DeFi Demystified — A Journey through Cryptocurrency: I
MetaMask Wallet Setup
Sunday, 17th January 2021
Let our minds and hearts be open, for today we will take the first step toward financial independence by starting a journey through the verdant, blooming landscape of DeFi. Step 1. → Get a wallet!
What is DeFi? DeFi is short for “decentralized finance,” an umbrella term for a variety of financial applications in cryptocurrency or blockchain geared toward disrupting financial intermediaries.
Simply: Peer-to-Peer payments are possible on decentralized public-ledger — “blockchain”. Ethereum (ETH), public Smart Contract ecosystem, hosts most of mainstream DeFi.
You stabilize the community, and therefore receive rewards for these actions:
- Staking your tokens, providing stability by locking funding in a Contract.
- Providing Liquidity (LP). (More on these later)
To send, receive, and get face-melting rewards, you will need your own cryptocurrency wallet. I’ll walk you through setting up your shiny MetaMask wallet. =-) ^^.
MetaMask is not endorsed by Thomas. There are other ERC20 wallets which you may prefer to use — please make sure you do your own due diligence and research.
On the nature of Secret Keys, Private Keys, Secret Phrases: They are the keys to your financial backdoor. I’ll ask you to write down your MetaMask wallet secret phrase on a physical sheet of paper that you put in a secure location. NEVER share this information with anyone, for it allows full access to your funds. Memorize it, familiarize it, protect it. Life before Death, Radiant.
Okay, enough hype. Lets get to the fun stuff.
- Download Metamask Extension: Go to Metamask.io/download. Click download, and you’ll arrive at your respective store to download the extension for your browser, or the app for your phone. The one with the cute fox.
2. Agree to the permissions and the terms.
3) Click: Get Started
4. Create a wallet
5. Follow the prompts and create a password. Ideally your password will be 12–16 characters, though 8 will due. Kindly include numbers, capitals, small letters, and symbols. I’d rather my students be secure.
6. SAVE YOUR SECRET OFFLINE. This is the key to your wallet.
7. Congratulations, you just setup your shiny new crypto-wallet. This is an Ethereum wallet, and can hold ETH and any ERC20 Token (LINK, yearn.Finance, CREAM, among 1000s).
MetaMask will now introduce you to token swapping. They will connect you to many different DEXs, Decentralized Exchanges, and set you up with the best price to swap one token for another. I’ll cover this in more detail in my token swapping article.
If you have tokens already, you can copy your address at the top and send your ETH or ERC20 tokens to that address and you will see them in your wallet in a few minutes/seconds!
Welcome to the world of DeFi, where international communities are growing value more rapidly than ever before. Stay tuned for future episodes of DeFi Demystified!