Drip — a detailed setup howto for noobs

Published in

Coinmonks

21 min readFeb 27, 2022

This article is the place to start for those who want to know a lot more nitty gritty details about getting started in Drip (and crypto in general). I provide more details than most introduction to Drip articles.

Scrabble Brown Wooden Blocks on White Surface — Photo by Brett Jordan from Pexels

TLDR;

There are lots of articles on Drip investing and most lean towards assuming the reader has some knowledge. Most articles say this:

Buy BNB
Create Metamask wallet
Transfer BNB to Metamask
Go to https://drip.community/swap, connect Metamask wallet, and Buy Drip using your BNB balance. You need a minimum of 1.12 Drip
Go to the Drip Faucet page and deposit Drip in to the faucet
You need a buddy so here use my buddy address (mine is 0xcf4a851B797107927B23B3E4648f66d05B983C4E if this TLDR is sufficient :) Also see below for details on joining our Discord server.
Hydrate! And alternatively claim once you have enough Drip.

Brown Wooden Table With Chairs and wood cube shelves behind — Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

OK cool — I can follow that because I already know about this topic, but if you are new to Drip (or even to general Crypto trading) then there are A LOT of missing details. Including the vital step of securing your crypto asses.

This article has turned out to be quite long - that is indicative of how much is actually involved in starting with Drip. Please let me know in the comments if I need to further expand on any of these or any other aspects. Or get rid of anything that is just a waste of space.

My first article in this series is an introduction and can be found at:

DRIP — The five stages of grief

And I have a follow up article to this in:

Drip essential security.

And I have several more in the pipeline.

Drip — by numbers

Plastic Numbers on White Background — Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels

Author’s Disclaimer: This is not trade or financial advice. This information is being presented for entertainment purposes and represents the OPINION of the author. All trading and investing, whether real estate, stocks, or crypto, involves the risk of loss, sometimes greater than 100% loss. Do not trade or invest with funds you are not willing to lose. I am not responsible for your trading errors, trading losses, or missed opportunities, even if you are a part of my DRIP Team. Please do your own research and verify information for yourself. Any reference to an investment’s past or potential performance is not, and should not be construed as, a recommendation or as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit.

Drip is a Defi project on the Binance Smart Chain (Blockchain) that pays 1% per day, which can be compounded to give you an APY of 3,053.61%. A $1000 investment could be worth $30,536 in 12 months! Better still, you can keep growing your deposit in this way for nearly 4 years. After 2 years your deposit will be worth $999,525. Your bank might pay you 1% annually. That $1000 is $1010 after a year with them. Whoa — down boy!

There is more to it than that, but these figures are indicative of the outcome.

Please be aware that any deposits you add cannot be withdrawn. All money comes from the interest by claiming instead of hydrating — every day you can choose to hydrate or claim.

Having your deposit “burnt” is unusual to investors used to traditional equities like shares. This is part of the risk with Drip. Like anything, invest only what you can afford to lose.

Having to wait for growth in an asset is well understood. But to have an APY of 3053.61% is totally insane to traditional investors. Given this and despite losing your deposit, it will take claiming for the first 124 days to get back the initial deposit. Or hydrate from the start for 18 months, then claim your deposit in 1 day. Or alternate between hydrating and claiming to get your deposit back in 6 months! The rest is profit in every one of these cases.

This highlights one of the game aspect of the Drip network. There are many strategies that can be employed.

Is this a scam

You might be wondering how the Drip network is able to pay users 1% per day. I will discuss this in detail in a future article. For now just understand that this is all above board. It works by charging taxes within the network. 10% to deposit and withdraw. And 5% to hydrate. Once the ‘whales’ start claiming they could be paying up to 50% tax to the network.

Is it a scam — everything that I’ve read supports it as legitimate. Of course like any kind of investing there are risks. Is this a rugpull — a fraudulant product that will take all your money? Everything I’ve read says no. But don’t take my word for it.

