to manage your wallet’s connection to the app.
Now that you have your wallet setup and connected, you’re ready to buy some MATIC.
MATIC Tokens
BackedBy runs on the Polygon blockchain, a cheaper, faster version of Ethereum. Each action you take on the Polygon blockchain (initiating a subscription, publishing a post) costs a tiny amount of their native token: MATIC. But it’s very cheap to do. $1 of MATIC can pay for hundreds of transactions. The cost is what keeps the blockchain distrubted. It’s why BackedBy is so much cheaper than its competitors and also why your content cannot be censored.
We recommend using Coinbase to buy your first MATIC, but any exchange or onramp will do: Coinbase, Binance, Crypt.com, ramp.network, Moonpay. Just make sure you send the MATIC to your wallet address on the Polygon network. That goes for any other exchange you’re buying crypto on as well. Make sure it’s on the Polygon network.
If you’re using a wallet like MetaMask or Brave, you can buy MATIC/USDC with a credit card from inside your wallet. Again, just make sure it’s on the Polygon network.
Note: If you buy too much MATIC, you can always swap it back and forth to USDC from inside your wallet for a couple cents in fees. The important part is getting tokens into your wallet. Then you can convert them back and forth.
Stablecoins: $USDC, $USDT, $DAI
Subscriptions on BackedBy are paid in “stablecoin” tokens: $USDC, $USDT, and/or $DAI. Stablecoins are unique cryptocurrency tokens because unlike other cryptocurrency tokens which can fluctuate in value, USDC tokens are always worth $1US Dollar. That means you can buy $100 worth of USDC tokens and trade them back to US dollars at any point. Some people keep hundreds in their wallets just because it’s so much cheaper to send money that way.
If you’d like to read more about the three most popular coins, here they are: Circle, Tether, and Dai.
If you’re using the Coinbase Wallet app, you can buy $USDC from the Coinbase app and send it to your wallet. If you’re using another exchange or “onramp” (Coinbase, Binance, Crypt.com, ramp.network, Moonpay), you can send the tokens directly to your wallet. Wherever you buy your tokens, just make sure you send your USDC to your wallet address using the Polygon blockchain.
You can always use the button that looks like this on the right of the navbar to check your balances: 
Subscribing to a Project
When you subscribe to a project, the subscription price is deducted from your wallet, as well as a small amount of MATIC to process your entire subscription. This usually amounts to about 50¢ and it’s spent over 5 years. That’s much less than the 30¢ PayPal charges and the 10¢ + 3% fees charged by credit cards per transaction! Your wallet then gives our smart contracts permission to withdraw the subscription amount once a month for 5 years. We picked that because it’s typically the same length of time it takes credit cards to expire.
That means, if you’re subscribing to a project that’s $5/mo, you’ll pay about $5.50 today, and your wallet will be authorized to spend $300 over 5 years. You can cancel your subscription and revoke the authorized spend amount at any time.
Creating Your Project
Creating your first project on BackedBy will look familiar if you’ve used any creator monetization platform before, but is one major difference: each action you take on BackedBy must be approved by your wallet. Creating your project, creating the subscription tiers for your project, and publishing content to your project must be approved by your wallet and that approval costs about a penny. This cost is what powers the blockchain and is the reason why your project can never be censored or canceled in any way. Pretty cheap for what it provides!
As backers subscribe to your project, their subscription fees will be automatically deposited into your wallet by our smart contracts. That means you’ll start seeing $USDC, $USDT, and/or $DAI showing up in your wallet every month on the day that your backers’ subscriptions renew.
Final Note
Not all wallets automatically detect and track token balances. They sometimes have to be setup manually. Since there are many different wallet options, look for instructions on adding tokens to your specific wallet if you don’t see them. You can always use the button that looks like this on the right of the navbar to check your balances:
Thanks and welcome to Web3!
