technology – adamprescott.net

How I Turned 1 ETH Into 1.5 ETH in One Swap

It started with a tip in a tweet

I remember reading about Ethereum 2.0 staking when it was announced last year. You needed 32 ETH, which is nearly $64k in today’s money, to do it — well out of reach for me, even then when ETH was only $700 or whatever it was at the time.

Leave it to the community to come up with solutions, though. Ankr, Kraken, and others offered the opportunity to stake ETH quantities as little as 0.1. This was perfect for me — I promptly staked my 1 ETH with Ankr, and I was given an ankrETH in return.

The cool thing about staking with Ankr is that the rewards accumulate, and you redeem your staked ETH plus the rewards when you exchange the ankrETH back to Ankr after the Ethereum 2.0 locking phase is over. It also means you can exchange the token, so if I suddenly started feeling bad about staking ETH, I’m not locked in the same way as if I’d done it officially with Ethereum. This proved to a really, really good thing for me.

Earlier this week, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed. I saw this message from Guarda Wallet, a company that I’ve written about previously for staking both Harmony ONE and Cardano ADA tokens:https://adamprescott.wordpress.com/media/c149701349a3b3487341b93af04ada8bSource: Twitter

I was immediately curious — I hopped over to Uniswap and checked the exchange rate. Sure enough, 1 ETH was trading for 1.60 GETH. Wow — mind blown. It felt a little too good to be true, and I wanted to do a little more research before committing. So, I got to work.

You can see step 1 of my research on the tweet itself. I asked Guarda why the value of GETH was so low compared to ETH, and they promptly fired back a 5-tweet reply explaining the history of GETH and why the market varies, along with a note about wanting to make their customers aware when a rare opportunity presents itself.https://adamprescott.wordpress.com/media/928f8b1f8e62c9a56d1ea68895f758f7Source: Twitter

Okay, this was still sounding pretty good. I looked up GETH on both CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, and it all felt very suspicious. It was only a part of 5 watchlists on CMC, and it had just 17 likes on CG. The trading volume was also insanely low.

So, the next thing I did was to open a support ticket through my Guarda wallet. In the ticket, I raised the potential of a GETH scam that they were promoting via their Twitter account and asked if they could confirm the GETH token’s contract address, which isn’t found anywhere in the Guarda documentation.

Once again, I received a prompt response from the Guarda team along with the GETH token contract address:

Alright then. At this point, I decided to take the plunge. I went over to SnowSwap, where I had staked my ankrETH, and withdrew from their Eth2 liquidity pool. I checked exchange rates and found that WETH had a more favorable GETH exchange rate on Uniswap, so I elected to withdraw that instead of the ankrETH that I had originally deposited.

With WETH in-wallet, I headed to Uniswap and swapped it to GETH. Magically, the 1 ETH that I started with had been transformed into 1.47 GETH.

I logged into Guarda and imported my Ethereum wallet. Without any additional steps, the GETH was showing as staked ETH:

Additionally, as you can see in the screenshot, the next reward distribution will occur on May 1, 2021. That’s part of the deal when you stake with Guarda — they distribute rewards they earn to GETH holders each month.

The final step in my journey was to visit Guarda’s Telegram community to ask if need to do anything else to receive rewards. Once again, my question was answered promptly — and I was assured that I didn’t need to do anything else. I just need to hold onto my GETH to collect rewards.

I was already enjoying Guarda for staking ONE, ADA, and ATOM tokens, and I feel like I just hit the lottery with this swap. At the time I’m writing this, it looks like GETH has regained a lot of its value against ETH, and the exchange rate is not nearly as favorable. Still, getting an 18% bonus on your ETH isn’t too shabby…

Now that I’m a GETH holder, it’s great to see that the value has rebounded & recovered. I feel even better about making the move! If you’re looking to make a similar move, keep an eye on the price of GETH at CoinGecko. If Ethereum starts to surge, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the GETH drop price again, and that’s your chance to make the same move.

Thanks for taking the time to read about my experience. All the usual disclaimers apply. Be careful about making swaps on and know what you’re doing. When you hold GETH, you aren’t locked in. You can trade it away on Uniswap at any point. But, if you keep holding it, you’ll receive monthly rewards and be able to exchange it 1:1 when the next phase of Ethereum 2.0 is reached.

This story was originally published on This Crypto Life on April 9, 2021.

Setup & Run a Theta Edge Node and Start Earning TFUEL in 5 Minutes

No effort, no minimums

Theta Network has been very hot in the cryptocurrency & blockchain space recently. Its two tokens, THETA and TFUEL, both experienced explosive growth in March. THETA went from $3 to an all-time high of $14, earning itself a spot as a top-10 token by market cap. Similarly, TFUEL — the gas token of the Theta blockchain — grew from $0.09 to its peak value, $0.54.

