How to Get Started with the Drip Network (a beginner’s guide)
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UPDATE 17 Aug 2021 — We have had some disastrous results from using the method I originally posted in this guide for getting US Dollars (Fiat) into BNB (BEP-20) on the Binance Smart Chain. Please scroll down to see the updated step-by-step instructions. MAIN LESSON LEARNED: Avoid using any swap websites to bridge blockchains at any cost, if possible.
Have you suddenly been hearing all about the Drip Network on the Binance Smart Chain and you want to try it, but you don’t have hours to spare to figure it all out?
I originally compiled this as a guide for my dad, who, like me, has some experience in the crypto space, but who has up till now mainly only worked with projects and cryptocurrencies on the Ethereum Network. I have been dabbling in blockchain-related projects for a few years, but I’ve never been wealthy, so the learning curve is steep when encountering the “fi” in DeFi. (Why does compound interest seem like the world’s best kept secret-thats-not-a-secret?) Anyway, despite the fact that I am a bona fide rocket scientist, it has still taken me and my best friend many hours to figure out how to get started with Drip. He is in Dublin and I am in Oregon, and we each found different region-specific challenges, so this is oriented more to solving problems I encountered here in the USA. I’m hoping this post saves you some of the time it took us!
What is the Drip Network?
I am not really qualified to explain properly what the Drip Network is, so here’s a summary in their own words on the drip.community website:
“The DRIP Network’s Faucet is a low-risk, high reward contract that operates similarly to a high yield certificate of deposit by paying out 1% daily return on investment up to 365%. Players can compound and extend their earnings through deposits, hydrating (compounding) rewards as well as through team based referrals.”
The guide below assumes you know how to wrangle cryptos and you can work out how to get funds into a MetaMask wallet running in a browser on a laptop or smartphone. You’ll need the equivalent of about US$50 to get started. I’ve also made a free google doc version of the steps below in case you want to send this info to people who don’t have a Medium subscription.
But first, I’d like to share what intrigues me about DRIP. Basically, 1% daily compound interest (or in this case, 0.95% daily compound interest after the hydration tax) translates to life-changing amounts of money very quickly. This is how the rich have been getting richer for centuries, but now it is seems accessible as pathway out of the struggle for the less rich. I’m sharing what I’m learning in hopes it will help others like me who are struggling through these uncertain times.
Some Scenarios for Inspiration
(Update: Caveat — this article was written before I started taking into consideration some very important limits that contribute to the sustainability of Drip, namely 1) a 100k DRIP max payout (hard cap); 2) whale taxes; or 3) round robin rewards or team rewards, etc. Consider this article just an exercise in thinking about compound interest, not a realistic Drip planning tool.)
Even after years in engineering school, I still find my mind boggled by the reality of compounding interest, so I thought I would play around with some math (aka make a spreadsheet) that explores some different scenarios and their sensitivity to different conditions. In the Drip network terminology, “faucet” is the money held in your account that is earning interest. When you deposit DRIP into your faucet, it is no longer accessible to you, but the interest you earn (1% daily) is available to you. You can either “claim” the interest for withdrawal to an external wallet, or “hydrate” (compound) it by re-depositing it into your faucet. I was interested in seeing how it would all play out over time, so I built a simple model that I could use to explore the effects of
- Starting with different initial deposit amounts into my “faucet” on day 1
- Whether and how fast the value of DRIP goes up or down
- Different strategies for how much interest to “hydrate” (or add back into my wallet balance) vs how much interest is withdrawn
- Different time frames for when I want to start pulling funds out after an initial period of 100% daily hydration
The summary tab spreadsheet shows comparisons of five scenarios and snapshots of the state of affairs at the end of Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 starting today, the 10th of August, 2021. The value of DRIP has been set at $30 for illustrative purposes, but feel free to make a copy of the spreadsheet and play around with the scenario assumptions. It’s changing a lot even as I write it, so it will be interesting to see how stable or volatile it is in the coming months.
All scenarios follow a similar pattern of some period of time at the beginning where nothing is withdrawn and all available interest is re-invested or “hydrated.” The spreadsheet takes into consideration taxes on hydration (5%) and withdrawal, but does not include gas fees (about $0.75 each transaction at the moment for deposits and hydration, much higher fees for cross-chain transactions to and from the Binance Smart Chain).
None of these scenarios even considers the rewards I may earn from others joining my network downline, airdrops I might receive from team members or other deposits I may make. All scenarios assume just a one time deposit in the beginning and then daily hydration/withdrawal activity only.
