Adding funds to your Web3 wallet
You’ve obtained a web3 wallet - congratulations!
🎉
But as we know from real life, a wallet without money in it is no good!
On the Solana blockchain, the most important asset is SOL. SOL allows you to pay for transaction fees and can be used to buy any other crypto asset that lives on the Solana blockchain.
There’s 2 main ways to get SOL into your wallet, there are others but these are the easiest:
1) Funding from within the wallet
In some web3 wallets like Phantom, they have integrations with banking services to allow you obtain SOL within the wallet without having to go elsewhere.
For example in Phantom you can select Moonpay, Coinbase Pay & FTX Pay are available via the "deposit" button. In each of these services, you can buy SOL with most major debit/credit cards and/or bank transfer.
2) Buying through an exchange
Many major crypto exchanges have markets to buy SOL. Here are a some of the major exchanges that it is possible to purchase SOL on:
To add money to your exchange account, follow the deposit steps that your chosen exchange provides, these all differ slightly so the exchange will be able to give you the most accurate instructions.
Once you have funded your crypto exchange account, you can proceed to buy SOL.
Then, once you have acquired SOL and it is an available balance, you’re ready to migrate your funds to your web3 wallet.
To do this, you need to take a note of your web3 wallet address. This is your unique identifier on the Solana blockchain.
Often at the top of your web3 wallet, your wallet address will be visible.
In Phantom for example, you just need to click the top text to add your address to your clipboard.
In your chosen exchange, press the “Withdraw” button. In here, you will be required to place your wallet address and the quantity of SOL you would like to send.
Make sure to verify that the wallet address you paste in matches, particularly that the first and last characters of the address match.
Withdrawing from an exchange can sometimes take 5-10 minutes to appear within your web3 wallet, don’t worry!