DeFi stands for Decentralized Finance. The goal of DeFi is to bring the tools of traditional finance to the decentralized online world utilizing cryptocurrencies. Individuals can become market makers who receive compensation for lending their digital assets. DeFi by-passes central financial intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks to offer traditional financial instruments for your digital assets.

There are quite a few steps to get everything set up, but if you make it through this tutorial, you will be set for good. First, you will need a Metamask wallet, which you can download here: https://metamask.io/

Once downloaded, it will appear as an extension on your browser and look like this: (you only have to do this once)

Metamask is one of the most widely used crypto wallets available. Your wallet ID is the letter/number combination under “Account 1” which starts with 0x…. You will notice at the top that your Metamask wallet is currently set up to work on Ethereum Mainnet. This tells you that the wallet is ready to work with the Ethereum Blockchain.

Since Cloutbridge is set up to work on the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain, you will want to click on the drop down and set up your wallet to work on that chain.

Here are the instructions from the MATIC website itself: https://docs.matic.network/docs/develop/metamask/config-polygon-on-metamask/ Follow the instructions at this link and then come back here to complete the process. Your wallet should look like this now:

See the new network on the top? Great! One more step before we can use the bridge: You will need 4 MATIC in order to create the bridge (which is about $5) and another 4 MATIC to transfer your $clout to your wallet. So plan on having at least 10 MATIC ready. You can get MATIC on blockchain.com. You can take some of your $clout and convert it to USD here: https://exchange.blockchain.com/trade/CLOUT-USD Then convert the USD to MATIC here. https://exchange.blockchain.com/trade/MATIC-USD

You can convert to USDT instead of USD if you want to stay away from nasty fiat currency 😊 Make sure you paste your address from your Metamask wallet as the recipient address of your MATIC. You can copy your address easily by simply clicking on it.

Now that you have some MATIC and a shiny new Metamask wallet which is ready to work on the MATIC blockchain, let’s form a bridge!

Head on over to https://www.cloutbridge.net/ click on the 3 lines to reveal the dropdown menu:

Click on Bridge Now you need to connect your two wallets. You can log in to one at a time by clicking on these buttons:

Once you have logged in, click Bridge again and then you should see something like this:

In order to get your $clout onto the MATIC network you need to turn it into $bCLOUT. Select how much $clout you want to exchange. In the To: drop down select ”Polygon” then enter the amount you want to exchange for $bCLOUT. Don’t worry, you can exchange it back.

You need to request to mint the bCLOUT. After you have requested it, you need to approve the transaction in Metamask. If it is going slow you can increase the gas fee manually. It’s an incredibly small amount, even when you increase it. After the transaction has gone through with your Metamask, then press send and approve the transaction from the Bitclout popup. If you were successful, you will see this screen.

Now you need to add the category of $bCLOUT to your Metamask wallet. Since it is not a widely known token (yet!) you need to add it manually. Click on the fox head of your Metamask extension and look at your assets. At the bottom you are looking for this button which will enable you to add the category $bCLOUT to the wallet.

Then paste the following token ID into the Token Contract Address 0xe306AeD16B434418e0cCC75F31FBF46B6bB1bEF2 The other fields should auto-populate. Once you click Next click the button Add Tokens. If you go back to your Assets tab in your Metamask wallet you should see your $bCLOUT sitting in your wallet! Congratulations! You can now use that $clout you earned from diamonds, FR, NFTs, etc. in DeFi which will let it earn interest and grow over time! Do you remember the Polygon fee of 4 MATIC + $Clout you paid to transfer $clout? By being a Liquidity Provider (which we will cover next), you receive a percentage of that fee every time someone uses the bridge. Let’s get into that. Now go back to the cloutbridge.net website and click Swap from the drop down. This will take you to the Quickswap exchange which is the front door to DeFi on MATIC. You should see this pop up. This will enable $bCLOUT to be swapped on the Quickswap exchange. Click I understand and then Continue. Now you should see the option to swap between $bCLOUT and MATIC. In order to be a Liquidity Provider, you will add a value-equivalent amount of $bCLOUT and $MATIC so you will need to determine what amount you want to add and then have that amount in both tokens. You can exchange your $bCLOUT for the right amount of MATIC (and vice-versa) in order to get the levels right. Now click on the label Pools in header at the top of the website. Then you will click the Add Liquidity button. MATIC should be on top and then you will need to add $bCLOUT at the place where it says Select a token.

You will notice that whatever amount you enter in one token will automatically convert to the equivalent amount in the other token. Then click Confirm Supply When you do this, your Metamask wallet will open and you will need to approve of the gas fees. Sometimes the transactions struggle to go through. In these situations, you can click Edit in Metamask and increase the gas fee 2 or 3 clicks and it should go through without an issue. Once the transaction goes through, congratulations!!! You will now receive a percentage of all fees that are paid for every trade of $bCLOUT. The amount you receive depends on the percentage share of the pool that your liquidity takes up.

When you head back to the Pools tab on Quickswap, you should see Your Liquidity. When you click Manage you will see what percentage of the pool you hold and you are welcome to remove your share any time. This will release your original funds plus any rewards you’ve earned back to your Metamask.

Soon there will be a CLOUT Farm which will enable you to stake your tokens to Farm more tokens. Liquidity Mining and Yield Farming are two significant ways to generate passive income through DeFi.

The true innovation here is the chance to generate $clout through social interaction and then stake it in DeFi to bring in passive income. This should truly level the playing field and make crypto and DeFi work for everyone, even without a large amount of upfront capital.

If you found this tutorial helpful, please give a quote-reclout so that others can learn about how to get started in DeFi with their $clout.