Scenario 1 — “Baseline”
The baseline scenario assumes I put $1K in today and hydrate all available DRIP daily for 1 year, after which I hydrate half of my available DRIP and pocket the rest. The baseline scenario has the value of DRIP unchanging over the 3-year period. Here are the baseline values for the things the spreadsheet compares across different scenarios.
Faucet Balance
- End of Year 1: $33,270.19
- End of Year 2: $187,599.09
- End of Year 3: $1,062,830.91
Daily Available for hydration or withdrawal
- End of Year 1: $332.79
- End of Year 2: $1875.99
- End of Year 3: $10,628.31
Amount Withdrawn each year
- End of Year 1: $0
- End of Year 2: $147,050.52
- End of Year 3: $833,105.53
End result after 3 years:
- Balance in Faucet: $1,062,830.91
- Total withdrawn: $980,156.05
Scenario 2 — “Start Big”
This scenario holds everything the same as the baseline except starts with $3,000 today instead of $1050.
Faucet Balance
- End of Year 1: $95,057.69
- End of Year 2: $535,997.41
- End of Year 3: $3,036.659.74
Daily Available for hydration or withdrawal
- End of Year 1: $950.58
- End of Year 2: $5,359.97
- End of Year 3: $30,366.60
Amount Withdrawn each year
- End of Year 1: $0
- End of Year 2: $420,144.35
- End of Year 3: $2,380,301.51
End result after 3 years:
- Balance in Faucet: $3,036.659.74
- Total withdrawn: $2,800,445.86
Scenario 3— “Modest Drip Growth”
This scenario is the same as Baseline, back to starting with just $1050, but it looks at what happens in a happy scenario that the value of DRIP increases (linearly an average of) 0.15% daily over the entire 3-year period. This isn’t incredibly likely, but it’s possible.
Faucet Balance
- End of Year 1: $57,584.33
- End of Year 2: $561,148.54
- End of Year 3: $5,502,503.26
Daily Available for hydration or withdrawal
- End of Year 1: $575.84
- End of Year 2: $5,611.49
- End of Year 3: $55,025.03
Amount Withdrawn each year
- End of Year 1: $0
- End of Year 2: $364,678.54
- End of Year 3: $3,575,960.24
End result after 3 years:
- Balance in Faucet: $5,502,503.26
- Total withdrawn: $3,940,638.79
Scenario 4— “Fast and Furious”
I ran this scenario because I’m in a hurry to be able to pay rent and buy food, so I wanted to see what happens if I put a lot more in up front ($6000) and start pulling out 50% of what’s available on 1/1/2021, after just 5 months of daily hydration, instead of waiting a year like in the first 3 scenarios. Then, on 1/1/2022 I reduce the amount that I withdraw to 20% of what’s available and hydrate the other 80% for the rest of the simulation. The assumption in this scenario is that DRIP stays healthy and increases in value, but less fast than in Scenario 3 at a rate of (linearly an average of) 0.05% daily over the entire 3-year period.
The numbers in this scenario get silly very fast — if reality ends up looking anything like this, I will obviously shift strategies, but it’s useful for comparison to see what happens in a kind of “better case” scenario. The amazing thing is that this isn’t even a best case scenario, just a recklessly optimistic one (for fun).
Faucet Balance
- End of Year 1: $79,859.72
- End of Year 2: $1,013,524.14
- End of Year 3: $19,442,685.60
Daily Available for hydration or withdrawal
- End of Year 1: $798.60
- End of Year 2: $10,135.24
- End of Year 3: $194,426.86 (This is DAILY, people!)
Amount Withdrawn each year
- End of Year 1: $47,282.21
- End of Year 2: $265,822.53
- End of Year 3: $4,126,621,32
End result after 3 years:
- Balance in Faucet: $19,442,685.60
- Total withdrawn: $4,439,726.07
Scenario 5— “Fast and Furious TANK”
OK, people, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Scenario 5 is the less optimistic version of Scenario 4 where everything is the same as Scenario 4 except the value of DRIP tanks fast by 0.5% per day, going from its current value of $30 to $0.12 in 3 years. I really hope this doesn’t happen, but even if it does, the situation is not as bad as you might expect!
Again, just as Scenario 4 isn’t a best case scenario, this isn’t a worst case scenario. It could be worse — the world is on fire and everything could come crashing down at any minute, and I don’t feel like modeling that. So let’s just stick with a bad case of slowly sinking DRIP and leave it there.
