Navigating the cryptos can be a suicide mission if you do not have the proper knowledge, people will try to scam you every day, that is why it occurred to me to create an article with all the tips that I would have liked to receive a while ago.
The tips are not only about security, but also about optimization, investment and useful tools. In addition, they are oriented towards degens (native DeFi users, who interact daily on Twitter, Telegram and Discord).
Security tips
- Have the original operating system and a trusted antivirus, in my case Windows 11 Pro + Windows Defender, do not download anything pirated, not even Minecraft.
- If possible, use a device only for cryptography, where you don’t have to install anything, or visit strange sites..
- Use a secure wallet, I use Metamask, because it has been around for years and has millions of users (although they recently launched some controversial policies), other good alternatives are Rabby and Frame.
- Keep part of your funds in a cold wallet like Ledger or Trezor, never sign any smart contracts with them, use them only to store funds.
- Having a multi-sig wallet is an excellent option, I personally use Safe, I highly recommend this practice!
- Save your recovery phrase physically and never enter it anywhere unless you have no other option, such as if you misplace your device.
- In case you have entered your recovery phrase when switching devices or to try another wallet, it is advisable to create a new wallet and transfer all funds.
- Have a backup wallet, just create a wallet, save the address and recovery phrase and delete it from your device, in case something unexpected happens, it will be faster for you to migrate your funds.
- Do not interact with high-risk dapps with your main wallet, and always verify what you are signing up for.
- Use the official links when entering a dapp, do not search for it on internet because the first results are scam ads, personally I keep frequent dapps in the bookmarks bar.
- Use Revoke Cash to revoke the approvals of your funds, have not any approval of your base coins, in my case WETH, USDC, USDT, DAI.
- Have as few extensions in your browser, if possible just your wallet and AdBlock.
- Avoid depositing in dapps that have multiple attack vectors, such as a multi-chain lending platform, or that are unaudited, have incompetent teams and are not backed by VCs or angels.
- For newly released farms, wait 24 hours before interacting.
- If you are buying shitcoins, check that it is not a honeypot, you can do it quickly with this site.
- Follow PeckShield and ZachXBT and have your notifications turned on, to be aware of vulnerabilities and hacks.
- Use common sense, no one wants to give you anything and if something sounds too good to be true, it’s a scam.
- In the real world, keep a low profile, if no one knows you have money in crypto, you will be safer.
- Finally, if you want to go deeper, you can search for videos or testimonials of scams, to see real cases and learn from them.
Optimization tips
- If you are going to perform a multi-step movement, review multiple paths until you find the most optimal one.
I will give you a personal example, a few days ago I needed DAI in Ethereum and I had USDC and USDT in Arbitrum, so I started looking for the most optimal way to make the movement.
From experience I know that in the bridges, the stablecoin with the highest liquidity is usually USDC and USDC, so I sold my USDT for USDC in the best aggregator, then I sent the USDC through the cheapest bridge, upon recived my funds, i checked which aggregator gave me the best USDC to DAI exchange, it was 1inch, but 1inch’s route was only Uniswap, so I preferred to do the swap directly on Uniswap, as the costs are a bit lower.
In total, the 7 movements only took me 5 minutes, and at no time did I stress, because I already had everything planned.
- To see which aggregator offers me the best price, I use the DefiLlama meta-aggregator.
- To see which bridge offers the best price, I use the Bungee aggregator, in addition, currently to transfer sums of less than 10 ETH, the best option is Orbiter, which is currently not indexed to some aggregators.
- If two bridges or dexes offer you the same price, use the one with no token as it could qualify you for a potential airdrop.
- Take into account the official bridges of each network, where the exchange rate will always be 1:1, there are cases where you will have to wait a while, but if you’re not in a hurry, it may be the best option.
- In some cases, considering centralized exchanges like bridge can be a good option.
- If you plan to sell multiple tokens, you can do it in a single transaction in Dump Service.
- If you’re constantly farming and selling a token, it’s a good idea to approve an infinite amount of that token in an aggregator, so you don’t have to approve each time.
Investment tips
Since I plan to do an in-depth article on this subject, I will only leave a few important points.
- Attention is the most important thing, even over all the fundamentals.
- Stay away from technical analysis and leverage.
- Know what is your advantage or what are you good at, if you don’t have one, build it little by little.
- Many of your best investments will be those you didn’t make.
- Do not get carried away by FOMO, there will be opportunities constantly, take advantage of each one to learn and improve.
- Overtaking ETH is very difficult, having >50% in ETH and BTC is fine.
Tools
I will not look for general tools, I will only make a list of the tools that I use and have in my bookmark, know that I interact a lot with DeFi, but not with NFTs, so there will be no tools for NFTs (actually there has been nothing about NFTs in this article, sorry).
- Defillama, I use it for so many things that I would have to do an entire article just to explain them.
- DEX Screener and DEXTools to analice tokens.
- Etherscan, Debank, Zerion, Arkama, Bublemaps, Cielo and Etherdrops for on-chain analysis.
- CryptoFees and Token Terminal to see how much the protocols are earning.
- L2BEAT and L2Fees to view metrics about the L2s.
- Revert to manage my LP positions on Uniswap V3.
- Token Unlocks to view unlocks.
- Droptabs to see the fundrasings.
- Similarweb to see the traffic.
- This Dune dashboard to see the APR for ETH staking on Lido.
- Artemis to compare chains.
- Earnfi to review unclaimed airdrops.
- This Dune dashboard to see the LSDfi war.
- Coingecko Stablecoins, Bull Market Comparison, Daly Exchange Voumen and Google Trends as indicators.
- Naoly and DefiLlama to search for farms.
Lastly, if you want to learn about on-chain analysis, I wrote this article and this thread. Also, I recommend my thread about the art of yield farming which may also be useful to you.
If you liked the article, you can follow me on Twitter: @0ctoshi.
