Oh not that, this.
If you’ve read any of my previous articles, I’ve been working hard on researching as many passive crypto income streams as possible. I suppose you could equate this to gambling since I do not have an in-depth understanding of economics and tokenomics, but I have definitely read many an article and have watched several YT videos on Defi projects. I combine what I absorb with information in the whitepapers to do my best vetting, and to date, I’m fortunate enough to have avoided all scams and rug pulls. I’m currently invested in the following projects:
While the Drip Network is my most recent passive income play and I haven’t finished my articles about the previous 9 projects, I wanted to get this article out to you all because time is of the essence.
First, I will post my usual disclaimer — I’m not a financial advisor, nor am I an accredited investor. The majority of my investments haven’t been big wins. Therefore, please do your own research and really confirm the information I’m presenting below.
I foresee this article being a bit of a long read. Much of that is because I feel so strongly about the potential here. I must also warn you that there’s a bit of a sales pitch here as well, but I will do my best to ease your Spidey Sense. Ultimately, it’s up to you if you should decide to invest in the Drip Network.
Signing Up
Ok, so let me get the signup information out of the way as soon as possible. In order to participate in the Drip Network, you must be referred by someone. And I am truly hoping that you readers of this article decide to use my referral, which is called a “buddy account” in the world of Drip. To sign up, you have to complete these steps:
Arguments For Signing Up Under My Team, Prologue
Well, since this is by referral only, you have to sign up for someone’s team no matter what. My job with this article is primarily to provide you with information about how becoming a team member benefits you, regardless of the buddy address you use, and also to present possible ways that I can help you decide to accept me as your “team leader”.
Why I Like Drip
It’s not because of the name. To be honest, the name really made my Spidey Sense tingle. It sounds… sketchy at best. Also, while I give major praise to the creators Forex_Shark and BB, to the best of my knowledge they aren’t doxxed and that’s typically a red flag. However, after watching several YT videos, I walked through the whitepaper and this gave me a much warmer and fuzzier feeling inside. I’ve also watched a great interview with Forex_Shark by Jooviers Gems on YT.
Let me first propose a question to you — when you think of other Defi protocols, you know, the ones that promise large APYs (like 1M+) to insane APYs that don’t even have proper names associated with them? Scam? Ponzinomics? “Too good to be true”, or “That won’t last”? That’s exactly what I think, and yes, I still invested a little bit in the ones that I think have the most potential to survive.
The Drip Network offers a much more sane return on investment — a mere 1% daily. You can choose to deposit your funds and then cash out the interest at the end of a year, or you can compound the interest (called “hydration” in their parlance) every day. Or multiple times per day, should you choose to do so. There are actually online spreadsheets users have created to help you determine the best approach (in my brief exploration, it’s not worth the hassle of doing it multiple times per day, and just once is enough).
But surely, this is still not sustainable, right? How can any project support 1% daily compounding ad infinitum? This results in exponential growth in the principal, after all. I’ll start with my gut response, based on no research whatsoever:
It’ll last a hell of a lot longer than a project that gives you 123,456,789% APY.
Limiting returns to 1% interest daily certainly slows bleeding of the treasury, but it’s obviously not enough. Therefore, there are several more mechanisms within the Drip Network, most of which I haven’t see in other projects. All of them contribute to why I’m in favor of Drip (and why I will be emotionally crushed and mentally perplexed if it fails).
Mechanisms for Longevity and Prosperity
Teams and How They Benefit Everyone
If you aren’t familiar with Drip, I think I know what you were thinking when you first read about the highest part of the team hierarchy.
“This is a ponzi scheme”
“This is just a multi-level marketing scheme”
I don’t blame you because I had the same thoughts until I watched more YT videos and read the whitepaper. Therefore, I will present arguments that I have found online to dispel these fears, and in fact, I haven’t found any arguments to the contrary. The Drip Network is a legitimate system. I need to convince you of this before you will be willing to join my (or anyone else’s) team.
First of all, it’s easy to prove that Drip isn’t a Ponzi scheme. In the latter “system”, early investors get their imaginary profit from the deposits made by later investors. Eventually the whole house of cards comes down once too many investors decide to cash out their gains. In contrast, and as I’ve already explained above, all Drip Network investors’ rewards come from the tax wallet, which is funded by taxes, meaning that anytime anyone executes a DRIP transaction (other than buying, which in itself is great for the token value), a pretty significant percentage of that is held for the rewards.
Note to self: it might be a fun project to create a visual simulator of the Drip Network in action where you can specify types of investors, and simulate the tokenomics day to day.
So, how is the Drip Network not a MLM (pyramid) scheme? Well, the primary characteristic of a MLM is that it only benefits those at the top of the hierarchy. Everyone at the bottom is working their butts off to make those above them richer. Drip actually makes it a point to share the wealth.