The cool thing about TFUEL is that you can earn it simply by watching Theta.tv, a streaming service that has a similar look & feel to Twitch. TFUEL earned this way can be used to tip streamers, subscribe, and purchase rewards. You can’t withdraw this TFUEL, though, or exchange it for other tokens. If you’re curious about Theta at all, start there. Sign up and give it a shot. (Note that the sign-up link is a referral; it’s okay to work around that if you prefer.)

The Theta Edge Node

If you’re like me, when you earn by streaming, your first thought is, “Oh! I should keep this thing going 24/7 to earn more free TFUEL.” You can definitely do that, but there’s a better way — a way that doesn’t require you to actually stream content, and you’ll earn rewards in a wallet where you can send & receive them as you see fit: the Theta Edge Node.

Here’s Theta’s documentation for setting up an Edge Node: https://docs.thetatoken.org/docs/setup-theta-edge-node.

Source: Theta Edge Node running on my computer

Getting going is super easy; just download, install, and run. The only configuration is to enter your Theta wallet address, which will probably require you to do the extra step of creating the wallet if you don’t already have one.

Walkthrough

Here’s the breakdown of exactly what to do, starting from scratch:

Create a Theta wallet: https://wallet.thetatoken.org/create
Download the Windows or macOS client: https://docs.thetatoken.org/docs/setup-theta-edge-node
Install the client
Run the client
Enter your wallet address from step 1

And that, my friends, is it! By default, the client will look for Cache and Compute jobs. Edge Cache works the same as what you experience while earning from Theta.tv by receiving streaming content and re-broadcasting it to other users. Edge Compute is more interesting, in my opinion, and is intended to be a “generic computing platform.” Here’s an excerpt from the Edge Node docs:

Such a platform allows Task Initiators to post tasks for Edge Nodes to download and solve. Task initiators also register the tasks and provide the TFuel rewards for each task on the blockchain through smart contracts. Tasks can be anything ranging from solving a set of equations, finding novel protein structures to help fight COVID-19, transcoding a video, to thousands of other applications that can leverage a network of distributed edge computing devices.

While getting started with Edge Compute, my immediate concern was how many resources it would consume. I was thinking of running the Edge Node on a part-time gaming PC that I use for mining, and I didn’t want Edge competing for GPU resources. The Theta documentation says this about its Folding@Home initiative:

Since bandwidth sharing utilizes minimal CPU and GPU resources, it means that Edge Nodes could also perform compute intensive tasks such as determining which drug designs could be effective COVID-19 antivirals.

So, this validates that Edge Compute is looking to take advantage of both idle CPU and GPU resources. I’m running it on my mining PC, and it hasn’t impacted hash rates so far — but I’m keeping any on it. (It also hasn’t earned very impressively, but that’s ok given that I don’t want it competing for those resources.)

Conclusion

Theta Network and Theta.tv are doing some really cool things. They’ve partnered with big names like Sony and Lionsgate, and they have co-founders from Twitch and YouTube as advisors.

The growth in value of THETA and TFUEL has been incredible, and there’s no reason to expect that they’ll stop growing — although certainly not at the same parabolic rate.

Running a Theta Edge Node gives users an effortless way to start earning TFUEL with idle bandwidth and computing resources, and it will only get better with time. Theta’s Mainnet 3.0 release is right around the corner, and it promises improvements for Edge Node users.

This story was originally published on This Crypto Life on April 7, 2021.

The Mutually-Beneficial Future of Reader-Incentivized Media

Decrypt’s Reader Token is a brilliant evolution that the news industry would do well to embrace

Last month, I wrote an article about Brave’s Basic Attention Token and the possibilities its model holds for big media outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post. Today these companies use annoying paywalls to encourage readers to subscribe. They broadcast headlines to news aggregators, but when you click, you can’t read the article until you subscribe.

The reason behind the paywalls makes sense. Writers and their employers need to be paid, and, generally, the internet of yore provides two ways for generating revenue: ads and subscriptions. You either monetize your traffic, so advertisers are willing to pay you or collect money from users directly in place of the ads.

There’s a problem with both of those models, though. In both cases, the reader/customer/consumer is the essential resource, and they’re completely cut out of the revenue stream. Rather than valuing and rewarding their choice and attention, media companies focus solely on profit. Traditional media is struggling because there’s so much choice, and people will often gravitate toward high-quality free options rather than pay or put up with ads.

This is where the Basic Attention Token, or BAT, is such a novel idea. Essentially, advertisers pay Brave, and Brave passes a portion of the proceeds to its users, who opt-in as willing participants in the Brave Rewards program. They’re happy to view ads because it benefits them. Instead of installing ad-blockers, Brave’s users are cranking their “ads per hour” setting to the max!

