Don't want to read this rant? Jump to the important part

I've been contributing to opensource software in the web3 ecosystem through the Protocol Labs Dev Guild for the past month now and it's been quite an awesome learning journey!

We got the first set of grants recently and I had issues moving assets out of MetaMask. Sending FIL out or swapping isn't possible via MetaMask on the Filecoin network. I spoke with one of our organizers about this and KuCoin was recommended as an exchange I could use.

So basically, here's the idea behind what you're expected to do; Create an account on Kucoin if you don't already have one, try depositiing FIL into your wallet, which would eventually get you a wallet address on that network — Filecoin, in this case.

When I got my address, I tried sending the tokens there but I ended up getting this error: "No resolution for domain provided". After speaking with Joel from our community, one could say this is because Kucoin doesn't support f4 addresses, yet.

Enter Glif.io

Glif is the foundational DeFi primitive of Filecoin - enabling Filecoin token holders to earn sustainable rewards on their FIL by lending (aka “leasing”) it to a diverse pool of Filecoin Miners (also known as “Storage Providers”).

So, what this means is that I can use GLIF to send FIL to a corresponding wallet address on the Filecoin network. Mind you, I'm still stuck with Kucoin at this stage.

With Glif it was quite easy bypassing the "No resolution..." error, because, all I had to do was link my MetaMask wallet on Glif, and "hit send", which I did, 24 hours later, and 3000+ block confirmations later, the tokens I sent still didn't show up in my wallet.

Luckily for me, I only sent what I could afford to let go THRICE — 2, 0.2, 0.001 FILs respectively.

Switching to another exchange

The next thing I did was to search for "Sell Filecoin" on Google and the first result that came up was Kraken. I created an account, went through the verification step, and tried repeating the same process I had followed on KuCoin.

I sent a test amount, and in under 5 minutes, I received the token I sent in my wallet. See the step-by-step process below.

Move assets from MetaMask

• Go to your dashboard on Kraken, if your account has been verified. You should see something like this:

• Click on transfers and you'll get to this screen. Select an asset — in this case, FIL.

• Select the network. This should be the filecoin network, by the way. Now, you'll be prompted to generate an address. Go ahead and generate one right there. You should have something like this, with your wallet address. Copy it.

• Copy it and head on to glif.io (assuming you've already connected your MetaMask wallet)
• At the top right corner you'll see your address beside an Ethereum-like icon. Click on it to open the menu and select "send/ Forward FIL"

• now paste the address you've copied from Kraken into the recipient input box enter the amount of FIL you want to send and click send.

And that's pretty much it.

Final thoughts

When I eventually moved my asset from MetaMask into my Kraken wallet, I converted it to USDT and sent it to another wallet. Making that withdrawal, incured a $4 charge. So, if that's something you're uncomfortable with, you may need to consider other platforms and weigh your options.

I hope this helps!