For example, let’s look at the taxes involved with deposits and hydration. If you’re part of someone’s team and they have at least 5 referrals (actually called “players” in the Drip whitepaper), you, the player, will get a 2.5% discount on those transactions!
What’s in it for the team leader? Surely, they must benefit way more than their players, right? Well, it’s true that the team leader will receive a 10% bonus reward from all players on their downlines, which are simply the levels of depth in their team’s hierarchy (provided they hold enough $BR34P, more on this later in the article). However, the key thing to note here is that when a player adds referrals, they are effectively also becoming a team leader, and are therefore eligible to receive the same bonus rewards!
As you can see, the Drip Network is neither a Ponzi nor a Pyramid scheme, and it is truly set up for long term sustainability.
I Will Strive to Be the Best Team Leader For You
Now that I’ve presented you with the basics of how the Drip Network works, and have hopefully dispelled any concerns you might have about joining, I now have to ask you to please consider using my buddy address and allowing me to be your Team Leader.
I’ll be frank with you — I want to be a team leader because of the potential for growth and to provide my family with a little extra financial security. In order to do this, I want to provide you with benefits other than the ones inherent to the Drip Network system.
One idea I have read about that I will definitely adopt for my team is round robin exposure. Although I’m not a social media influencer, or even a well-known blogger, I hope to increase exposure for my experiences in crypto by continuing to write these articles on Medium. It’s pretty standard for a crypto writer to request others to use their referral code, or in this case, their buddy address. What I would do here is, after getting 5 players in my first downline (which activates the team’s 2.5% discount, which is imperative in my opinion), I will post my next player’s buddy address in my article. This does two things for players — first, it provides an opportunity for them to get buddy referrals if someone enjoys reading my articles on the Drip Network and wants to get involved. It also eliminates the “shiller” smell when they recommend the article to others, because it’s not their article.
Another idea which I would definitely employ, although without concrete details at this time, is airdropping to players. This feature is already built into the Drip Network for teams:
I can certainly see myself onboarding players that either don’t know how to execute the necessary crypto operations to get accustomed to the system. I can also foresee them onboarding their friends, who also aren’t familiar enough with crypto. Should the need arise, I would start a private discord or telegram (I really dislike Telegram, but would use it if that’s what everyone preferred) and would be willing to assist all downline players. I would probably eventually redirect those now familiar with Drip to the official Drip telegram, in order to keep the private discord / telegram focused only on onboarding.
As I read and watch more about Drip in the future, I’ll likely formulate ideas for other ways in which I can help my direct players, and it’s natural that they as future team leaders will also come up with ideas!
Ok, I’m Sold on Drip, How Do I Get Started?
I slightly misled you at the beginning of my article in the Signing Up section, only because I wanted you to be comfortable with this project before going through the real first step. You need to get Drip.
As I already mentioned, Drip is on the Binance Smart Chain. Therefore, you need to buy BNB first. This can easily be done by purchasing from any of the following options:
You have to deposit a minimum of 1 DRIP in order to join, which is a deal because it used to be 10 DRIP. At the time of writing, DRIP is $67. You could probably get away with a small amount of BNB just to join, like 0.25, so you have extra to pay for fees. However, the more you deposit at the beginning, the faster you will realize the compounded gains. For example, consider the following plot:
This might not be that impressive looking, but you should be able to see how much more quickly the higher initial investment compounds. You should probably try to invest as much as you can afford to lose. For me, when I go to Las Vegas, I never feel guilty about losing because I don’t overextend myself. Crypto investments aren’t any different. But this one sure feels good.
Now that you have BNB, you can go back to the Signing Up section above and complete steps 1 through 5!
Here’s another plot, just for kicks.
I want to reiterate something here, just to temper the excitement — deposits are “burned”. Hydration is a deposit of your interest, so therefore it is also “burned”. So what’s the point?
The key is to hydrate daily until one of two conditions are met:
And I think that’s it! If I realize I’ve missed something here, I will definitely update this article. If it’s an entirely new concept, I’ll post a new article. I hope to write something about the Reservoir and the Manor Farm soon.
Once again, here’s my buddy link and buddy address:
0x8896F41511935fc27e05B8c86563608659cEC9B7
If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to tell you that I appreciate your taking the time to read the entire article. Any comments or questions are welcome, just post away! Hopefully, I’ve presented a reasonable argument in favor of picking the Drip Network over the other Defi DAOs out there, and I hope you’ll use my buddy link to sign up. In my non-financial advisor’s voice, I’ll conclude by saying that I believe this is the one Defi project to rule them all.
Update 1/7/2022:
I wrote this article as a general overview of the Drip Network and while it covers many of the important points, it lacks some of the finer details about wallet management. I’ve continued to research the project and to try to optimize my own approach to investing in Drip, and I highly recommend reading Part 1 of Kelly Snook’s article, Simple Rules for Success. Please give it a read now and give her 50 claps! It’s that good.