Pancake Swap — A Breakfast DeFi Protocol

An analysis about how crypto relates to breakfast foods and rabbits.

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

“Breakfast is a big deal. I love it!” — Joey Lawrence

At exactly 8:00 AM, your alarm screeches and echoes throughout your head, the sound is unbearable, but you notice something in the air. The smell of sweet, sticky pancakes. The addictive scent pulls you out of bed, and your curiosity throws you into the kitchen. However, upon approaching your kitchen island, the smell of succulent pancakes dwindles. Instead, your laptop is open, and Google has directed you to PancakeSwap.Finance — a Binance Smart Chain-based DEX launched by anonymous devs.

You have entered the sweet and sticky eden of De-Fi.

I already swapped my sushi!

It seems crypto developers have a knack for naming new De-Fi protocols after food, as we already had SushiSwap, and now we have a new Michelin star De-Fi protocol entering the scene. Pancake-Swap is a new BEP-20 (a token on Binance’s smart chain based on ERC-20) swap protocol that promises high staking APRs and sticky goodness along the way.

But we already have Uniswap and Sushiswap, so why do I need Pancake-Swap?

Pancake-Swap is a fork of Uniswap that was built for the BSC (Binance Smart Chain — which I will be discussing in another article soon) exclusively. This allows investors to save time and money (on gas) when staking, sending, and investing in tokens. I’m a bit of a stan for BSC and it’s low gas fees compared to ETH which has me guzzling gas like a Toyota Sequoia. However I did just buy my ENS domain which I will also be discussing in another article!

Pancake-Swaps Critical Ingredients

Pancake-swap functions on an Automated Market Maker (AMM), which is essentially a robot that is always willing to provide you with a price quote between two different assets. The robot relies on a mathematical formula to price assets, with UniSwap being one of the most popular. Uniswap uses x * y = k, where x is the amount of one token in the liquidity pool, and y is the amount of the other token. K, by the way, is some fixed constant to ensure the pool’s total liquidity (ease at which an asset can be turned into another asset) remains the same. Most AMM’s allow for trust-less trade and liquidity pools to literally become the market for other investors. The coolest part about the Pancake-Swaps trading mechanism is its P2C transactions. Instead of selling your crypto to another individual (counter-party), you sell your crypto directly to a smart contract that establishes the market for you. Another cool feature is that the price of an asset isn’t determined by the order book but by a specific formula (an example is listed above).

Butter Me Up!

Getting started on PancakeSwap is super easy, especially if you’re already familiar with SushiSwap, Metamask, and Binance. Regardless of your experience, my tutorial should be able to get you swapping some fresh pancakes.

Step 1: MetaMask Setup

Sub-steps:

1. Visit this link on Google Chrome and click the blue “Add to chrome” button.

2. Click the “Add Extension” button and when MetaMask pops up, move to step two.

Step 2: MetaMask Setup

Once you install MetaMask a new chrome tab will be opened, click the blue “Get Started” button and you should be left with a screen like the image below.

If you have a seed phrase from a prior MetaMask wallet feel free to use that. But in this case we are creating a new wallet.

Sub-Steps:

1. Click “Create a Wallet”.
2. Click either button depending on your data usage preference.
3. Create a password that is larger than 8 characters. This password is one of the preventive measures that secures your crypto, so helloworld123 isn’t a good password.
4. Write down, print, save, or memorize your seed phrase. Do whatever you need to do to ensure you don’t lose it, because if you get signed out and lose that phrase you can say goodbye to your crypto. Just ensure that wherever you store it that it is secure (https://oneKYC.io is a good place to do this).
5. Confirm your seed phrase by putting it in order. I recommend putting it in a temporary notepad to complete this step. Delete the note after.
6. Click “All Done”

Congratulations, you just setup MetaMask. Now Binance and Binance Smart Chain!

Step 4. Binance Smart Chain on MetaMask

Sub-Steps:

1. Click MetaMask in your extension tab (the little orange fox)

• If MetaMask isn’t there, click the puzzle piece beside your image in the top right corner of chrome. After doing so a large menu should pop down and the MetaMask fox should be there. If not check your installation and go back to the MetaMask install above.

2. Click on the box to the right of the fox that says “_________ Mainnet” or “________ Testnet” and and a black box should appear that says network (see below).

3. Click Custom RPC

4. Fill in these exact details (otherwise you can lose your crypto)—

• Network Name: Smart Chain
• New RPC URL: https://bsc-dataseed.binance.org/
• ChainID: 56
• Symbol: BNB
• Block Explorer URL: https://bscscan.com

5. Once you click save, you should now see that the network has changed to BSC (Binance Smart Chain Mainnet) and that the units are no longer in ETH, but in BNB (Binance Tokens).

Note: You should not have BNB in your account yet (that is the next step).

Step 3: Binance Setup

If you already have a wallet on Binance feel free to skip this step. If you don’t, setup steps are below.

Sub-Steps:

1. Visit https://accounts.binance.com/en/register?
2. Sign up with your email and a secure password.
3. Verify your email
4. Click the gold text that says “Go to Dashboard” as seen below.

5. Deposit crypto in your Binance wallet. (Tutorial Here)

6. Click Trade on the top bar and click Convert (Swap mechanism).

7. Convert the initial currency you deposited into BNB (Amount isn’t entirely relevant but around $25 is good).

8.Hover on the wallet text on the top bar and then click overview.

9. Click withdraw (as seen below)

10. Complete/Register for two-factor auth if necessary.

Step 4: BNB Transfer

• This step starts in the withdraw tab under Binance

1. Select BNB as your coin.
2. Go to MetaMask and click “Account _” to copy your wallet address.

3. Enter the copied address into the address section. (Do not use my address below). Send your BNB to your own MetaMask Address which can be found above.

4. Ensure you select BEP20(BSC) as your network of choice, otherwise you won’t transfer your BNB.

5. Withdraw (send the amount) you wish to your MetaMask address. The BNB you’re sending is simply changing wallets from Binance to MetaMask.

6. Wait a few moments and your BNB should arrive in MetaMask. To check on the status of your BNB look under recent withdrawals and Binance should update you!

Note: Your transaction should look like the one below, except a different wallet address and potentially a different amount.

Finally, let’s setup PancakeSwap

Steps:

1. Visit https://pancakeswap.finance/ and click the connect button in the top right corner.
2. Click MetaMask and immediately a new tab should open prompting you to authorize your account. (I’ve completed this already and it won’t let me reset to show you) (Here is another tutorial to address any problems).
3. Once you complete the connect you are finally on PancakeSwap and you can begin staking and pooling!

What should I do first?

Check out this tutorial that goes into depth about Syrup Pools, Farms and liquidity.

Anyways, I hoped you enjoyed this sweet article about getting started with PancakeSwap!

If you want to read more articles about entrepreneurship, knowledge and philosophy check out my medium page!

~Jake