The learning never stops! This week, we’ve taken some massive steps to bring you value.

Today, we’re diving into:

• 📈Empowered Investor: Win Against Scammers, Investing in Uniswap V3.

PLUS: 

• 💡Community Highlight: Meet The Open Chain

• 🔊Spaces Alpha: Is Social Fi the Future?

📈Empowered Investor

Sharing what we learn about DeFi, Crypto and NFT’s so you can grow.

Win Against Scammers - Your Playbook 🚨 (4 mins)

Almost everyone has fallen victim to scams, rugs or wallet drains. In 2021 alone, scammers made a staggering $14 billion, and its getting worse each quarter.

With the potential of a bull run and an influx of new tokens, now’s the time to build your skills. We spoke with an expert, The Open Chain, to show you how.

Understanding the Threat:

The Scale of Scams: An estimated 25% of new tokens launched are involved in pump and dumps. This is when “founders'“ artificially inflate a token's price with hype and marketing, before withdrawing liquidity, causing up to 99% drops and big red candles.

5 Essential Tools to Identify Scam Tokens:

1. Uni-Crypt: Verifies liquidity claims of tokens, checking if the liquidity is genuinely locked for the stated duration.

2. Block Explorers: like Etherscan or Solscan, provides details like liquidity movements and contract code comments.

3. Token Sniffer: Highlights known scams and contract exploits, offering a quick check against potential scam tokens.

4. Dex Tools: Offers live buy and sell data, helping to spot unusual trading patterns and other red flags.

5. DeFi Scanner: Checks for vulnerabilities in smart contracts, identifying potential exploits even in legitimate projects.

Noob Guide for Investing in Crypto:

So you bought some bitcoin on Binance, now what can you do?

• Self Custody: Store your tokens in a Decentralized Wallet (Metamask, Phantom), or even better, cold storage wallets rather than on exchanges to mitigate risks of exchange failures or hacks. Remember when FTX crashed?

• Seed Phrase Security: Never share your seed phrase and ensure it's stored securely! Write it down and lock it away. Even keeping it online is a risk.

Recommended Cold Wallets:

• NGRAVE ZERO: Exclusive alpha from TOC. Known for its high-security certification and collaboration with cryptography experts.

• Alternatives: Ledger and Trezor, despite some controversies, remain popular choices.

Responding to Wallet Drains:

1. Contact Exchange Support: If the drain occurred on a centralized exchange, or a DEX reach out to their support team immediately.

2. Perform a Security Audit: Check for malware or viruses that could compromise other assets.

3. Move Assets: Quickly transfer other assets to a secure location.

4. Report the Incident: Use platforms like Etherscan or Solscan to find the wallet address of the scammer and report it directly to the platform. Consider reporting to local authorities for significant losses.

Common Scam Tactics and How to Avoid Them:

• Phishing DMs: Ignore random messages, especially those with links.

• Suspicious Social Media Posts: Be wary of airdrop offers and urgent investment opportunities.

• Third-Party App Risks: Carefully review permissions when linking wallets to new platforms.

• Suspicious NFTs: Avoid interacting with unexpected NFTs in your wallet, as they may contain harmful smart contracts.

Stay informed, use reliable tools for DD, and always prioritize the security of your assets. Stay tuned for future articles where we will share up to date security and scam tactics.

First Uniswap Position🦄

Getting our hands dirty so you can grow.

We’ve done it! We’ve officially invested into a liquidity pool all in the name of growth! And we’ve learned a ton in the process. Keep reading to find out how you can take your crypto skills to the next level.

Step 1: Choose your network.

Because we are investing with a small amount (60$ USD), we wanted to choose a high performing network that also has cheap gas fees.

The clear winner was Arbitrum. Here’s why:

• First, I researched different options on Uniswap V3. Ethereum was out because of its high gas prices.

• The next choice was different layer 2 options such as AVAX, MATIC, OP and ARB. What to choose…

• CoinMarketCap was the go to resource to check this out.

