This article describes what bankless is, and how to set this app up.
What is bankless?
Bankless is a DeFi desktop app with the highest possible yield on your stablecoin savings.
What is DeFi?
DeFi apps are blockchain-based financial apps that do what banks do (savings, loans, time deposits, mortgages, pensions, etc) without a bank. These apps are trustless and censorship resistant.
Why would you want to use bankless?
- Bankless does not need MetaMask or a web browser. As a matter of fact, there is nothing else to install.
- Bankless shows all the available APYs in one simple screen.
- Bankless makes it super simple to earn yield on your stablecoins.
- Bankless is secure by design. Your crypto keys aren’t stored anywhere, and they never leave your device.
- Bankless is cross-platform. There is a version for Windows and for macOS.
- Bankless makes it super easy to transfer your money from savings account A to savings account B, without the need to visit multiple web sites.
Let’s get started.
When you start bankless, you are greeted with this screen.
In the upper right corner, you can select various stablecoins, including DAI and USDC and USDT. These stablecoins are pegged to the US dollar and as such they are designed to minimize the volatility of the price. One DAI (or one USDC, or one USDT) is redeemable for one US dollar.
In the upper left corner, you should paste the address of your Ethereum wallet or a human readable name. If you do not have an Ethereum wallet, then you can create a free Ethereum wallet at https://www.myetherwallet.com or https://mycrypto.com
Ethereum itself is a blockchain-based distributed computing platform. Ethereum isn’t owned by anyone, cannot be shut down, and has zero downtime.
Assuming you have an Ethereum wallet, your wallet needs to hold some ETH, because you will need to pay the network for gas if you want to make any transactions. You can think of gas as the metering unit for use of the Ethereum network.
There are many exchanges on the Internet where you can buy ETH. Because I cannot and will not give financial advice, I do not recommend any of them. You should do your own research.
Assuming you have an Ethereum wallet with some ETH in it, you will need a stablecoin such as DAI or USDC or USDT.
If you have ETH and want to exchange your ETH for a stablecoin, then Uniswap is a decentralized exchange you can trust. Uniswap is running as smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and as such it is censorship resistant.
Phew. Those where a lot of prerequisites. Thank you for hanging in there. Now it is time to earn some yield!
After you have pasted your Ethereum wallet address into bankless, it should tell you how much DAI (or USDC, or USDT) you have in your wallet. Click on the button labelled “Deposit to Highest”. Because bankless knows exactly what lending protocol provides the highest yield at any given time, there is no need to pick one if you don’t want to. Let bankless do the work for you.
After you have clicked on “Deposit to Highest”, bankless will tell you what lending protocol provides the highest yield, and ask you whether you are sure you will want to deposit your money.
Assuming you clicked on Yes, bankless will now ask you for your private key. Please note that your private key is not stored on disk and never leaves your device. Your private key is in memory for the shortest time span possible, and zero’ed out as soon as the app has completed the transaction.
We are almost there. Before bankless sends a signed transaction to the Ethereum blockchain, it will ask you one more time for permission. The app will also inform you about the gas fee. You will know exactly how much this transaction is going to cost you.
Now please wait. Blockchain technology is slow. It can take a few seconds up to 20 minutes for your transaction to get mined. If everything goes according to plan and there aren’t any errors, then bankless will open the etherscan.io web site with your transaction. Etherscan is a so-called blockchain explorer, where you can easily lookup, confirm and validate transactions that have taken place on the blockchain.
Congratulations! You have successfully deposited your stablecoins into a lending protocol. From here, you can transfer your savings to another lending protocol, or withdraw your savings to your wallet, with the click of one button.