Look at the Drip charts and analysis from https://charts.mongodb.com/charts-drip-efpxa/public/dashboards/613c8813-c5e6-4da6-8d73-62af61dd4497?utm_source=beta+chart+mongodb

Drip analysis screenshot showing number of investors and other Drip network stats

That’s 81,000 people who are convinced. And this project as can be seen has been running for 10 months now. The developer are not hidden and can be freely contacted. The lead developer, Forex Shark is open about the Drip product and the other ones he is behind or developing — https://twitter.com/F0r3x_Shark.

Does it pay? See all those blue lines after about the fourth entry along the horizontal axes of the bottom graph (number of players with number of deposits). That third entry is 1200 Drip. Those players have most likely started claiming, at least on alternate days and they are receiving at least 12 drip per day or 180 per month. At $100 per drip, that is US$18,000 per month. The larger holders in the middle of the horizontal axis have 10,000 Drip in deposits — that’s 100 drip per day in interest — US$10,000 per day or US$150,000 per month. Head to the right and look at the fat cats with deposits of 27,000 Drip. They are getting 270 Drip, US$27,000 per day — US$405,000 per month. I’m using alternate hydrating and claiming here. Once you are at these higher levels of holding you would be claiming every day — so that would be US$810,000 per month. For 9 months (depending on how much you claimed along the way).

And this is per wallet. I hold 10 wallets (actually 12 now since I’ve been writing these articles). So when I get up there I will be getting US$8 million per month! If the price is at $100 per drip.

Is this a ponzi scheme

A Ponzi scheme (/ˈpɒnzi/, Italian: [ˈpontsi]) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.[1] The scheme leads victims to believe that profits are coming from legitimate business activity (e.g., product sales or successful investments), and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds. A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as new investors contribute new funds, and as long as most of the investors do not demand full repayment and still believe in the non-existent assets they are purported to own. — Wikipedia

Everyone in the Drip network earns the same 1%. The only advantage earlier investors have is that they can build a ‘downline’ team. I’ve been in the network for 7 weeks and already have 1 team with 5 downlines. Everyone has the same opportunities.

My wallets sit well to the left side of the graph shown and discussed above. All but 1 (11 of them) are in the very left bar — less than 100 Drip. The 12th wallet is in the second bar.

I can start claiming soon. If I started today I would make a little less than US$400 per day (before my countries tax is paid).

The details here about Drip not being a Scam or ponzi scheme are quite brief. I will write more about this in a future article and you will just need to trust me and the other 81,226 other people.

Let’s get started

Before reading the details review the steps as presented at the top of this article and reproduced here. I’ve interleaved the new steps that were missing.

Buy hardware wallet — NEW
Setup hardware wallet and accounts — NEW
Setup Cryptocurrency Exchange account
Create Metamask wallet
Transfer funds to exchange account — NEW
Buy BNB
Transfer BNB to Metamask
Go to https://drip.community/swap, connect Metamask wallet, and Buy Drip using your BNB balance. You need a minimum of 1.12 Drip
Go to the Drip Faucet page and deposit Drip in to the faucet
You need a buddy so here use my buddy address (mine is 0xcf4a851B797107927B23B3E4648f66d05B983C4E if this TLDR is sufficient :) Also see below for details on joining our Discord server.
Hydrate! And alternatively claim once you’ have enough Drip.

Before we can buy BNB and start our Crypto journey we need to cover some essential groundwork.

I am a computer scientists and have been playing with crypto trading for 5 years. The information presented here is based on my experience over that time and most significantly over the last 8 weeks as I’ve poured endless effort in to understanding and participating in the Drip network.

As you start to read this, please allow for at least a week to get everything sorted out. Prepare yourself so you don’t get all flustered and angry when you see Ethereum drop 10%!

