If you're on Polygon, and found yourself out of MATIC... You're not alone (at least, there's me!)
In the name of exploration and experimentation, I depleted my own supply of MATIC by depositing it all onto a platform much to my horror. It dawned on me after that I couldn't do anything next. In a less extreme case, you could end up with too small an amount to carry out another transaction.
2 ways to be revived
1. Obtain some from faucets (free)
Faucets, our knight in shining armour. Faucets transfer a nominal amount of the token, in my case MATIC, for us to carry out some transactions. As dubious as they seemed, there've been reports that the crypto community has successfully used it:
https://matic.supply/ (tried, but the website was out of MATIC so wasn't successfully for me)
https://macncheese.finance/matic-polygon-mainnet-faucet.php (successfully claimed a couple of times. Yes, you're right, I did make a couple of mistakes)
Best part (or worst part for some) of Macncheese is that they'll do a reasonableness check on your MATIC balance, it's not for you to claim free MATIC all day every day!
2. Bridge in from another blockchain (pricey)
The assumption for this method is that you hold both crypto - crypto of the sending blockchain, and crypto of the receiving blockchain. Using an example of a transfer from Ethereum to Polygon, it would meant having both ETH and MATIC in your wallet.
Since the destination is Polygon, you'll use a bridge platform to send across some MATIC onto Polygon. A tried and tested bridge:
The difference of this method to the first is that it'll cost you gas on the original network to do the sending (or more if you have to swap for Matic), and if we're talking about ethereum, it ain't cheap.
My suggestion? Always remember to keep your gas (and keep it topped up). An obvious newbie mistake. I hope you can simply learn from it from my article, and not from your own personal experience. Cheers all!
Image credit: mymac.com