• Under DEX’s, I scoped out the top exchanges and the volume for each.

• Arbitrum has been the 3 best performing network over the last 24 hours with over 300 million in volume!

Perfect. We have a network. Now which pool should we choose?

Step 2: Choosing your Pool.

I reflected on my trading style which is Low to Medium risk tolerance, holding for 3-6 weeks, and I have decent technical and fundamental knowledge.

Perfect. So how did I apply this to finding a pool? Let’s check out Buildr Metrics to see.

• Under the Pools section, I chose the Arbitrum Network.

• I filtered the risk to LOW RISK, and sorted the pools by Estimated Fees/24hrs.

• Here is what came up:

ARB/USDC caught my eye because I am familiar with both tokens and bullish on each. I also appreciated that there was a stablecoin as part of the pair; this would also fit my trading thesis. Now let’s dig deeper.

To practice good habits, I researched both tokens on the site De.Fi. Both had 100% safety ratings and I was happy with the fundamentals. Next step.

You can see that there are several different fee tiers, the 1%, 0.3%, 0.05% and 0.01%. Which would be best?

I opened all of them by clicking on the Calculate button and here is why I chose the 0.3% tier:

• It was a great balance between volume in the and fees generated. I calculated my position and was happy to see a 174% Yearly APR.

• the TVL and Volume on the charts we both relatively consistent.

• Most importantly, this pool matched my trading style and plan. So I went for it.

Step 3: Making my Position.

Here’s what I did:

1. I made sure the Arbitrum Network was on my MetaMask Wallet. For this:

   1. I went to the Uniswap Swap page,

   2. Changed the network to Arbitrum, and

   3. Connected my wallet. It added the network for me.

2. Transferred ETH to my Metamask wallet. You can either Bridge ETH OR transfer it from a CEX, which is typically faster and cheaper.

3. Swapped ETH for USDC and ARB (the two coins in my pool). I did this on the Uniswap app, it was fast, cheap, and painless.

4. Entered into my position. Back on Uniswap, Under Pools, I did the following:

   1. Click, New Position

   2. Make sure the network is on Arbitrum

   3. Inputed the two pairs (ARB and USDC)

   4. Chose my fee tier (0.3%)

   5. Selected my range (which I also calculated on Buildr Metrics, using Technical Analysis market sentiment)

   6. Inputed the liquidity for each token

   7. Submitted it!

Stay tuned for our next article where I will share our progress and what we learned in the process!

💡Community Highlight

Recognition for our Web3 Matters community members who are making a difference.

Meet The Open Chain (TOC)🙏

A former banking professional, with an impressive 11.5 years of experience in compliance, KYC (Know Your Customer), and risk analysis, TOC has brought his skills to Web3, with a mission to empower us all.

He’s been one of our original friends in Web3, and has a heart of gold.

He is founding a project called TOC 3DX (The Open Chain third-party Doxxing), a unique platform designed to authenticate the identities of project founders within the Web3 ecosystem.

This tool is not just helpful but also sets a new standard for how we can stay safe and trust each other in the Web3 world.

Connect with TOC on X for his weekly spaces on mental health and personal growth here 👇

Want to be featured in our next newsletter?

Join us for our next episode of Web3 Matters 👇

🔊Spaces Alpha

Every Friday at 2 pm EST / 7 pm UTC. 

This Friday we are proud to host the legendary founder of SuperSpaces!

They have recently jumped into the Social-Fi scene, and are coming about it in a unique and fascinating way.

Join us to learn all about what they’re building, and also chat about how they are empowering spaces hosts with their incredible tools.

Check out the link below and set your reminders ✅

Finally, we'll be giving away exclusive thank-you gifts to our early supporters, so be sure to invite your friends to subscribe to Growth Bytes. Link below 👇️ 

http://web3bytes.beehiiv.com/subscribe