Hi everyone!
As those who has seen my username and read my articles long enough, you know I am always very curious into learning new things along the way in my life, and share my experience with you all! (pun intended!)
For those who has started reading my articles last year would have noticed this title, Should I Spend for My Christmas - A Hardware Wallet? and boy was I grateful not listening to some who said, "don't. Pay your bills first." survey; or went for the more prominent hardware wallets like ledger that cost double the price.
Why?
Right after I acquired the hardware wallet under the marketing Black Friday sale, this new initiative manufacture, despite it originates from China (sorry anti-china people, don't get me wrong, I disagree with CCP, but Chinese people are always very innovative all their life) it actually had an "token air drop" initiative just for claiming the points. I even wrote a review New Air Drop to Entice More Hardware Wallet Owners. Smart Move SafePal! on how that worked for me.
Being uncertain what to do and was procrastinated quite a few times, I managed to get these many points, thinking this can be used as discount for another SafePal later which I might plan to use that to acquire for my family later.
Then, the air drop went into listing!
Being blessed with an initiative of $1 a token at the time, I was quite excited to try out this "dessert" DeFi called pancakeswap after countless times shared by my teamMalaysia fam. But I didn't want to touched my locked up for compounding BCH, and this was a perfect chance for me to use a little bit to see how much I can learn from it for a full scale decentralised staking, unlike centralised compounding services like Nexo and Celsius.
Off I went, being a n00b for the Binance Smart Chain, I totally didn't know how to get about it. I thought it was be an easy swap, unfortunately I couldn't get it to swap directly from SFP to BNB BEP20 token due to "gas fees" and I got really frustrated even until my other TeamMalaysia member knocked on my head:
"Girl! You just send BNB in BEP20 and that's it!"
Yeah, how blur I was that day! Juggling between day job and crypto learning is definitely no easy task if you are not clear in your head.
HOWEVER
I was stuck with my SafePal hardware wallet at home!
How did I go about it?
There are other ways to get the BEP20 tokens ready, which is in the supporting centralised exchange: Binance.com
For those who had trouble getting there because of sanctions, VPN to Asian region will solve your frustration.
I just so happened the first few try when I did for Binance when its price was just around $10 USD at the time, I saved up 0.5 BNB in the exchange so that I might be able to use it for an exchage.
Blessing in disguise because I realised that RealT is having troubles issuing their token sales, I used my saved up LTC for the token purchase and convert everything into BNB then to CAKE, getting ready to send it to my SafePal app that ties to the wallet and do it when I reach home.
How much did I spend on preparing it?
Total I have spent. $59.12 USD
Don't forget you MUST SEND TO BEP20 chain!
By the way...
All from my blogging savings throughout the last 4 years. Zero from fiat.
That's why, working hard in blogging sites like HIVE, STEEM, BLURT, LEOFINANCE is a good way to not only build reputation, sharpening writing skills, it also brings in a 2nd layer of income that can be used / test for further asset growth.
One thing good about Binance.com security is quite high, with email and Google Authentication codes, no one can easily steal your dough once these are set up; unless your entire google account + phone is stolen and compromised.
I digress!
So what have we learn so far?
To test / acquire the DeFi Staking service from PancakeSwap site, you need these 2 key elements.
BNB BEP20 Token. 0.1 BNB to play safe. This is your gas fees for A LOT OF Authentication.
CAKE, the first layer utility token for Yield, and also other services like lending and farming (which I haven't explore just yet)
Now come to the interesting part.
If you already have a SafePal hardware wallet (which is the extra layers of protection for your crypto wallet and by far an ultimate centralised wallet for Main coins, Ether, and Binance Chain) and SafePal application installed on your mobile, you are good to go.
However, if you don't have a hardware wallet just yet, you should also be able to do that with a soft wallet. Less secured.
I might actually attempt to make one soft wallet just to test and see if this really works and write down the step by step guide. Let me know in the comments if you have already done so and it works!
Once everything is in your wallet, your BNB BEP20 and your CAKE BEP20 tokens, you will need to go to the centralised dApp. This is where you can see all kinds of dApps available for SafePal wallet coins and tokens to interact with.
Ignoring all the other distractions, go straight to what my main article is all about: PancakeSwap!
It is great that the app itself is giving enough advise to every user that it has high risk, asking you to think twice before dabbling into this app, so that when you confirm your actions, they are not liable for any mishap and loss you suffered.
Do it at your own risk! They said.
Next, you will be brought to the main swap site where you can still change your BEP20 BNB main token to other tokens, but this is not where we are heading.
