Dispatch No 1 - May 3rd 2022

The Journey Begins

Welcome to DeFiance, a regular dispatch from the frontiers of finance, where I explore the weird and wonderful world of high-risk, high-return crypto farms, pools and assorted other life-forms.

I only write about projects I’m already invested in or planning to. Each week I’ll record my profits and losses and offer my opinions.

None of this is financial advice, I’m just an amateur. But I’m prepared to put my money where my keyboard is, so you don’t have to.

Let’s Go!

This is what I’ll be sharing each week. A full breakdown of my current portfolio showing how much I’ve invested, what the current value is, whether I’m in profit or not and how much I’ve been able to withdraw, if any.

Performance notes*

My Diamond Team

I was sceptical about MDT at first and as you can see, I invested the least, but it has proved to be a consistent earner and the TVL continues to rise, despite the ups and downs of BNB. I’ll be investing more soon.

Titano

I liked Titano because my funds are not locked and it started well. It gives consistent daily returns but the price has plummeted and the TVL is dropping. I’m holding to see what happens, but it doesn’t look good.

SAFUU

This is another quiet success. It gives steady returns and the tokenomics look strong, so it’s a bit of a mystery why the TVL is falling. I’m hoping it’s only due to temporary profit-taking and that we’ll see a turnround soon. One to watch carefully.

Piston Token

Although the prices faltered after launch and I was losing faith, it has since rallied and the TVL, which was static for a while, is now climbing. Another possible future winner.

Baked Beans

My best performer by far. I’ve profited massively, but that was mainly due to some substantial referral bonuses at the beginning. However, the TVL has been declining for the last 8 days, so there’s a question mark against it now. See feature below.

PinkApple

What started as a promising Baked Beans clone with the added attraction of it’s own token, PinkApple failed to gain traction. The TVL never made it past 16.5 BNB and it’s now down below 10. Not a rug, just a dead cat. Shame, the devs seemed to care and they were trying something different. I’m taking out the few dollars that I can, but I probably won’t make ROI.

DRIP

This is my longest-standing crypto investment and the most reliable. The price of DRIP is low right now, but that’s about to change with the relaunch of the Animal Farm contracts, which should herald a strong recovery.

DRIP Garden

The Garden has suffered the most from the Animal Farm launch delays and the DRIP price drop. It was highly innovative in it’s day and had great promise, but right now returns are not keeping pace with the LP decline. It may recover when DRIP rises, but equally, it may be over-shadowed by more attractive returns from Piggy Bank V2. I’m watching carefully and taking some profits.

(* please note, some of the above are referral links, but you don’t have to use them.)

This Week’s Featured Contract - Baked Beans

Each week I’ll take a deeper look at one of the projects in the portfolio. This week it’s the turn of Baked Beans.

BB is managed by a combined US and Australian dev team, who come across as genuine in their AMA’s. They say they were frustrated by witnessing too many scam projects and rug-pulls and wanted to do something a little more robust.

So, they set themselves an ambitious target by offering a tempting 8% return per day, with only a 3% dev fee.

That structure and their recommendation to compound 6 days of the week and take rewards on the seventh, has become an article of faith, not only for those in BB itself, but for the several forks that have since sprung up such as Spooky Miner and Beef Roast. I’ve even seen some Forex Shark fans, advocating the same approach for DRIP.

As you can see, I’ve made a damn good profit from BB, but this is mainly due to some initial referral earnings.

Considering that Baked Beans started back in early November ‘21, it has lasted remarkably well for a miner. The Bake 6, Eat 1 mantra held well for a long time, but now it looks like there’s more eating going on - hence the recent TVL drop.

I confess that I also ate a little more than I baked this last week and, as predicted by the algorithm, my daily percentage went down. I’m back on the straight and narrow now and will wait the full six days to eat again.

Unfortunately there is no way of knowing how much of my daily rewards are from the promised 8%, or from referral bonuses, but I have noticed that my daily amount has dropped to around 3 or 4% in the last few days.

To stop the rot, the dev team launched a major marketing campaign in Asia this week, so I’m hopeful that we’ll see the TVL turn round and we’ll be back to happily stuffing our faces with the little orange beasties, very soon.

My DeFi Rules

1. only invest ‘don’t matter dollars’

2. don’t invest at launch, unless you’re a bot, wait till the dust settles

3. avoid falling TVLs and/or falling prices

4. slowly invest more in the winners, cash out what you can from the losers

5. have fun

Next Week

Each week, I plan to investigate a new protocol and put in a small investment to add it to my portfolio. So over time, that list will get bigger and we can figure out which ones are going to print dollars and which ones are going to be a money-suck. That way it’ll be my money in the blender and not yours.

I have a few targets in mind, but I’d be delighted to hear from you, if you know of any good ones, or even any bad ones to avoid. Drop me a line in the comments and let me know what you’d like me to include.

In the meantime I’ll be digging deeper into My Diamond Team which will be next week’s featured contract.