First guideline with Crypto trading — Because of its decentralized nature and a lack of ‘policing’ through a central authority like a bank or even a countries reserve bank, it is full of scams and scammers. There are some simple rules to follow that will prevent nearly all possible attacks. The main one is to not fall for a scam. As discussed above, Drip is not one :).

Always use a hardware wallet. I discuss that here — check out my other article where I cover other aspects of basic Drip security:

Drip — essential security

Hardware (Cold) Wallet

Order a hardware wallet - Leger and Trezor are the big names in this space. And there is a new entrant — Lattice, that is supported by Metamask. Hardware wallets are used to hold your private keys in “Cold Storage” disconnected from the internet. One should be used for all crypto trading (not just Drip).

There are Hot software wallets and we use one (Metamask). However they are hot because they are connected to the internet. There are so many attack vectors against a computer connected to the internet. It is not worth the risk with crypto since it is a very popular target. Use a cold hardware wallet to store your private keys.

Private keys are like your bank account login details except there is NO RECOURSE if they are stolen. There is no ‘bank’ you can talk to that will make things right again. You will be holding your drip for over 3 years which is a long time to be at risk.

Now you might be thinking you can set up your Cold Wallet later. Unfortunately that is not so easy with Drip, since you don’t own your deposits. You have to make this all operational before beginning.

I’m sorry to say that you will need to put your journey on hold until this and the next step are completed.

Make sure you buy your hardware wallet directly from the manufacturers:

I use a Ledger Nano X (and have a Nano S as a backup) and will only discuss using these in my articles. I’ve heard lots of good things about the Trezor though chose to use Ledger. The Lattice is new to me.

Return to here once you have a cold wallet and have set it up as per the manufactures instructions. Continue to the next step to setup a Crypto Exchange account.

Setup accounts in Ledger Live

You need to setup accounts in Ledger Live. It *can* be done in Metamask however I have made mistakes doing this and found it best to do it like this:

Firstly install the Binance Smart Chain app on your Ledger device
Then set up a Binance Smart Chain (BNB) account(s) in Ledger Live

I have multiple Drip wallets and named them ‘Drip 1’, ‘Drip 2’, … to make it easier to track as you need to switch between them in the Metamask wallet. I will discuss managing multiple wallets in a future article.

You will also need to install the Etherium app on your hardware wallet.

Setup Crypto Exchange Account

Setup an account at a trusted Cryptocurrency exchange that trades in BNB - Binance, Binance.us (*1), Coinbase (*2), Coinify or BTCMarkets. There are new exchanges opening every day. Just make sure you choose a reputable one (do your own research — dyor).

(*1) Binance.us is apparently not available to residents of Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, New York, Texas and Vermont

(*2) US Citizens cannot use Coinbase to purchase BNB.

Coinmaketcap lists the BNB trading pairs.

Which one you use also depends on your country. Apart from that there isn’t a lot of difference between the various ones so I wouldn’t sweat on this too much. Unless you want to buy other coins / tokens that aren’t available on the chosen exchange. Keep in mind that you can sign up to more than one exchange.

Each exchange will need to go through Know Your Customer (KYC) steps to verify who you are when you sign up for an account. This is part of the steps to help reduce fraud, scams and money laundering. It also lets your countries tax department become aware of your (intention to) trade in Cryptocurrencies. Most countries recognise capital gains from crypto currency trading and will expect you to pay tax. So keep your own records. I will write another article on this.

KYC may take a day or two to setup.

You should setup Authentication security on your account. The maximum security is achieved using Email, Phone, Authenticator and YubiKey. You won’t likely withdraw that often so it is worth setting up multiple of these with one being Authenticator or YubiKey. I use email, phone and authenticator.

Binance security authentication setup screen

Wait at this point until you have a Cold Wallet and Crypto Exchange account(s) setup.

Setup a Hot Wallet

Drip operations require a soft wallet.

