KUDA Token - I created my own Cryptocurrency
I've been putting it off, creating my own cryptocurrency. It has been one of the many things on my crypto to-do list, however, I just never got around to it. But the time has come to create my own token and learn the mechanics behind how to accomplish such a task. There were a few stops and starts along the way and before completing the token but it is now done. Before actually creating the coin, I had to answer a few questions.
Question 1 - What would I name the token?
I wasn't really too worried about the name because creating this token was for educational purposes so I would be ready for future projects. I decided to go the dog route, I mean it worked for Dogecoin didn't it. Perhaps Elon Musk can throw some attention my way! And what a better subject to choose than my very own dog - Kuda. He is two-and-a-half-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that my family got at the start of the pandemic. We were all at home at the time from work and school, so it was a great time to add to the family. I won't go into the story of how we can up with the name, but it is unique enough as to not already be a cryptocurrency so why not?
With that out of the way, I messed around with some logos based on my dog. Since I've not figured out how to get the logo tied into the token itself to pull into items like wallets I'm not that worried about it as of yet.
As it turns out, there is also a Kuda Bank in Nigeria but that wasn't giving me much inspiration from a logo perspective. Kuda is also a machine gun that appears in Call of Duty: Black Ops III. It was present in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 during its pre-alpha phase, but was not present in any other builds. And if you search the term Kuda on google images, horses are prominent among them. Who knew?
Question 2 - What network would I build the token on?
This was actually pretty easy as I do most of my DeFi work on the BNB Chain network, formerly known as the Binance Smart Chain. I would create a BEP-20 token which would mean reasonable gas fees to both create and mess around with the token. I thought about building an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network, but wasn't sure how many time I would mess up costing me decent amounts of ETH in the process if I got things wrong.
The only other network I really considered was Polygon given the cheap fees. I've already created some NFTs on that network and have some MATIC in my MetaMask account. Maybe next time...
Question 3 - How many tokens would I create?
This was another question I really did care much about. One million sounded like a good round number to start with so that is the figure I landed on. Heck, I'm not that greedy am I?
Question 4 - How to create the token?
This was obviously the most challenging question. I won't go into all the boring details here but I used Remix on Ethereum.org for the Solidity coding, editing, compiling and deploying necessary to create the token. I had never used Solidity before, but have done some basic coding in the past primarily when I used to fool around building websites back in the day. This wasn't HTML or javascript, but that background certainly helped me figure things out.
Once the token was finished deploying, the final step, I was able to find it on BscScan which was pretty cool.
Question 5 - How to get the token into wallets?
Once created, I transferred all the tokens to my MetaMask for which you can find the transaction here. The Token Contract Address is 0x787D581017cbeDC74905C38Ec9cC45e6bA986E2C and by simply putting that into my wallet when "Importing Tokens", MetaMask filled in the Token Symbol (KUDA) and Token Decimal (18) for me automatically. This was a sign that I did things right. Sure enough, the 1,000,000 tokens showed up in my wallet.
Next I would transfer 10,000 tokens to a friend's account to make sure that process worked correctly. After sending him the basic info via text, he set up the token on the BNB Chain account on his MetaMask and he would soon be the second holder of the Kuda token. Unfortunately that meant I was down to just 990,000 Kuda tokens before adding some liquidity with 10,000 more as explained below taking me down to a paltry 980,000.
KUDA Token QR Code
Yes I even have my own QR code for the token! Scanning this code will take you to The Bit Times website which has now listed my coin.
Kuda (KUDA) Token listing at exchanges
Want to swap for some KUDA tokens? That is no problem and available on a number of decentralized exchanges including the leading DEX on the BNB Chain network and one I would recommend - PancakeSwap
Other exchanges you can swap Kuda tokens on include:
I actually need to still transfer a number of tokens to the main token address to make them available but will get around to that shortly.
Wallets supporting the Kuda (KUDA) BEP-20 Token include:
Keeping your crypto safe and secure is of the utmost importance so you have plenty of choices when it comes to where to store your Kuda tokens.
Setting Liquidity
One critical step was to figure out how to set up the liquidity for the token on Pancakeswap. I decided to supply 10,000 Kuda tokens for .04 BNB ($11.07) or an even 25,0000 for a single BNB to make the math pretty easy. After the fees, this created 19.999 KUDA-BNB LP tokens each valued at $23.28 in my wallet with an estimated 0.42% APR and created another transaction on the BNB Chain. My Kuda tokens now had real value.
Final Thoughts
Creating my first token was a fun challenge, but now I've done it once it will be a piece of cake the next time. I eventually do want to create an entire DeFi ecosystem platform so learning how to create a cryptocurrency token was one of the many items I needed to educate myself on. The real value in tokens comes from the "utility" they provide. This obviously wasn't the purpose of this project but will be a main driving force behind the motivation the next time I create a token or set of tokens.
Next on the "to do" list is learning how to write smart contracts, the code that governs crypto transactions on protocols. This will also help me evaluate DeFi platforms by digging into the underlying smart contracts that control their actions.
Being able to write smart contracts combined with some of the things I already learned how to do like create a token, develop and mint NFTs, and write and code websites should enable me to develop my dream crypto project at some point. It is all just part of a process I am very much enjoying at this point as life is as much about the journey as it is the destination. This time, I just happened to take my dog Kuda along for the ride!