A similar concept has been implemented by the cryptocurrency-focused online magazine Decrypt. Two weeks ago, they unveiled the Decrypt Reader Token.

It’s similar in concept to BAT. Users are rewarded with DCPT for reading, sharing, and reacting to articles in the Decrypt app. Users are limited to earning just 20 tokens per day. The tokens have no monetary value, and they can’t be withdrawn. I’m not sure Decrypt knows exactly what the tokens will be used for, but they have a rewards store where DCPT can be exchanged for limited-edition NFTs and presumably things like swag in the future.

The concept is brilliant for many reasons.

First and foremost, it’s a huge incentive for readers. I can earn up to 3 tokens for every article I read. I can earn 2 more by sharing the article and another by reacting to it.

Source: https://decrypt.co/61733/decrypt-launches-reader-rewards-token-dcpt

I can only earn 20 tokens per day, too, which is the perfect segue into the second benefit: it makes older articles more valuable. In addition to checking in on the latest headlines, I’m more likely to browse through older articles searching for interesting content that will earn me more tokens.

Reacting to an article earns 1 DCPT, so guess what I do to every article I read? These reactions provide valuable feedback to Decrypt, which will help them write more content that their readers like in the future.

The fourth benefit belongs to advertisers. Filecoin is sponsoring “season 1” of the reader token. I see the Filecoin logo several times a day as I’m in & out of the app. That’s great exposure for Filecoin!

I absolutely love what Decrypt has done, and I think this represents the future of media revenue. Treat users and readers as people, and reward them for their time. It can come in many ways. You can reward them with actual currency, like Brave’s BAT. Alternatively, allow them to earn a custom token, like Decrypt’s Reader Token, which can later be redeemed for swag that turns loyal readers into walking billboards for your brand.

It’s a literal win-win because you — the company — are earning revenue from advertisers at the same time you’re growing your reader base and rewarding users for their time and loyalty. More loyal readers mean more advertising dollars, leading to more/better rewards, so the cycle goes.

And consider the alternative. You keep showing ads or charging a subscription fee with no benefit to your users. How will you compete when an incentivized challenger rises? Why would you pick the browser that doesn’t pay you? Why would you read news from the source that charges a subscription instead of offering you rewards?

The established players with traditional models have an edge now, but the competition is closing the gap, and if the big boys of today can’t evolve, they’ll be left behind.

This story was originally published on This Crypto Life on April 5, 2021.

Viperswap Hits $10 Million TVL in 17 Days

Wait, but is that good? Let’s compare.

VenomDAO announced Viperswap’s launch on March 8. Four days later, on March 12, it had reached $1 million in total value locked (TVL). Two days later, its TVL doubled to $2.2 million, and one week after that, it had doubled again to $4.3 million.

Then, three days after that, on March 24–a mere seventeen days after its launch — Viperswap reached $10 million in TVL.

That’s quite an achievement, but how does it stack up against its predecessors? Let’s make some comparisons against today’s top 5 DEXes, as ranked by DeFi Pulse:

At the top of the list is SushiSwap, which started on September 4, 2020, and exploded to $1.15 billion in TVL on September 9, 2020. This was largely due to a notable migration of assets from Uniswap. The migration may warrant an asterisk on the milestone, but it’s pretty incredible, nonetheless. 5 days.
Uniswap launched on November 2, 2018, and it took them until May 11, 2019 to reach $10 million in TVL. 190 days.
It took Curve Finance from February 10, 2020 until April 23, 2020 to accomplish the feat. 73 days.
Balancer launched on February 28, 2020 and hit the mark on June 1, 2020. 94 days.
Rounding out the top 5 is Bancor, which began on August 17, 2017 and passed $10 million 112 days later on December 7, 2017.

Reaching $10 million in TVL in just 17 days is pretty remarkable, especially when you compare it against the others listed above. Viperswap’s rise came about quietly, too, without much advertising beyond a handful of tweets from the community. It’s not slowing down, either, having already gained another 30% since hitting the $10M milestone yesterday. It could be halfway to $100M by this time next week!

This article’s focus has been total value locked, but the growth of Viperswap’s native token value and market cap has been equally impressive. The token began at $0.005 and has grown to just shy of $1, pushing the total market cap near $150 million.

I’ve written about Viperswap a couple of times now, and I maintain that if you try it yourself, it will re-write your expectations for blockchain apps. Harmony is so fast and cheap, and you can try Viperswap with less than $10 and see real earnings accumulate in real-time. It’s incredible.

