Five DeFi tools you need to know about
By: Hikaru Kasai
Tags: Defi, Cryptocurrency Investment, Cryptocurrency, Yield Farming, Decentralized Finance

With so many Decentralized Finance (DeFi) projects out there, it can be like uncharted waters when trying to understand what’s going on. As the rapid pace of DeFi continues to pick up, many are easily left behind.

Thankfully, there are a multitude of tools that will help you make informed decisions — here are 5 DeFi tools you need to know about.

DeFiprime.com

Source: DeFiprime.com

DeFi’s fast-paced environment is honestly not easy to keep up with. To help people stay informed with accurate data, Defiprime curates relevant DeFi projects by categories to make your research easier.

From analytics, DEXs, insurance and even derivative projects, this site makes research more organized so you can get the relevant information you need.

Defiprime also has resources for finding community threads, real time lending rates and the top DeFi tokens making it one of the best informational tools for all things DeFi.

Zapper.fi

Source: Zapper.fi

Zapper is a platform that claims to “create the ultimate hub for Decentralized Finance” where users can simplify their DeFi investments and asset management.

One powerful feature allows you to simplify Ethereum transactions in just a few clicks from one platform. Otherwise, the traditional route takes more steps and numerous manual transactions (along with Ethereum gas fees).

Best of all, Zapper saves you Ethereum transaction fees by simplifying multiple transactions into a single consolidated transaction. It kills two birds with one stone by masking the complexities involved with Ethereum transactions while saving you fees. Neat, right?

To get started, all you need to do is to connect your Ethereum address (via Metamask or WalletConnect as examples) and then Zapper will show your portfolio balance on it’s dashboard. You can then choose to deposit the asset of your choice and start lending or staking your assets from the Invest page.

Yield Farming Tools

Source: yieldfarmingtools.com

One of the biggest challenges that yield farmers (users who stake or “farm” crypto yields) face in DeFi is tracking the accurate ROI of your investment.

Yield farming is the process of being rewarded tokens in return for staking or providing liquidity to the DeFi market. Yield farming can be simple, or cleverly complex as farmers devise articulate strategies to maximize their yield.

To better track your earnings in real time, Yield Farming Tools allows you to view your farming ROI including hourly, daily and weekly returns for supported liquidity pools. It calculates how much tokens you’ve earned, the current total value locked in a pool, and other stats for you to monitor your investment.

The platform also has a curated list of liquidity pools which allows you to filter by risk level (smart contract risk), provider (Uniswap, Sushi, etc), collateral (type of crypto staked), and reward (ROI ). This makes research for yield farming platforms much easier.

For the adventurous, the platform also curates more yield farming platforms and tools that will broaden your arsenal of DeFi knowledge.

Overall, Yield Farming Tools packs a ton of resources while offering important data points for tracking your yield farming investments.

Eth Gas Station

Source: ethgasstation.info

Gas, which is the transaction fee paid to the Ethereum network, constantly changes depending on factors like the network usage and demand.

As such, fees can suddenly spike or stay expensive, as seen when Uniswap airdropped UNI tokens causing gas price to reach a record high of 700 gwei. Gwei is just another term for a unit of Ethereum commonly used when calculating gas fees.

So why is Eth Gas Station helpful? First off, it tells you the current estimated gas prices so that you can make sure your transaction will confirm with the intended time range in mind.

Most Ethereum wallets will calculate the appropriate gas fee for you, but as a frequent or advanced DeFi user, it’s beneficial to understand how much gas you really have to pay. Manually choosing the right fee can save you a few or more dollars with the same outcome.

For traders on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, you want to have an edge and be in control of the fees you pay.

For example, you may want to make sure you pay the “Fast” option to get your transaction confirmed under 2 minutes. Or if you can’t wait, opt for the “Trader” option. Either way, you can always estimate the transaction fee under the Tx Calculator tab.

If you want to learn more about how gas works on Ethereum, go ahead and explore their FAQ page.

Discord and Medium Groups

The last set of “tools”, or rather social channels, applies to pretty much most DeFi projects. Always DYOR on the project through reputable sources. As part of your research, the project’s Discord and Medium tends to be the most informational. They also cut down a lot of the noise seen in chat groups like Telegram where conversations tend to be lower quality then Discord.

Discord usually has different threads for different topics, and allows you to better research the questions you have in mind. Browsing through important announcements, threads and topic oriented discussions are just way easier to grasp on Discord compared to Telegram.

Medium pages on the other hand are also a great resource. They usually contain a bulk of the explainer and announcements from the team that you should know.

Not all Discord and Medium groups are the same, but from experience these two platforms have higher quality and organized info compared to the likes of Twitter and Telegram. If you have questions that weren’t answered anywhere else, Discord is usually a great place to get answers from the community.

Use tools to your advantage

As always, do your due diligence and learn how these 5 platforms can benefit you. Not all tools will benefit everyone the same. Being equipped with more knowledge means more power to you.