This was the first of many things for me. Up until now for the most part I’ve stayed as far away from farming and staking in the DeFi world as I can. There are some exceptions such as powering up on Hive and staking some game NFTs on the Wax blockchain. Outside of that, insane APR projects I stay the heck away from.

That was until Leo Finance announced they're CubDefi project. While this is my first post made on Leo Finance I have been keeping an eye on many of the things they have been doing. I’m not a content creator that makes content that fits the LeoFinance platform. As such I tend to post elsewhere.

My Epic Journey Into Defi

Quite a while back when I had a little bit of Leo I sold a large chunk of it. I’m rather pro Hive and everything good that happens in the Hive ecosystem I expect to have a long-term impact on Hive. As such I just prefer acquiring Hive when I can.

I still however kept some LEO as I had a feeling they would go on to do some great things. Finance can be quite the market and hold a lot of value regarding things around it. While I watch Leo skyrocket I kept the Hive I made from selling some around just in case I ever wanted to do something with it regarding the Leo ecosystem in the future.

When they announced an snapshot and airdrop was coming I ended up staking the little bit of liquid Leo I had. Before that point in time, I was not considering doing anything other than holding the little bit of Leo I had for the long run. I did not play around with their warping for WLeo in Defi either as ETH is quite a costly blockchain to do things on. The numbers just never added up to do so.

After they announced Cub Finance I felt it was best to try and get everything I needed ready ahead of time before the airdrop. That way when the airdrop happened I could just claim my drop and jump on into it without having to fumble my way through it.

With them now using Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and fees being more reasonable this seemed like an opportunity to learn by doing. Partaking in some kind of DeFi more than I have in the past which was just limited to gaming was something new and fun.

The next thing was to get a wallet to use on BSC. Since it looked like MetaMask was the way they were expecting many users to go I followed the CubFinance instructions on adding it to my wallet. It was easy and I did not seem to have any issues with that part.

The biggest holdup for me was getting my hands on some BNB to pay for the gas fees on BSC. The area I live in it’s a pain in the behind dealing with exchanges. On top of that, any centralized exchange I had access to did not have both Hive or BNB.

Most of the places listed on CoinGecko for BNB I’m unfamiliar with or are just too much of a pain dealing with. It seems most places did not want to play with BNB at all that also want users from my area using them. Sounds like there some legal reasons for that but I won’t get into it in this post.

This meant I needed to go to lower volume places off the beaten path to get my hands on some BNB. I don’t like leaving the Hive ecosystem much so I did not know many of those options either. I expected it to be another giant miss but I ended up finding two places.

The first place which I shall not name does not have Hive. So since that was what I wanted to use for this instance it would add further costs and extra steps I did not want to take. Furthermore, I found it rather strange they had two BNB listed without any further information.

At the time I did not understand why they had two different BNB listed. It all felt a little more shady and costly than I wanted to deal with. So I considered the first option I found that I won’t be naming a last resort.

The other option I discovered was Ionomy (do not use without reading further and understanding there is a complication). They both have Hive and for whatever reason, they seem to always be ready for Hive users’ needs as they also had BNB. I thought this was a perfect match

The biggest downside to a place like Ionomy is going to be the lack of volume. I expected going into this that there would be a bit of a cost getting into DeFi. I was willing to pay to learn. I also was hoping that the ARP would be high enough that if I got in soon enough I’d at least cover the costs of paying at a premium price for BNB.

So I bit the bullet. I moved The Hive I was willing to play with out Hive Engine and then sent it over to Ionomy. After that, I overpaid a tad selling that for BTC and then into BNB. That is however where this story takes a bit of a sideways turn and hence my warning above to read further.

I went to transfer out my BNB to my MetaMask wallet and it gave me an error. At the time I did not understand why and I’m thankful Ionomy refused to do the transfer. I tried a few times and each time just got an error without any further explaining of why.

At that point, I was quite frustrated. I had spent a few bucks between gas, exchange rates, and so forth just to hit this bump in the road. I thought maybe it's something to do with my wallet address. So I asked myself what other wallet options I have.

I ended up going with the Binance wallet. While there are lots of reviews warning about issues and it being buggy I just wanted to use it quickly. I also won’t be linking out to it as it seems they do need to fix many bugs.

So I download the Binance wallet and went to send my BNB to it. Again, I got an error. At this point, I’ve had enough. I was several hours researching and looking into things. The APRs in the DEN was dropping like a brick.

I thought of just dumping my BNB back on the exchange, taking even a further loss, and just cashing out with something else. I thought it would not be the end of the world to get some BTC or something. It would not be a lot since I’ve now lost a few bucks between trades but it would be something.

I checked beforehand to see what the BTC withdrawal cost was and it was like $25. That was a no-go for me. I was not willing to pay that much for how little I’d have left. I considered some other options including just going back into Hive and taking my losses and being done with this whole thing.

I decided to take a bit of a break. I needed to cool off for a bit. Thankfully I did. Once I came back I decided to learn more about BNB. It felt like I was missing out on something that I could not send a transaction to a wallet.

Turns out there are two BNB blockchains. You have the one I want BSC and then just the Binance blockchain. The BNB on Ionomy was for just the Binance blockchain and those wallet addresses started with BNN. Not, X0 like I was trying to send funds into and what I needed to partake in CubDefi.

This also started to connect the dots in my mind on why one place I was looking to exchange on had two different BNB listed. I don’t know why exchanges don’t have some kind of further labeling to try and make it a bit more idiot-proof.

Apparently, on some of the centralized exchanges, they either give you the option to select the BNB type you need or just auto-detect and make sure you are getting what you are supposed to be to the wallet you are sending to. That was not the case and now I had the wrong kind of BNB.