The future for Harmony is bright, and Viperswap has the opportunity to play a central role. Harmony had its own news this week, launching a Binance Smart Chain bridge in addition to its existing Ethereum bridge. With that news, they explained that you couldn’t do a direct passthrough of tokens, for example, to send USDT from Ethereum straight to BSC. Instead, there will be separate ethUSDT and bscUSDT tokens. If/when Viperswap adds liquidity to facilitate this swap, it will be an easy, negligible-fee, non-issue to do the extra swap to make it happen.

I can’t wait to see what comes next from the Harmony and VenomDAO teams!

This story was originally published on This Crypto Life on March 25, 2021.

Harmony Launches Binance Smart Chain Bridge

A guided look at Harmony’s Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain bridges

Harmony protocol announced yesterday that they’d expanded their bridge to support Binance Smart Chain (BSC) in addition to Ethereum, which was already supported.

This is great news for two reasons. First and most obviously, it provides another on & off ramps to BSC, which has a vast ecosystem of dApps. Second, it provides me, a user in the United States, with a bridge from Ethereum to BSC.

You see, the Binance Bridge isn’t available to US users. There’s no great way for me to get funds onto BSC other than by going through Binance US.

I’ll explore both the existing Ethereum bridge and the new Binance Smart Chain bridge in this story.

The Ethereum bridge

A bonus third-and-more-personal reason to be excited is that it won’t cost me $20 to try it out #TheFeesAreTooDamnHigh. I haven’t played with Harmony’s Ethereum bridge because I don’t have any “real business,” and it’s simply too expensive to use just for tryin’ it out.

To that end, I won’t complete a transaction, but let’s at least take a look at the experience.

To use the Ethereum bridge, browse to https://bridge.harmony.one and select ETH > ONE. Connect your Ethereum wallet via MetaMask, and you’re ready to go.

Let’s say I want to move 500 REEF tokens from my Ethereum wallet onto the Harmony chain. REEF isn’t one of the pre-configured tokens, so we select ERC20 and enter a custom address. When the Change token button is pressed, the token is recognized, and the prompts & available quantity will be changed & populated accordingly.

Specify the amount to transfer and ONE wallet address, then click Continue. Since I’m using the same wallet on Harmony, I can conveniently use the Use my address link button to populate my address.

Next, you’ll be prompted to approve the amount. I won’t lie — I don’t quite understand this step. It tells me that the minimum is my transaction amount, but I can specify a larger amount to save on approval later. Perhaps to cover additional gas fees? (If you know, please help me understand by leaving a comment!)

Click Continue again, and we get to my favorite part — the final confirmation, where we learn that it will cost $23 to transfer $20 of REEF!

That obviously doesn’t make sense, so we’ll cancel the transaction and leave our 500 REEF for another day.

The Binance Smart Chain bridge

Those fees, right? Binance Smart Chain is much better than Ethereum in this regard, so let’s attempt the same operation using Harmony’s BSC bridge. The steps are the same, except this time, we’ll click the Binance toggle and connect a BSC wallet with MetaMask.

Once again, I’ll enter the REEF contract’s custom address, and the page will update with the prompts and correct balance.

Click Continue through to the confirmation, and this time we see that the transaction fee is just $3.23 — much better!

While it’s still not ideal to pay $3 to move $20 of assets, it’s infinitely times better than paying $23 to move $20 of assets! So, this time we’ll go ahead and proceed. You know, for science.

When you click Confirm, the view expands to show a step-by-step view of the actions that must be executed. The experience is actually quite nice, and the full operation takes about 2 minutes to complete.

Once it’s done, you can easily see the new tokens in your ONE wallet by connecting the wallet to the bridge UI.

If I wanted to move the tokens back to BSC from Harmony, I repeat the steps of specifying the custom token address and clicking through to the confirmation — but we see the return trip will cost less than $1.

Conclusion

Harmony continues to impress me with its speed and low fees every time I touch it. The bridge experience is a huge step toward making cross-chain everything we might want it to be — a place where you can move tokens quickly and cheaply between blockchains. It feels less like the experience we’ve come to expect from Ethereum and more like the real-time native web app we’re accustomed to.

If you haven’t tried Harmony, give it a shot. It only costs you a couple of dollars. Once you experience how fast it is, you won’t want to go back.

Ethereum, BSC, and others aren’t going anywhere, and we’ll surely see different apps on different chains that emerge as clear leaders for their various purposes. Bridges like what Harmony has created are essential for the cross-chain ecosystem to thrive, and they show us that it doesn’t need to be hard, slow, or expensive.

Harmony is making me redefine my expectations for blockchains. The Ethereum and BSC bridges are an important step, and they work great. I can’t wait to see what comes next from Harmony!