Faucet Balance
- End of Year 1: $10,619.87
- End of Year 2: $18,022.34
- End of Year 3: $45,975.33
Daily Available for hydration or withdrawal
- End of Year 1: $106.20
- End of Year 2: $180.22
- End of Year 3: $459.75
Amount Withdrawn each year
- End of Year 1: $10,396.81
- End of Year 2: $12,202.25
- End of Year 3: $19,689.42
End result after 3 years:
- Balance in Faucet: $45,975.33
- Total withdrawn: $42,828.48
Even in this last unhappy scenario, these are numbers I can get excited about. An extra 5-figure passive income is nothing to sneeze at.
So, here are the steps I have taken to deposit my first hopeful chunk into this new thing called DRIP.
How To Get Started With DRIP
To use DRIP (https://drip.community), you need:
- BNB on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) Network (gas fees come from this token) — this was honestly the hardest part, so we’ll get into this first
- MetaMask or Binance Wallet extensions in your browser
- ETH or any token on the Ethereum Network
- DRIP tokens (purchased as described below on drip.community)
- BR34P token on the Binance Smart Chain Network in the same account as your BNB and DRIP
Important notes:
- There are two different Binance blockchain networks: the Binance Chain (where BNB are BEP-2 standard tokens) and the Binance Smart Chain (where BNB are BEP-20 standard tokens). We will be using the latter Binance Smart Chain, but the first annoying thing one encounters when trying to do all this in the USA is that binance.us only allows you to send BEP-2 BNB (not the BEP-20 BNB compatible with the Binance Smart Chain that we want), so it’s not immediately obvious how to get funds onto the Binance Smart Network in the United States. You can either have a friend outside the states transfer BEP-20 BNB into your wallet from binance.com, or you can follow the steps below to get BNB across from one blockchain to another (in our case, we’ll jump chains from the Ethereum Network to the Binance Smart Chain Network). If all this makes your head spin, there’s a lovely article here by Ivan on Tech that breaks it all down.
- You can only join the Drip Network if you have an invitation, so you’ll need a buddy referral address. You are welcome to use mine: 0x43143fdd3aeB9ad012778E490866B3BED476E375
- The way the developers of Drip seem to be thinking and presenting the Drip project is as a game that is played by teams, rather than individuals, so there are rewards associated with various team activities. (I’ll admit this part is still confusing to me, so I’m kind of neglecting it for now. However, at the very least, don’t ignore point 4 below, so you don’t miss out on rewards.)
- Be aware, you need to hold at least 2 Br34p in your wallet to be able to earn rewards from people in your Drip Network. More info on this can be found in the Drip whitepaper here. Note that if someone joins Drip using your buddy code and you don’t hold at least 2 Br34p, the 10% of their deposits that would have automagically gone to you instead go to the next person upline from you. There are instructions for buying Br34p at the top of the drip website.
Preparing to Buy Drip with BNB (BSC)
How to get BNB into your MetaMask wallet on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) Blockchain Network:
- Add the Binance Smart Chain Network to your MetaMask wallet that you plan to use with Drip. If you don’t already have a wallet, create a new one — I created a new account specifically for use with DRIP so I wouldn’t get confused. Then follow the steps in this guide to add the BSC Network: https://www.bsc.news/post/connecting-metamask-wallet-to-the-binance-smart-chain (Network Name: BSC Mainnet; New RPC URL: https://bsc-dataseed1.binance.org/ or https://bsc-dataseed2.binance.org/; ChainID: 56, or 0x38 if 56 doesn’t work; Symbol: BNB; Block Explorer URL: https://bscscan.com/)
- Start with the equivalent of around US$50 (fiat)-Then follow these steps carefully.
