I have been watching around the edges the unfolding of the PolyCUB airdrop. I was not really paying attention to the details - my head was elsewhere and I thought I would get an airdrop as I also have sizeable and growing LEO holding which is being staked like the March 2021 airdrop. I watched a few of the AMA sessions and saw it was time to start moving - the day before the airdrop began.
Step one: Get some CUB and start staking is what I read.
A false start
The DuckDuckGo searches all said to buy CUB and then stake them on CubDefi - so off I went to do that. Buy them on Hive-Engine, they said. I already had a few CUB sitting on Hive-Engine from the last airdrop - I put in a buy order and was filled for a few.
I have learned over time to test crypto things out before committing - test I did. I searched how to transfer CUB to Binance Smart Chain - swap CUB for SWAP.CUB and transfer those - off went the 2.57 CUB I got in the last airdrop and nothing came out the other side.
Meanwhile I was getting a few more fills on my buy CUB order. Then I noticed that I could no longer switch CUB for SWAP.CUB. Then I noticed in the LeoFinance Wallet a note saying CUB was a deprecated asset and should not be traded as it had no value.
It was all a false start
Key Lessons - Not Just For Me
Now there are some lessons in here:
Lesson 1: This industry needs to be a lot better at publishing tutorials and keeping them up to date. A Github repository is a good place - too bad the CubDefi one was not kept current.
Lesson 2: The industry needs to switch off functionality that is no longer operational. I should never have been able to trade CUB on Hive-Engine after the March 17 2021 airdrop date. I should never have been able to swap CUB for SWAP.CUB to get them from Hive to BSC
Lesson 3: I needed to pay attention to the dates on the tutorials I found - if a tutorial is more than 3 months old, find a newer one
Lesson 4: Name and shame the people who traded the deprecated CUB to me - they almost certainly knew the CUB was worthless and basically stole my HIVE - it was not a lot of HIVE which have been earned over a very long time when HIVE was $0.04 - not close to $1 but they were basically stolen.
Here are the kind people who played the game @revise.leo, @sheinthu, @kachinhenry, @rzc24-nftbbg, @syllem, @carloserp-2000 - thanks for the 35 HIVE lesson. Karma is sweet.
Enough of the lessons. I did cancel the buy order before it was totally filled - I am now the proud owner of 35 useless CUB tokens. Now for the remedial action to win well in the CUB and PolyCUB airdrops. The key principles are to be staking CUB and PolyCUB in some form
Why CUB - this picture from a few days ago (Mar 11) says it all - not often do you get the chance to increase your holdings by 146% in 60 days - in stock markets that takes a lot of years in the good times.
Staking CUB
Step one is to buy some CUB - not on Hive-Engine but on Pancake.Swap. This is where it got interesting for me
My main source of funds to buy CUB to stake is ETH which are held on MyEtherWallet (MEW). The best part of this is the ETH I am holding there were all mined when ETH was between $200 and $500 each. That feels like using free money to me.
These were the steps (Google each one to find how to do it - that is what I did. Nah! Search in Hive.blog)
- Connect Metamask to MEW to access the coins in MEW - this all happens on Ethereum mainnet - set up an account for that and connect to Ethereum mainnet. It did take some time to get that working as I was holding the ETH in an offline wallet for which the software was no longer up to date.
- Set up Binance Smart Chain (BSC) on Metamask - use the same account is the simplest way - the same account number works across all the mainnets on Metamask.
- Make sure there are BNB coins in the account as you need these to pay fees on Binance Smart Chain. I transferred from Binance as I have an account there. You can buy SWAP.BNB on Hive-Engine and move those if you do not have access to Binance. Move a few across as you can stake a CUB-BNB farm.
- Transfer ETH from Ethereum mainnet to BSC. I used Celer Bridge to do that. Transfers were done quite quickly - Celer Bridge does the wrapping of native ETH to get it across. There are other bridges - be aware Binance Bridge is switched off
- Use ETH to buy BUSD and CUB on Pancake Swap. I have since learned that Paraswap does a search on the optimal routes and does a pretty good job with fees too. What I did was buy two thirds CUB and one third BUSD - that way I create a CUB-BUSD pool one to one and have a CUB pool the same size.
- To stake BUSD/CP, create LP for BUSD/CUB. This is done from CubDefi but is done on PancakeSwap. Note the cautions on CubDefi - the LP must be created to their rules
- Once those are created add LP to CubDefi Farm for BUSD/CUB and your first staking is ready
- Stake CUB on CubDefi Kingdom and your second staking is done
It is possible to earn CUB by staking in CubDefi kingdoms. Apart from staking CUB directly, the most attractive Kingdom was for CAKE at 72% APY. I set up staking there too - now this does not qualify for the airdrop. You will need to gather in the earned CUB and stake them before the 60 day airdrop period is over. This is one way to earn CUB without the risk of a rug pull on CUB itself.
A step back about what you need to know
- CubDefi works on the Binance Smart Chain (now called Binance Cloud). Fees are paid there in BNB. Get some BNB in place
- If the coins you are wanting to use to buy CUB are not on BSC, you have to bridge them there. Like I did for ETH on Ethereum mainnet. Find a bridge to do that or sell coins on your exchange to something easy to bridge.
- Pay close attention to fees especially coming from Ethereum mainnet - do it all in one go as fees are not percentage based they are transaction based. Be sure you have all the accounts right.
- Keep your Metamask simple - you only need one account no matter how many networks you plan to use
- There are avenues to get from HIVE to CUB - I have not tested any of them other than the false start. I am keeping HIVE to grow my HIVE blogging. The path is to get to SWAP.CUB
What I don't know yet?
Should I harvest my CUB to stake more?
Coming Next
Staking PolyCUB - APY's are exciting - process is harder.
Key links
The main CubDefi platform https://cubdefi.com/
Notes and stats on CUB airdrop https://cubdefi.com/airdrop
Farms for staking CUB liquidity pools https://cubdefi.com/farms - note only CUB-BUSD and CUB-BNB earn CUB tokens
Kingdoms for staking CUB and CAKE https://cubdefi.com/kingdoms
Celer Bridge https://cbridge.celer.network/#/transfer
Paraswap - cheaper than Pancake Swap https://paraswap.io/
Image credits
FALSE by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images