This story was originally published on This Crypto Life on March 24, 2021.

How to Earn 17,160% APR in 2 Minutes and 55 Seconds

A Viperswap ONE-1ETH liquidity pool tutorial

The VenomDAO team just announced that they’d added APRs to their Viperswap liquidity pool UI, and they’re quite generous. Of course, it’s all very new and dropping quickly*, but the fact remains — the rates are insane right now.

*In just a few hours since announcing and sharing the screenshot, it’s already reduced to less than 14,000%. 14,000% still feels pretty okay, though, right?

The best part is that it literally takes less than 3 minutes (I used a stopwatch) to add funds to the liquidity pool, and there’s basically no minimum and near-$0 transaction fees. In this article, I’ll show you how to add liquidity with a tiny amount — just $30!

I’ve purchased ONE from Binance US, and there’s where the journey begins. We only need to do four steps:

Transfer ONE tokens to a MetaMask wallet on Harmony Mainnet
Swap half of the ONE tokens to 1ETH
Add liquidity
Stake the resulting LP tokens

Ready? Let’s go!

1. Transfer to MetaMask wallet

The first thing you need to do is add Harmony Mainnet to your MetaMask wallet. It’s easy to do by adding a Custom RPC network to MetaMask and plugging in the correct values. Follow Harmony’s documentation for this here.

The easiest way to get your ONE address is to view your MetaMask account using Harmony Explorer, which can be accessed conveniently from the MetaMask UI.

Clicking the View in Explorer link will whisk you away to Harmony Explorer, where you can click-to-copy your ONE wallet address.

Now we take that value and enter it into the exchange’s withdrawal screen, jump through the necessary confirmation hoops, and seconds later, our funds are visible in MetaMask.

2. Swap for some 1ETH

To add liquidity to Venomswap’s pool, we need to provide equal amounts of two tokens. I want to contribute to the 1ETH pool, so I’ll convert half of my ONE tokens to 1ETH. Browse to https://viper.exchange and connect your wallet (make sure you have the Harmony Mainnet network selected).

$30 bought me 265 ONE tokens, so I’ll convert half of them to 1ETH on the Viperswap Swap page.

3. Add liquidity

After just a few seconds, the swap should complete, and you’re ready to switch to the Pool tab to add liquidity. Select the pair you’d like to provide and specify the amount. I have less 1ETH available, so I click the MAX button next to 1ETH to contribute the maximum amount. (I had trace amounts of additional 1ETH in my wallet, so I’m adding a little more than was shown previously in the swap screenshot above.)

4. Stake the LP token

Our final step is to stake the liquidity tokens we received for contributing to the ONE-1ETH pool. We do this by selecting the Staking tab and clicking the Deposit button.

Conclusion

As soon as the staking transaction is complete, you can watch your rewards begin to accumulate in real-time. For example, my $30 has earned 1.5 VIPER (about $0.30) since I’ve been writing this article.

It’s worth noting that rewards are boosted by the VenomDAO team for these first few weeks of launch, and 95% of rewards will be locked until the end of 2021, at which point they’ll gradually unlock over the course of 2022.

Still, Viperswap has been incredible, and I’m happy to sit on my VIPER tokens for these next 20 months. Since my last article, VenomDAO has hinted that a similar project will launch on Binance Smart Chain, and I’ve also seen VIPER appear as an untracked project on CoinMarketCap.

Harmony is so fast, and the transaction fees are so low. Viperswap really does a terrific job of showcasing both in addition to providing a tremendous earning opportunity during their first weeks of launch. I’m very excited to see what the future holds for both parties!

This story was originally published on This Crypto Life on March 20, 2021.

ETH2 Staking Results (1 month)

Month-by-month tracking of ETH2 staking via Ankr & providing ETH2 liquidity with SnowSwap

I staked 1 ETH with Ankr Staker on February 17, 2021, and then added the resulting aETH token to an ETH2 liquidity pool at SnowSwap. Each month, I’ll publish a short summary of rewards earned and value over time.How to Stake ETH2 and Earn Double Rewards
A tour of Ankr Staker & liquidity provider SnowSwapmedium.com

Results

Ankr Staker shows rewards earned by displaying the current value of aETH in ETH. Similarly, SnowSwap’s liquidity pool displays the number of SNOW that have been earned. Each month, I’ll record the current prices of ETH and SNOW in USD, aETH value in ETH, and the total value of assets.

|------------+-----------+-------+------------+------+-----------|
| DATE       | ETH (USD) | aETH  | SNOW (USD) | SNOW | Total     |
|------------+-----------+-------+------------+------+-----------|
| 02-17-2021 | $1,851.14 | 1.00E |         $0 |    0 | $1,851.14 |
| 03-17-2021 | $1,763.94 | 1.03E |     $47.13 | 0.50 | $1,840.42 |
|------------+-----------+-------+------------+------+-----------|