- Buy BNB using your fiat — In the USA this is really not straightforward at all. There some different pathways that have worked for folks, and the Telegram groups are treasure troves of advice for this, but here is my current path:
1. Convert the Tether (USDT) to BNB — WARNING: This step can be surprisingly dangerous (we lost $5,000 last night trying to do this step in MetaMask — I would avoid sites like pancake swap, anyswap, or multichain.xyz for this step if you’re in the USA) I have learned that the most reliable way to get BNB is to use binance.us to buy BNB with Tether. Others have been able to use Trustwallet with pretty good results. I have to go through an extra step to buy BNB because I my fiat buy/sell is not working in binance.us, so I’m currently not able to buy directly on binance.us from my bank account, so I have to buy crypto on another exchange (Coinbase or Uphold) and send coins (I use Tether (USDT)) to Binance.us (or trustwallet. In the USA when you do this, you are buying BNB (BEP-2) on the Binance Chain. This gets you closer to Drip, but not there yet, because you need BNB (BEP-20) on the Binance Smart Chain
2. Convert BNB (BEP-2) to BNB (BEP-20) — This step can also be tricky and dangerous! This article detailing different methods for converting BEP2 to BEP20 was super helpful to me in this step! What we’re doing here is the final step of bridging from one blockchain to another to convert BNB (BEP-2 on the regular Binance Chain) to BNB (BEP-20 on the Binance Smart Chain) — If you’re in the USA, this is also really tricky. If you’re outside the US, this is easily done on binance.com by choosing “BEP-20” when you send your BNB to MetaMask Binance Smart Chain wallet. How I do this important step has changed over the last week. Again, people in many states have reported being able to use TrustWallet with good success. I recently discovered that in Oregon, I can use the Binance Smart Bridge directly if I install the Binance Wallet extension in my browser. So If I send my newly purchased BNB (BEP-2) funds to my Binance Wallet, I can then cross bridges easily within the Binance Wallet. This is the most elegant solution I’ve found.
3. Finally, send your BNB (BEP-20) to MetaMask or whatever wallet you plan to link to Drip — Point your MetaMask wallet to the Binance Smart Chain Mainnet, copy the address of your wallet, and send the BNB! Now you’re ready to buy DRIP!
In summary — here are the shenanigans require in the United States to get BNB on the Binance Smart Chain:
- USD$ to TETH via any trusted exchange
- TETH to BNB (BEP2) via trusted exchange like binance.us
- BNB2 to BNB20 via binance wallet (or trustwallet)
- BNB20 to BNB20 in MetaMask Binance Smart Chain wallet
How to Buy DRIP
Go to drip.community, but first:
- Before you do anything, make sure you have your buddy’s referral address handy. (If you don’t have one, you can use mine! It is: 0x43143fdd3aeB9ad012778E490866B3BED476E375). A person’s buddy address is just their BSC wallet address that is linked to their Drip account.
- (Optional) Peruse the original article from Scott Debevic that I used to get started
- (Optional) Watch this tutorial that’s linked from the top of the Drip website
- Connect your MetaMask wallet — Point your MetaMask wallet to the Binance Smart Chain network and then click on the “Connect Wallet” symbol at the top of the Drip website. NOTE: If you get a “wrong network” error in Drip, make sure your MetaMask wallet is pointing to the Binance Smart Chain network, not the Ethereum network.
- Click on the “Swap” tab at the top of drip.community — this will take you to the Drip Fountain.
- Buy DRIP — The website will show you how much BNB you have available to use for purchasing DRIP. Be sure to leave at least 0.01 drip in your MetaMask wallet account to handle DRIP transaction fees for a little while. The DRIP you purchase with your BNB will show up in your DRIP balance on the DRIP website and also in your MetaMask account, but you haven’t put it into the DRIP Faucet yet.
- Deposit your DRIP into the Drip Faucet— Go over to the “Faucet” tab on the drip website and click deposit. Your drip will now show up in your “Deposits.” This transaction costs BNB for gas fees, so Your immediate upline gets a nice 10% deposit directly into their account when you make this first deposit.
Community and Resources
From what I’ve seen so far, the Drip community are really nice folks. If you join my team, I would love to hear from you and send you some drip, so please do consider getting in touch on Telegram by joining this group and introducing yourself: https://t.me/joinchat/PbTulqLoCmAzZmQx. There are also many other Telegram groups to benefit from, including tech support.
- There is an incredibly rich and informative set of YouTube videos on Drip Guide’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/bbdsan
- The main Drip Telegram group is here: https://t.me/DRIPtoken_Chat
- And on twitter: https://twitter.com/DRIPcommunity
Happy Dripping, everyone! ❤
Disclaimers: I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m not affiliated with the Drip Network developers in any way, so under no circumstances should you read any of the above as financial advice. At the time of writing this article, I was less than 48 hours into my Drip journey, so there is still much I don’t know, especially around the team elements, the rewards, and the entire “Reservoir” liquidity pool stuff. Maybe there will be other posts in the future where I learn about these things. Feel free to drop gems of knowledge in the comments. Finally, this is my first time publishing on Medium, so please be gentle and courteous when poking holes in my numbers.❤