Hot Wallets store your private keys in software that runs on your desktop, mobile or on a Crypto Exchange server like Binance. They are convenient and easy to work with. On the downside they are exposed to the internet and susceptible to being taken over by malware, being hacked or exposed through some other compromise.

Yes the concept is scary. However the hot wallet can be used in conjunction with your cold wallet where your private keys are kept safe. Thus giving you the best of both worlds — convenience and security. All transactions that are performed through the convenient hot wallet have to go through the cold wallet where the private keys are actually held.

The ones that the Drip network currently supports are:

Metamask comes to us as a browser plugin and is available in Chromium (Chrome, Brave, Edge) and Firefox
Wallet Connect is a hot wallet that is for connecting mobile wallet to decentralized applications
Binance Smart Chain Wallet — This is a wallet that is tightly integrated with the Binance Exchange, also comes as a browser plugin and is available in Chromium (Chrome, Brave, Edge) and Firefox

I use Metamask since it is one of the most popular. I will talk in terms of using this wallet.

Install the Metamask wallet from https://metamask.io/
Set it up for trading on the Binance Smart Chain.

I set it up in Chrome and only use Chrome to perform Crypto trading. All other web surfing is done in different browsers. I do this as an added layer of security and advise you do the same (you may consider this to be overly paranoid, however this approach removes one more attack vector). It doesn’t have to be Chrome for Crypto and Firefox for everything else. Just dedicate one browser to Crypto. And never mix and match in either, ever.

Follow one of these to connect your hot and cold wallets:

After you have completed those steps your Metamask accounts should be marked to indicate they are hardware wallet protected. Now you can use the convenience of the hot wallet in the browser with the safety of knowing your private data is stored in the cold wallet.

Metamask wallet showing accounts are under the control of a Hardware wallet

Transfer Funds

Try and transfer a test amount from your bank account to your Crypto Exchange account. I use Binance and choose Buy with Bank Deposit from the Buy Crypto menu.

Binance screen to initiate depositing fiat Via PayID / Osko

My bank account supports OSKO / PayId and you’ll need to setup a new account at your bank if your current one doesn’t (mine didn’t so I had to perform this step — this only took less than an hour as I already had accounts with them).

Binance screen with PayID to use in your banks ‘pay by PayId’ screen.

Hiding my PayID in this screenshot shouldn’t be necessary and is just another added layer of paranoia.

Choose ‘OSKO / PayId’ in Binance and it will give you an address to use (most likely an email looking one with an ‘@’ in it). Transfer to this from your bank account.

Note that when I tried this the test deposit failed. I had to ring my bank and after 10 calls and an hour of waiting I was eventually put on to the Fraud team who asked me a series of questions and warned me about scams. They have to do this as part of their due diligence, and as a disclaimer so I can’t try and sue them if my crytpo trading goes belly-up.

It is also obvious that they make it difficult enough to discourage all but the determined. I hope the banks see the writing on the wall and start to align their businesses to the not-so-nascent-any-more crypto trading world.

Don’t move forward until the above steps are completed — you have a hardware wallet, a software wallet (with both being connected) and an account on a Cryptocurrency Exchange and that you can easily transfer money to. Allow at least a week so start now!

Buy BNB

Buy BNB on a your trusted Cryptocurrency exchange.

BNB is the coin that powers the Binance ecosystem and Drip runs on the Binance Smart Chain — the arm that runs DEFI.

The amount you buy depends on the price of DRIP (paid for with BNB) and you need a minimum of 1.12 (1.0 after 10% deposit tax). The current price is 0.25 BNB per Drip, so 1 BNB (AU$553.09 or US$396.90 at current prices) will get you 3.5 Drip. Enough to get started with 3 wallets. You need to leave some BNB in the wallet for gas fees. Buy more over time (and as I say, the markets are still off after recent highs so now is actually a really really really good time).