Rewards:
0.03 ETH       =  $ 58.21
0.50 SNOW      =  $ 23.57
-------------------------
               =  $ 81.78

Txn fees (est) = ($200.00)
Rewards        =  $ 81.78
--------------------------
Total ROI      = ($118.22)

Summary

After 1 month, my net loss with estimated transaction fees is ($118.22), but most of the loss is due to the decrease in the value of ETH. In that regard, the SNOW I’ve earned offset some of the losses, but I’m still at a net loss due to transaction fees.

The combined ETH and SNOW staking rewards represent a 4.6% return in one month, which is more than I could’ve earned with other staking options, but SNOW is at a low point right now — we’ll see if it can turn it around next month!

This story was originally published on Data Driven Investor on March 17, 2021.

I Just Blew My Own Mind Writing This Viperswap Tutorial

Fast, cheap, & profitable liquidity pools & staking on Harmony blockchain

I really fell in love with Harmony the first time I transferred ONE tokens. They boast 2-second finality and near-$0 fees, and it worked flawlessly as advertised.

Now that Viperswap is just getting started, I was pretty excited to try it out. Viperswap is forked from SushiSwap, which is forked from Uniswap, so you can easily think of it as “the Harmony Uniswap.”

Viperswap is very much in its infancy, and it doesn’t have all the coins you’d see with its ancestors. It wins massively, though: it’s fast and cheap! That makes it really easy — and fun — to experiment with.

In today’s article, I’m starting with just $20 in ONE, and we’ll head over to Viperswap and add funds to a liquidity pool and stake the resulting LP token for even greater rewards.

If you’d like to follow along at home, I started by buying $20 of Bitcoin Cash with my debit card and Uphold wallet, then sending the BCH to BinanceUS. (Why Bitcoin Cash? Find out here!) This was done to avoid lock periods with the funds and pay minimal fees. Once my funders were deposited, I swapped them to ONE, and that’s where our story begins.

Deposit ONE to your wallet

Viperswap works like many web3.0 applications. You connect your wallet and — boom! — you’re ready to go. So, to use Viperswap, we first need to move funds into a wallet.

I’m using the MetaMask browser extension. One hurdle to overcome is that you need a “one1” address to send your funds to. Getting the address is easy, but it’s a manual two-step process.

First, you need to add the Harmony Mainnet to your MetaMask account. This is done easily enough by following the instructions provided by Harmony here.

Once you’ve created the account, copy the “0x” address from MetaMask and head to the Harmony blockchain explorer. Search your 0x address, and you’ll find your one1 address. Not super hard, but not exactly intuitive, either.

With your one1 wallet address, you can withdraw your ONE tokens from BinanceUS just as you would any other token. When you do this, you’ll experience speed and low fees that will blow your mind, so hang on!

Once the transaction processes, you should immediately see funds in MetaMask. (Even though I was expecting it, I was still amazed by how fast it happens!)

Exploring Viperswap

We’ve got tokens, now let’s play with Viperswap. Viperswap has four main applications: Swap, Pool, Staking, and ViperPit. Today, I’m going to cover Swap, Pool, and Staking.

I want to earn some VIPER tokens, so I’ll contribute to the ONE-VIPER liquidity pool. This means I need to convert half of my ONE tokens to VIPER. (Author’s note: it turns out that some of my deposited funds with BinanceUS were still locked, so I’m doing the tutorial with just 200 ONE, or about $10.)

Swap

With my wallet connected, swapping tokens was a breeze. Just pick how many I want to swap and click Swap. It’s essentially $0 in fees and instant. In the blink of an eye, I have 28 VIPER.

Pool

Now let’s add some liquidity. Just click on the Pool tab, and click Add Liquidity button. I selected to provide VIPER tokens and used the MAX button to contribute my entire $10 to the pool.

After approving the transaction, you’re presented with another dialog that lets you know about the pool you’re contributing to. Not surprisingly, my $10 is good for less than 0.01%, but that’s okay — we’re here for the experience! Click the Supply button to supply funds to the liquidity pool.

In exchange for supplying liquidity, you receive LP (liquidity pool) tokens. My contribution was good for just shy of 53 ONE/VIPER LP tokens.

Staking

Finally, we can stake our LP tokens to earn more VIPER rewards. Go to the Staking tab, and click the Deposit button that corresponds to your LP token — in my case, the ONE-VIPER token.

You’ll once again receive a transaction approval box with details about what you’re doing. Go ahead and approve that. (Or don’t — it’s a free world.)

