There are various avenues for obtaining assets ahead of onboarding the Polkadot ecosystem.

These include :

• Getting a gift (ex: Polkadot/Kusama vouchers)

• Getting a tip, payout, or (child) bounty (ex: Kappa Sigma Mu pot, Polkadot/Kusama Treasury bounties)

• Getting a grant (ex: Polkadot/Kusama Treasury spends, W3F grants)

• Buying through fiat on-ramp on a webapp

• Swapping on a Decentralised exchange

• Swapping on a Centralised platform

• Buying/swapping on a Centralised exchange

You can send/receive DOT and KSM gifts in one click.

You will need a Polkadot account to receive your coins/tokens, along with some understanding of the following concepts:

• Depending on the coins/tokens that you receive, you might need to pay attention to existential deposits.
• Depending on the dapps that you use, you might need to investigate address formats.
• Depending on the methods that you choose, you might need to make use of transaction explorers.

In this section, we review key information for sending, receiving, and transferring assets safely across Polkadot ecosystem's networks.