DeFi stands for "decentralized finance", a subset of financial products within the wider crypto market, made up from a variety of tokens, apps, and DeFi protocols.
The DeFi ecosystem offers a decentralized alternative to the traditional financial system offering services such as banking and currency exchanges.
DeFi protocols are autonomous computer programs, built using smart contracts and running within blockchain networks.
A smart contract code is visible within the blockchain for anyone to read and audit. Users of DeFi protocols interact with these smart contracts using their wallets, allowing them to exchange or transfer funds, borrow or lend assets, or to use any other services provided by the protocol. Such as purchasing and selling DeFi coins and tokens, partaking in lending pools, to provide liquidity to liquidity pools, or the purchase and sale of non fungible tokens - NFTs.
So, you wish to take your first steps into the crypto industry and purchase your first DeFi crypto coins.
Your first step will be to set up a wallet to hold all of your crypto assets. Two of the most popular wallets at the moment are MetaMask and Trust Wallet due to their ability to work with multiple blockchain networks.
Once your wallet is set up, you will next need to find a decentralized exchange - DEX that sells the DeFi tokens or coins you wish to purchase. The DEX required to purchase DeFi tokens and coins can change depending on the project. It's recommended to check with the project team which DEX you should use if you're unsure.
There are different DEX's for each of the blockchain networks. Examples of the most popular places to purchase DeFi tokens on some of the large blockchain networks are: PancakeSwap on Binance Smart Chain, UniSwap on Ethereum and QuickSwap on Polygon.
Before you are able to purchase your digital asset, you must first transfer funds to your crypto wallet. The best way of transferring fiat currency from your bank account to your decentralized wallet is through a centralized exchange - CEX. These often come with multiple methods of depositing funds into your account.
Next you need to purchase a token to withdraw to your crypto wallet. This can be in the form of a network's native gas or governance token. BNB, for Binance Smart Chain, ETH for Ethereum and Matic for Polygon. Or in the form of stable coins, these coins are pegged to fiat currencies such as USD. USDC, BUSD and USDT are popular choices.
Once you have your funds secured on a CEX you are ready to withdraw your crypto coins to your wallet. This can be done through the exchange’s withdrawal feature. You will be prompted to provide your wallet's network address as the source of the withdrawal, which can be found within the wallet app itself.
First of all, head over to the DEX that you wish to use to purchase your DeFi tokens, head over to the exchange’s swap page and connect your wallet. You will receive a transaction to approve the wallet's connection to the dApp. Approve this.
First of all, select the currency you wish to spend from the top input box. Upon selecting the currency the DEX should show you how much of that asset you currently hold.
Next, copy the smart contract address of the DeFi token that you wish to purchase into the second input box.
Next, you need to select the slippage percentage. Slippage determines how much a token's price can change during the transaction's processing time before the transaction is reverted. It's recommended that you speak with the project team about their recommended slippage amount prior to buying.
When performing any transactions on a DEX you will be charged a transaction fee. This fee can vary drastically between blockchains. Interacting with an Ethereum token, for example, can have fees of well over $100, while interacting with a BNB token, you’ll see much lower transaction fees. Most other networks have improved their blockchain technology and thus have greatly reduced fees.
The first time that you exchange a token, you may be required to approve the use of the token you are spending. You can do this by pressing the approve button that appears and accepting the approve transaction from your wallet.
You will now be able to see a variety of information around the trade prior to making the purchase. This may include information such as any trading fees that may apply to the trade, the provider fee for the liquidity pool, the price impact, the minimum amount of tokens received , the total value of the exchange, the projects current market cap, trading volume and the total supply of the DeFi coin you are purchasing.
Once you are ready to purchase your DeFi tokens, you can press the swap button and confirm the swap transaction in your wallet. The swap transaction may take a moment to process, but once the transaction becomes approved the swap is complete.
Similar to how traditional banks provide you with a list of your previous transactions usually via a bank statement or via a website or app, Crypto wallets also provide you with a list of previous transactions and their status, allowing you to keep track of the interactions you have made with the blockchain.
In order to see your DeFi coins or tokens in your wallet, you must add the smart contract address of the DeFi token into your wallet. This can often be done via a button within your wallets asset page, labelled something along the lines of 'add custom token'.
After you spend a while building a portfolio with all the best DeFi coins you can find, you will start to notice how hard it becomes to keep track of all of your assets, especially when using multiple wallets across multiple blockchains.
The sheer number of DeFi coins you own starts making it extremely hard for you to be able to keep track of all of the assets in your investment portfolio, leading to missed opportunities and possibly even loss of funds.
This is where the use of a DeFi platform such as a portfolio tracker can help you out.
Dexfolio is a web3 ecosystem aiming to revolutionise the DeFi sector and how we invest in crypto.
With the Dexfolio app, crypto investors can automatically track their DeFi coins/tokens across multiple chains by simply entering their wallet addresses. Users can also search over ten thousand tokens, add them to their watchlist, check on price performance and see token info.
With a revolutionary crypto tracking app, Dexfolio is set to change the way users engage with the crypto space. Whether you are just starting in the crypto markets or are a seasoned investor, you will benefit from the change that Dexfolio brings to the industry.
Dexfolio was built specifically to track all of your DeFi coins and tokens, wherever they’re being stored. Dexfolio is truly multichain, allowing you to add all of your wallets in one place, combining your assets from multiple different blockchains into a single portfolio view, making it easy than ever to keep track of all the DeFi projects you are invested in and giving you the ability to see the total value of all of your assets. Currently, Dexfolio is able to track assets across Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon and IoTeX, with over 20 more chains being added in the near future.
By selecting one of your DeFi coins or a digital asset from within the Dexfolio app, you are able to take a closer look at important information about the underlying asset. Information such as circulation supply, total supply, max supply, market cap, trading volumes and price highs/lows.
Dexfolio is also implementing the ability for you to track your other assets. Soon you will also be able to keep track of your staked assets as well as any assets that you hold within a CEX.
$DEXF is Dexfolio's native token. The purpose of the token is for purchasing premium features in the app.
There are a number of features that will be coming to the Dexfolio app soon that can be unlocked using $DEXF. These include but are not limited to subscribing to our pro traders to get an insight into their most recent trades, tipping your favourite traders, purchasing additional access to the app's chat feature and unlocking the use of DexfolioPay - a P2P payment platform.
Dexfolio offers a staking dApp, allowing you to stake your $DEXF tokens in order to earn interest.
You can stake your tokens for a period of 4-104 weeks. The higher the staking period the greater the interest multiplier.
Dexfolio operates as a decentralized autonomous organization - DAO. This lets the community have their say in the future of Dexfolio.
Where other platforms use native governance tokens in order to vote, Dexfolio allocates votes based on the amount of $DEXF you currently have staked in our staking dApp. These votes are key in accepting or declining proposals raised against the DAO. If you hold over 5% of the total votes, you are able to raise your own proposals within the DAO.
The Dexfolio app can be downloaded from either the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.
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