And for the final step, click the Deposit button.

That’s it! You’re done. You will immediately start earning rewards.

Conclusion

Viperswap is pretty amazing. In this story, I covered how to take just $10 in ONE, convert half of it to VIPER, add to the ONE-VIPER liquidity pool, and stake the resulting LP token.

The entire process took me about 15 minutes. That’s less than the time it took for the BCH transaction I mentioned at the beginning of the article to process.

The entire process, which took about 5 transactions, cost me less than a penny in fees. That includes withdrawing funds from the exchange, swapping half the tokens to VIPER, adding them to the liquidity pool, and staking the resulting LP token.

I’ve also been writing the article in real-time as I do this, and in the time it’s taken me to write the article — about 15 minutes — I’ve also earned 1 VIPER token.

How amazing is that!?

Everything I’ve experienced with Harmony is completely blowing my mind and re-writing my expectations for what cryptocurrency should be. I was exploring and experiencing Viperswap for the first time, right here, in real-time, and it destroyed all my expectations.

Great job, Harmony. Great job, Viperswap. I’m really looking forward to the future!

This story was originally published on This Crypto Life on March 13, 2021.

Harmony ONE Staking for Fun & Profit

12% rewards in just two steps

I really like what Harmony has going on. First, they promise to solve Ethereum scalability by providing a sharding protocol with a trustless bridge. They also advertise 2-second finality and near-$0 transaction fees.

Those are great, but it seems like a hundred projects are solving these same problems. Harmony has the tools to be successful, that’s for sure. So, I love that the top priority on their 2021 roadmap is adoption. I was also excited to see partnerships with Reef and API3 announced.

On top of all that, the Harmony ONE token was still priced at just $0.03. I noticed that Binance US had staking available, but it required a minimum of 10k tokens and paid just 2–3%. Still, I was in. I bought my 10k tokens, and I was happy.

A better rate

So there I was, gleefully earning my 2–3% when, hey — what’s this? A staking announcement from Harmony?https://adamprescott.wordpress.com/media/9ce992d1250b300a2e93f76b77ab2f43

I could earn 12% by staking my ONE with Guarda? That’s more than a little better than what I was getting with Binance, so I needed to check this out.

The staking guide on Guarda’s site is very straightforward. It’s basically a two-step process: deposit funds & stake ’em. I grabbed some screenshots along the way, so I’ll show you what it looks like.

Staking tutorial

I didn’t have a Guarda wallet, so step one was to create one. Guarda is a non-custodial wallet. That means you’re in charge of the private keys, and if you lose them, you’re out of luck. When you create a wallet, you get a text file containing your encrypted private keys. Keep that file and your password in a secure place.

The default multi-currency wallet doesn’t have a ONE wallet, so you may need to use the Add new wallet link at add one. It’s a simple, intuitive process. If you do this, you’ll get a new wallet text file — again, back it up somewhere safe.

You’ve got your ONE wallet ready to go? Let’s get to business.

Deposit funds

Click your ONE wallet and copy the wallet address. This is where you’ll send your ONE tokens. This was my first experience with sending tokens on the Harmony blockchain, and it was refreshingly instant.

I confirmed the withdrawal with Binance, and by the time I clicked refresh in my Guarda wallet, the funds were there. Well worth the $0.00 fee, I’d say!

Source: Binance US — transaction fee is 0.001 ONE, which is less than a penny

Stake ‘em

Now that the funds are in your Guarda wallet, you’re ready to stake! Start the process by clicking the Staking link beneath the wallet, followed by the Stake button.

This will bring up a prompt for you to specify how many tokens you wish to stake. There’s a minimum of 1000 ONE. Enter the quantity and click Next.

You’ll be presented with a confirmation screen. We get hit with another transaction fee, this time for 0.000021 ONE — a tiny amount. It’s worth noting that, while wildly insignificant, you do need some funds to cover the small fees, so don’t stake 100%. I left 5 ONE, about $0.15, which is more than enough.

Finally, click the Confirm button, and — boom — you’re staked!

When you click the Staking link beneath your ONE wallet, you’ll now be given details about your staked coins and earned rewards.

Conclusion

I’m so glad I found the tweet from Harmony & Guarda Wallet. The entire process of moving funds from Binance to my Guarda wallet and staking my ONE was completely painless. Given how slow and expensive it is to move things on Ethereum, this was downright enjoyable!

With just a few minutes, my confidence and excitement for Harmony grew, and I’m earning a return rate that’s 5–6 times better than I was! It feels like a serious win-win!

This story was originally published on This Crypto Life on March 9, 2021.

