Going Degen On Base - Rug-pulled By Grand Base And Bounced Back On Relay

6 months ago

I dived into DeFi back in 2020, thanks to Harvest Finance. What a journey since then, with remarkable stories and great disappointments. You will learn to surf through rug pulls, scams and FUD... and hopefully always DYOR.

Harvest Finance is a yield farming protocol that utilizes blockchain smart contract technology to automate the yield farming process. Users can deposit their funds into a Harvest smart contract of their choosing, and the programmed strategy will automatically deposit their funds with a third party protocol to start earning rewards.

My Harvest Finance portfolio has assets deposited on Base and Arbitrum. The Gnome-ETH DeSci pool is by far one of the best I've seen, maintaining the APY above 100% since the start of 2023! What about 81% APY on USDC? Is that degen enough?

Once upon a time I broke the Twitter algorithms! I minted the $PVM tokens on Base, and as every meme coin in the world... it has to be shared. So silly me tweeted about it and told the world that I have tokens to share!

Free tokens triggered all the bots in the world and $PVM tokens were kindly requested by 4,300 internet strangers. My tweet had 3100 likes and 3000 retweets in 24 hours! PVM broke the internet!

DYOR is essential but not always the key! I was browsing Harvest Finance for some new pools to farm, and the 9147% APY on the GB-ETH pool was mind blowing. Are you kidding me? 9147% APY!

One of the main rules of crypto investing is to use the funds you can afford to lose. I added $20 into the pool, and let it grow! But will greed take over? Keep reading crypto bro... keep reading!

I found another interesting pool, the RELAY-ETH, and done the research. RELAY been around for a while, and it looked like a project rejuvenation. The 5402% APY made me add $105 into the mix, hoping for some degen returns.

When you aping into DeFi, you must be ready to lose! If you don't know where's the yield coming from... you could be the yield! There's such a fine line between farming enough and cashing out... and losing it all!

Went to sleep and woke up ready to check my gains. Was GB and RELAY gone ... to the moon? The GB-ETH APY was at 5266% and my money tripled in a blink! Bro... I hit the jackpot! Yes bro... greed took over! I swapped some crypto, bridged some stuff and added $440 in the pool! Time to farm big and make thousands!

The RELAY-ETH pool farmed well, with $15 in gains in less then a day. The 377% APY was still juicy, but I went big on the other option. Go bigger or go home degen!

DeFi with insane APY is a gamble! This time I was the yield! The GrandBase team posted on twitter a sad news... an exploit happened! They urged all the community members to stay away from the contract as it wasn't not safe anymore. The LP was drained but they tracked all the wallets of the hacker and were actively monitoring the situation.

But while they urged the holders to stay away from the contract, huge amounts of $GB were sold. It looked like a rug-pull! The community gone mental as the price gone down... down...down!

Not sure how much my LP was valued when the exploit/rug pull happened, but a day or two before I had over $1000 in there. Initial investment $460 ... initial APY 9147% ... returns ZERO!

The aftermaths of the exploit left me with a $2 LP, and an useless token. What about you anon... still farming degen style? However, the crypto cycle marvelous... as the other degen investment gone ballistic.

RELEY pumped overnight and the value of my LP went to $531 as fast as you can eat a donut. I had to recover the GB loses, and the 11% APY wasn't big enough to keep me there. I cashed out and swapped all in USDC, waiting for my next degen investment.

Initial investment $105, and a profit of $426 obtained after a huge loss. I was lucky this time as things could go downhill for both investments. I ended up the experiment on deficit anyway, as the funds put into those two LP were $565 and my current balance is 428 USDC! Is it better to play safe and stake for 5-10% APR or gamble for high wins? Tell me anon...what's your story?