You have to, however, head over to connect your BNB BEP20 wallet from your SafePal App directly to this website embedded in the app.
Metamask, by far, is still the preferred key for dApps, and don't worry, you do not need to install a Metamak extension on your phone. SafePal will do all the work for you.
It will however ask you a bunch of questions and double confirming some stuffs (which I forgotten to screen capture) and go ahead with the linking.
Once the connection is up, you will need to open the top right menu icon to open the menu, and go straight to "pools", because you don't have enough liquidity to create a liquidity pair at the moment.
(That is also for another article to share)
What to Stake?
1. Stake CAKE for SafePal Tokens
Even though SafePal Tokens' price is dropping after the air drop and a sudden bull, I personally believe it can still be a good utility for you to either bet for a free SafePal hardware wallet, or for future use. In this exercise I am staking for SFP (although I already have SFP, also to increase my portfolio. I am sure that the SafePal organisation would not let it drop below $1. Hopefully!
Besides, this staking is not forever. There are limited tokens to be collected, and once that has ended you can just stake for another token.
So how do we do that?
Scroll down until you see the SFP token pool where you will need to let the DeFi site understand that you allow your CAKE to be used here for staking and "mining" SFP tokens.
Just like the ETH network, every single transaction you actually require to higher a service to help you. Unlike the BCH interface on read.cash and noise.cash where the platform owners actually does everything behind the scenes for you and they pay for your transactions, here, you must bear your own decision.
The good thing is that it will tell you how much you require to spend, so that you can decided to proceed or not; where this one is the average network gas fee. You can however go for lower or higher gwei (which is actually no difference in timing at the moment in terms of speed, so don't need to go for higher gwei) but for this education purposes, let's just stick to 21.4Gwei suggested at the moment; which average takes around 3 seconds to complete.
For hardware wallet users, you will know the drill where you will need the hardware wallet itself to do all the authorisation, which I think for soft-wallets might need you to use your biometric scan and private password to help authorise it .
Yes. They will probably prompt you a lot (just like the hardware wallet) a few more times in confirmation because they want to make sure you are really confirming this transaction. I think this is good because you need to be level headed especially when you are staking HUGE AMOUNTS. Besides, every $50 dollars USD is A LOT to some folks here.
You could feed a family!
Right??
(One of these can get a H.O.P.E Box organic vegetable Terarrium in Malaysia that could last from 3 months - 1 year! Again... I digress!)
By the way, this should be a one time thing
Time for staking the CAKE in!
Next, once that is approved and unlock, you will need to place your CAKE tokens into the pool in order to get your hourly dividend.
Just so you know, around $50 USD worth of CAKE could only earn you around $0.006 per hour worth of SPF (or lesser by the time I write this post), so staking the entire 7.263 CAKE everything in would definitely do good at the moment.
Once again, every fired up action will require to sign and acquire a miner to help you execute it, which is at the moment in BNB's price, could cost you around $0.50 USD per transaction. Therefore, you can record them as "expenses loss" if you want to find your net profit later.
This definitely still beats the ridiculously high gas fee for ETH blockchain.
The behaviour of Binance Smart Chain is the same with ETH, with cheaper learning fees.
And you are done!
Now seeing that your stake is shown under the APR, it is already start running. Relatively updating every hour.
You can anytime keep adding in until the entire pool of SFP tokens are all mined out.
2. Staking CAKE for MORE CAKE
You actually can also choose to stake for CAKE instead of SPF because its value is higher.
The whole process is the same as staking for SPF tokens, and the good part is that you can actually choose compounding later!
And you can be a tiny bit cheapskate to ask for 19 Gwei and see if the miner is in a good mood or not
(Obviously Chinese New Year might be this miner's good mood. But don't be overly cheapskate or else you will never get your request done and you will need to pay extra for cancellation / up the price to speed up the process!)
HOWEVER! BE WARNED!
There is one thing you need to REMEMBER!
Thanks to my TeamMalaysia fam who alerted me this.
Upon successful CAKE Stake for CAKE at the pool, you are issued a receipt of SYRUP Token! DO NOT SELL THIS TOKEN OFF if it ever show the price! This is your official receipt to redeemed your CAKE token that you have pawned for more CAKE tokens.
Treat it like a pawn shop. Every pawn shop has a receipt. Don't lose your receipt!
(I am actually hiding the token from my sight in case I forget)
What do you think?
If you have around $60 USD worth of earned tokens, would you give this a try?
Would you expand your portfolio further or you are the loyal fan of your first love BCH?
Share your thoughts in the comments below! Would love to hear how you see whether this DeFi diversifying is worth a shot!
Very long and useful article.😇😇😇