This might seem like a decent amount of money, but be aware that 3 wallets and 3 drip (1 Drip in each) will earn over US$11 million (if the price remains the same as today) within 5 years. The only thing that a greater deposit buys you is more time as it will reach the end faster (3 Drip in 1 wallet will mature faster but will “only” reach short of US$4 million.

If you can get the deposit up to 50 and spread it over 4 wallets then you will be able to collect US$15 million within 5 years, and the 50 Drip deposit will have been paid off within 6 months (if you alternate days of Hydrate and Claim).

I talk in more details such scenarios in my other article:

DRIP — The five stages of grief

Transfer BNB to Metamask

The BNB you bought will sit in your Binance hot wallet. You need to bring that in to your Metamask wallet (https://drip.community requires this).

Open Metamask in your browser. Click the Metamask fox icon on the browser windows tab bar and log in.

You can open Metamask as a window when its a dropdown by clicking the (vertical) … and Expand View.

Metamask as a drop down with the ‘expand view’ button to turn in to a browser tab — Turn Metamask drop down in to a browser tab

Select the account in the ‘round button’ above the vertical ‘…’ one.

Choose the desired account and select the wallet address, for example 0x965…53A8 in the screenshot below. This will copy it to the clipboard.

In Binance, login and then go to Wallet > Overview.

Binance after Login. Go to Wallet menu and Overview item. — Binance Wallet Overview

Then hit withdraw, enter BNB, and your wallet address. Make sure the Binance Smart Chain has been automatically selected. Choose MAX or the number of BNB to send to your Metamask wallet. Each transfer costs ‘gas’ so aim to transfer exactly what you need. Consider this more carefully if you have multiple wallets (remember 1.12 minimum).

Double-check the wallet address before hitting Withdraw and provide any required authentication inputs (phone, email and authentication code in my case).

Withdraw BNB from Binance screen showing wallet address, BSC network and amount in wallet — Withdraw BNB from Binance screen

Within a minute or two you will see the BNB in your wallet in Metamask.

Connect wallet in Drip.community

Head over to https://drip.community/swap and press connect.

Drip Swap page with a ‘connect wallet’ button

If you need to deal with multiple wallets you need to disconnect the current wallet in Metamask before selecting the next one and connecting to that from within Drip.community. Chose Connected Sites from the vertical … menu:

And disconnect:

Metamask disconnecting a site from the wallet

Choose the next account from the Round menu.

Of course, only perform this when the time comes to move to a different wallet.

Buy Drip

Drip Fountain Page where you swap BND for Drip — Drip Fountain where you swap BND for Drip

Let me just say, the price has really come back in recent days. Rest assured it will return to new highs over the course of 2022 with the crypto markets being largely driven by Bitcoin — see https://blog.cryptostars.is/a-former-professional-investor-explains-what-comes-next-in-the-crypto-cycle-4eeec130b496. And by global events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Drip also responds to Forex Shark’s development teams other projects such as Animal Farm

Although the initial price is important in any trading, it isn’t AS relevant for Drip since a Drip investment grows through the 1% per day (0.95% after hydration tax) regardless of what the rest of the market is doing. See my other article where I discuss some outcomes I am expecting from my Drip investment

DRIP — The five stages of grief

Now buy Drip with the BNB you have in your wallet. You need to leave some BNB left over to pay the Gas fees. I aim to leave 0.1 BNB since that should be enough for 2 months of hydrating and claiming. Buy more now if it is good value.

You will be shown how many Drip you will receive.

You will need to open the Etherium app on your hardware wallet.

Metamask will display a dialog showing you the transaction including the expected gas fees. Confirm it.

Your Hardware Wallet will light up saying “Review transaction”. Move through the screens and “Accept and Send”

I like to keep records for any significant transactions, especially given I am not too sure what our tax department will ask for. So I annotate the transactions in the private note field in BSCScan.com.