Thankfully after doing some further research I discovered you could with the Binance wallet do what they call a cross-chain transfer to BSC. This involves you sending your BNB of one type to the other BNB type in your Binance wallet.

So it was time to pull the trigger. This time having the correct BNB type address I sent a small amount first to make sure it would work. Once it did I sent the remaining over. I thought if all else fails from here I’ll just hold some BNB for the medium term as it seems like it could go up further.

After that, I tested with a couple of bucks’ worth of BNB doing a cross-chain transfer. While I was not thrilled with the gas fees I was thankful I finally had the correct type of BNB. After it was a success I moved the remainder over. My first time doing cross-chain transfers yay.

While I was still waiting for the Cub airdrop on Hive I thought I would play around a little bit with CubDeFi. Outside of HBD I never had much experience with other stable coins. I also have never used anything like a PancakeSwap Router or something like that.

So again this was an opportunity to try out some new things and pay under 1$ in gas to do so. I exchanged some BNB for BUSD and went into the Cub Den to stake it. Wish I had taken a screenshot at the time showing the nice APR that it was still at.

I’ll admit the 4% deposit fee stung just a tad in the end for this. After all the costs and struggle to get BNB and then into staking. I also suspected I was now too late with what the lower APR was to quickly recover my costs. I plan on keeping it in there for a while so hopefully one day it will.

This first part of my adventure was a long one. It all started on Hive Engine > withdrawal to wallet > transfer to exchange > exchange into BTC > exchange into BNB > withdrawal to wallet > cross-chain transfer into the BNB I needed > transfer to the wallet I wanted to use > exchange into BUSD > stake BUSD. I have a feeling people who do questionable things don’t even go through that kind of effort!

The Airdrop

I felt I was mostly ready and set up now for the airdrop. I did not have a lot of Leo staked so I was not expecting much. However, with some of the wild prices, Cub was jumping to such as $10 at one point I started to question if I had enough BNB to get it all into a farm once the drop happened.

I also expected once the airdrop happened it would go time and you would have many rushing in. I wanted the highest possible APR for as long as I could have it without fomoing in and paying crazy amounts to buy Cub.

At some point from my staked BUSD, I had a couple of bucks worth of Cub due to the high piece. While it was still a fraction of a Cub I thought I would give it a try. It is a bit of a test run with very small at stake if I messed it up it would not have been a big deal.

I claimed my Cub for the first time on CubDeFi. I then went and approved the contracts for the farm. After that, I went over to their pool liquidity section on the trade part of the site. I followed the pooling instructions in the documents they had provided making sure I was doing it right.

Once I had my LP for CUB-BNB I went over to the farms and dropped it in. It was rather nice getting into a much higher APR to the point my much smaller position in CUB-BNB LP was earning just as much as my bigger stake in BUSD.

After much waiting, they had finally done the airdrop. While I was hoping to get more than 0.678 Cub that I got. I also knew it would be not a lot either as I just don’t use Leo and thus my stake is quite tiny.

At least I had enough BNB to stake and play around with it like I was hoping to have. It was also nice they were not doing some insane Cub airdrop that would have an insane pressure on the market. While it did go down a bit from its high things are still quite early.

Leofinance had put out another guide on how to wrap your CUB and get it into your BSC wallet. The fact they are only giving people a week to do so is quite interesting. It rewards those who are at least active and somewhat paying attention. Those that are not for the most part are not sitting on a lot of Cub. Some seemed to just be dumping it for some quick profit as well.

I was glad getting my Cub went off without any issues. The epic journey I went on just to get some BNB left me rather relieved it was not going to be anything like that.

I also checked in to see how Cub I had generated from staking. While it was only .642 it seemed at least worth the gas fees to go ahead and claim it now to add to my other amount. The mass claim button on the home page had a transaction fail from trying to collect from multiple sources and gas costs. I think I’ll be staying away from that button at least for now moving forward.

Having already done it once the second time of exchanging for LP tokens was even quicker the second time around. After that into the farm, it went for CUB-BNB LP. While it did not have as high an APR as CUB-BUSD LP I was not that interested in trading more BNB for BUSD.

Now the hard part comes-- waiting. Since I’m playing around with small little amounts and did pay a little chunk into fees. I don’t see much rushing into selling the tiny amount I have. Unless Cub goes to some insane number this is one I’m just going to hold.

Once in a while, I might come back and claim my earnings to stake it back in. Generating compounding interest over the long run on something like this could lead to some interesting results. Even with the tiny amount I have in if Cub moons.

I might even consider doing something with my staked Leo at some point. For now though with them having more projects coming. Along with who knows anything else someone could base an airdrop on regarding staked Leo I’m just going to leave it alone.

Final Thoughts

I do understand there is a fair amount of risk playing with things like these. I could wake up tomorrow and it all could be gone. That is why I have always stayed clear of these kinds of things outside of staking some game NFTs in a different project.

While I understand you don’t take profit in something till you cash out. I have found it interesting I’m almost at break-even in terms of current value at the time of writing this. While I did pay a fair amount to get BNB and a few bucks on gas as well it’s nice to only be down 53 cents worth of value at the moment.

Most interestingly I’m so close to breakeven not because of the APR I’m earning in Cub. BNB in fact went up by quite a lot. The price I ended up paying for it almost looks like a smart move now. Naturally, I’m going to hold onto some of that as well. Just in case I need to play around with more things that require BNB for gas. I’d hate to have to do all this again from the start to get more if I don’t have any funds left to trade for more directly on BSC.

I’ve also lost track of how many first times experiences I’ve now had thanks all due to partaking in this. I don’t see myself jumping into other DeFi things. It was at least nice to have done it. I do hope I’ll be using more Leofinance products in the future as they roll out.

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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Screenshots are from CubDeFi

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta