I have decided to start a new series called Crypto Noobs. This series will deep dive into how to do different things with crypto. I've written a lot about passive income and play to earn, but I realized not everyone is an expert. That being said, I don't claim to be an expert nor do I claim to be a genius. I've been interacting with cryptocurrency and blockchain since 2015 so I have a little experience. I wanted this series to serve as a way to help educate people that might be new to cryptocurrency on how to different various things such as interacting with different blockchains.
Binance Smart Chain(BSC) is a parallel blockchain to the Binance Chain that supports smart contracts and tokens very similar to Ethereum. Transactions are nearly instant, and gas fees are very small. The major difference here is that Binance Smart Chain is much more centralized than Ethereum.
BSC has exploded in popularity and has become the go-to blockchain for gaming because of its very fast and cheap transactions. Similar to Ethereum, each transaction will have a gas fee that is paid in BNB, the native token of BSC. These transactions are processed in order of highest gas fee so transactions will go through in a very similar way to Ethereum. If the network is congested, gas prices can increase and transactions can be backlogged as we've seen with the recent explosion of DeFi and Play to Earn games.
Alright, enough talk about shit you don't care about. You came here to get started using BSC, so let's go through getting set up. First thing's first. You need a wallet and some BNB for transactions. There's quite a few different wallets and ways to get started, but here's what I've found to be the easiest.
Metamask is the easiest for desktop, and Trust Wallet is the easiest for mobile.
If you plan on using your wallet on mobile and desktop, you might as well just set up Trust wallet on your phone and then import the account into Metamask.
Once you have Trust Wallet installed, you'll set up a standard wallet. The app will generate a private recovery phrase, which you'll need to write down and then type back in to confirm. Screenshots are not recommended or allowed by the app.
Confirm your recovery phrase that you wrote down. Enter the words in the order you wrote them down.
You'll need to send some BNB to your wallet for any transactions. Click on Smart Chain, and click receive. This is your new BSC wallet address. If you don't already have BNB stored on the regular Binance Chain or anywhere else, Trust Wallet allows you to buy it straight in the app! Just click "Buy", select Smart Chain, and enter the amount.
There's not really a step 4, but if you want to use this same BSC wallet on Metamask you can. To do this, all you need to do is download Metamask chrome extension. I personally use Brave browser which supports chrome extensions. You'll be presented with a screen similar to this, and you'll click "Import Wallet". Type in your recovery phrase that you wrote down and create a wallet password.
Now we need to configure Metamask to interact with BSC by adding the network. By default, Metamask is connected to the Ethereum main network. To add BSC, click on the drop down menu that says "Ethereum Mainnet". You'll see an option that says "Custom RPC'. Click on that, and enter the data shown below. Then, click save. Metamask can now interact with the BSC blockchain.
You are now set up to use Binance Smart Chain on desktop and mobile! Easy, right? Now get to playing some games and using some DAPPS!
peace.