5 Ways to Earn Free Crypto Doing Things You Do Anyway

Generate passive micro-income that can easily grow to hundreds or thousands of free dollars

The cryptocurrency community has slowly been building an alternate universe where everything is incentivized. For every task, there’s a site or an app that wants to pay you with their token.

My purpose here isn’t to recruit you or trick you into signing up using referral links — I want to let people know about all these cool things!. That said, I’ll include referral links at the bottom if you do want them. (But seriously, that’s not why we’re here.)

Here’s the secret to success with these faucets, though: don’t try to maximize your earnings. Just use them for what they are. If you try to game the system by running multiple accounts or keep things pumping 24/7, you’re going to burn out (or get banned) over a few dollars. If you just use them, you’ll have fun and earn money without even realizing it. And don’t be quick to cash out, either. Reinvest that money and hold it. The biggest earnings in crypto come from the token gaining value over time. $10 earned from using your browser could turn into $300 in the span of a month.

So, without further ado, let’s look at some ways to earn free crypto by doing things you do anyway!

Do you like using the internet?

Use the Brave browser. When you opt-in to their Brave Rewards program, you’ll get ad notifications that earn you BAT. You don’t need to look at the ads or do anything; you get paid just for receiving the notifications. You can use Brave on all your computers and Apple & Android devices to earn more rewards.

BAT has gone from around $0.20 three months ago to more than $0.70 now. Brave has an ambitious roadmap that will reward users who keep BAT in their wallets and use them to pay for fees in their upcoming DEX. Earning a few dollars each month in BAT could easily turn into $100 or more with a bit of time.

But do you like searching for things on the internet?

Use Presearch. Presearch is a decentralized search engine that rewards you with PRE for every search you do, up to a limit per day. Like BAT, PRE has seen significant growth in the past 90 days, going from $0.01 to $0.08.

Last month, Presearch released an update that reduced its static 0.25 PRE per search to a variable amount that’s been around 0.12 PRE. While this is a decrease in earnings, it suggests to me that Presearch is adjusting for future growth and sustainability — a good sign for PRE earners & holders.

Got anything like Twitter?

Use Noise.Cash — built by the same folks as Read.Cash! I particularly enjoy Noise because a lot of the community is focused on cryptocurrencies and related projects. These are subjects my real-life friends & family aren’t into, so Noise really scratches an itch.

Noise gifts you a balance of free tips every so often, and you receive a cut of the tips you reward to others. It’s fun, and it’s easy to earn a few dollars per week just by talking with friends.

Don’t get greedy, though, and don’t try to game the system, or they’ll cut you off from free tips. Just be yourself, enjoy the experience, and you’ll find the earnings pile up quickly. Much like Read.Cash, everything you earn on Noise is paid in Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

How ‘bout watching videos?

Use LBRY. It’s the cryptocurrency world’s version of YouTube. If you’re a creator, you can even link your YouTube channel to import your videos. Using LBRY will earn you their token, LBRY Credits (LBC).

It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that LBC has gone up significantly in value this year, going from $0.03 in December to nearly $0.20! You earn rewards for signing up and doing simple things like visiting daily and following others.

What about streaming, like Twitch?

Use Theta.tv. Theta provides a mix of video game streaming and other programming, but it feels very Twitch-like. The cool thing about Theta is that while you watch, your unused bandwidth is used to re-broadcast the stream to others — and you earn Theta Fuel (TFUEL) for your contribution.

And guess what? TFUEL has gone from less than $0.02 to $0.15 in the last three months.

Conclusion

There’s increasingly a crypto alternative for everything, and if the thing you want doesn’t exist, give it a minute. There are projects for finding jobs that pay you in crypto. There are plenty of games that reward you in crypto. There are social media projects. The things I’ve listed above are just scratching the surface.

The services aren’t as polished and robust as their mainstream counterparts, but they’re made up of growing, vibrant communities. And more importantly, they serve their purposes well.

Individually, these applications and services may not pay very much, but nearly all of them are experiencing tremendous growth. You might as well start earning a few dollars here and there for all the things you’re doing, anyway. After a few months, those few dollars from those few things will turn into more dollars, and as these projects take off and grow, they’ll turn into even more dollars.

I’m looking for feedback! What other services should be part of the list? Do you like learning about offerings like this, or are these things that everybody in the community already knows about? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

Referral links

Here’s another thing about the crypto community: everything’s got a referral code. If you’re interested in trying the services mentioned above, consider supporting me by using the following links!

This article was originally published on read.cash on March 8, 2021.

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Generate passive micro-income that can easily grow to hundreds or thousands of free dollars

Do you like using the internet?

But do you like searching for things on the internet?

Got anything like Twitter?

How ‘bout watching videos?

What about streaming, like Twitch?

Conclusion

Referral links

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