Be sure to have a BSCScan account and log in to https://bscscan.com site ready.
Click on the Link after the transaction complete dialog displays
Enter details in to the private note field

Transaction in BSCScan.com; also showing Private Note I added

Now I can see a history of transactions in easy-to-read format. Also a good thing for me to do as I have multiple wallets (12 currently).

history of transactions in easy-to-read format through private note field — history of transactions in easy-to-read format

Please be aware that in some cases like this (where it is new to me and there are unknowns), I err on the side of caution and potentially add too much information. Do what feels right for you.

You need a buddy

Before you can deposit drip you need a buddy. They are your immediate upline. Their buddy will be 2 above you and so on. The depth of your upline has implications in the situation where you setup a parent wallet and have another wallet as a child of this (the parent is the buddy of the child). I introduce this issue in:

DRIP — The five stages of grief

In that article I also articulate why some buddies are better than others. Buddies receive a small reward and this is used as motivation to get more people Dripping.

Use this buddy link:

drip.community/faucet?buddy=0xcf4a851B797107927B23B3E4648f66d05B983C4E

Then, enter my wallet address to sign up as my Buddy:

0xcf4a851B797107927B23B3E4648f66d05B983C4E

I am part of the BlockStoxx team and invite you to join the Discord server. Tell them bbos sent you and that you nominated me as your buddy.

Join the BlockStoxx DRIP/Animal Farm Discord Server!

This is a community-based support group and fan site for DRIP, Manor Farm, and Animal Farm crypto passive income sites…

discord.gg

Deposit Drip

Also on the Faucet page (see below), you should see a Drip Balance on the deposit dialog. Choose MAX or type in how much Drip you wish to deposit (it needs to be at least 1.12 Drip) and click Deposit.

You will need to confirm with Metamask and validate on the hardware wallet. Depositing will also perform a Hydrate — any Drips available (from previous deposits) are transferred in to the Deposits. This is done as a combined transaction and you will only be changed one gas fee. Gas fees are actually irrelevant in the scheme of things and I will talk about this more in a future article.

Drip.community Faucet page for depositing, hydrating and claiming

Hydrate! And claim

Each day 1% of your deposit will become available. As can be seen on the Faucet page there are buttons to Hydrate (compound) and Claim.

When should you start doing this, given the taxes and gas fees? You guessed it — a topic of a future article!

Hydrate (compound), as it name suggests, is to add the available to the Deposits and thus compound the interest. Once pressed you will need to confirm with Metamask and validate on the hardware wallet.

To see compounding interest in action, visit https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/finance/calculators/compoundinterestcalculator.php and enter your initial number of Drip (I chose 100 below), 0.95% interest rate daily for 4 years compounded daily (365). It is 0.95 because hydrating has a 5% tax. It is 10% for deposits. Why this is so will become clear (essentially these taxes allow the 1% interest to be paid).

Compound interest calculator showing 100 drip will turn into 99 million after 4 years — Wow 99 million drip from 100 in 4 years

It will never reach 95 million — this was demonstrating the power of compound interest. However it will make it to nearly 30,000 Drip which at $100 per drip is 3 million dollars. But it doesn’t quite work like that since you make your money from claiming interest. The answer is that a single wallet will pay out nearly $4,000,000 once all the money is claimed (if the price of Drip remains at $100, which it won’t and should increase over time).

Look at payouts in my article DRIP — The five stages of grief.

Claiming will move the available amount in to your Drip balance. You can sell the Drip for BNB on the Fountain page.

There are different strategies to hydrating and claiming depending on your needs. How much you deposit also affects the outcome. These are topics for future articles.

That’s it — though I skimmed over a lot of details. You can find out more information at:

Drip Whitepaper
DRIP smart contract
Read my article DRIP — The five stages of grief.
And my article on Drip essential security.
And I will be writing more articles. So follow me and stay tuned.
If you sign up and use me as your buddy please also join the discord server using https://discord.gg/DWY46E8fSs. Please feel free to ask a question in the comments here.

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