Using Pancakeswap with Metamask Guide

by jkopas

So I’ve been seeing some comments and questions on the daily asking how to use Pancakeswap for trading/exchanging coins on the Pancakeswap website. Many people are now using it to avoid high gas fees on the Ethereum network while everyone waits for Optimistic rollups and migration to 2.0 for reduced fees. I figured I’d make a guide on how I use Pancakeswap with the Metamask extension in Brave.

There are a couple pre-requisites that you’ll need to meet before you can start exchanging/trading coins on Pancakeswap using Metamask:

– Metamask extension installed in your browser of choice (I recommend Brave so you can earn that juicy BAT as well ;) )

– Some BNB in your Metamask wallet (to pay for any transaction fees – very minor, e.g. less than $1 typically)

– If you’d like you can also add BUSD (Binance USD stablecoin) to your Metamask wallet to buy coins on Pancakeswap.

To begin, you’ll need to install the Metamask extension in your browser of choice. In this guide, I’ll show you how to do it in Brave Browser (although it’s the same process for Chrome, etc).

Start by going here to download the extension. Once you’ve installed it, it will ask if you want to set up a new wallet or if you want to import an existing seed. I’ll start by creating a new wallet:

The next screens will ask you to set up a password for your wallet. Make sure it’s something secure, enter it in, tick the box, then click Create:

It will then ask you to backup your seed phrase to a safe location once you reveal your seed:

The next screen asks you to select the seed words in the correct sequential order to ensure you have it saved somewhere safe, complete that, and click Confirm:

On the next screen, it will confirm that you are now done creating your Metamask wallet which is almost ready to use with Pancakeswap!

Click All Done and it will then take you to the wallet.

Once you’re in the wallet, we now need to add the Binance Smart Chain network to the wallet (as it isn’t already added by default: only Ethereum mainnet and other testnets come by default).

Click where it says Ethereum Mainnet and it will give you a drop down of what current network chains exist in your Metamask wallet:

You will then see the following:

Click on Custom RPC.

Enter the following details to add the Binance Smart Chain network to your Metamask wallet:

• Name: “Binance Smart Chain”
• URL: https://bsc-dataseed.binance.org/
• Chain ID: 56
• Symbol: BNB
• Block explorer: https://bscscan.com

Then click Save.

You can now see that the Binance Smart Chain network is added to your Metamask wallet.

At this point, we now need to send some BNB token(s) to the Metamask wallet to begin transacting on the Pancakeswap exchange. You can buy BNB from Binance and send the BNB to the Metamask wallet address (you can click under where it says Account 1 to automatically copy the BSC address).

A thing to note is that when you’re withdrawing the BNB from Binance, make sure that you are withdrawing it using the BEP20 (BSC) network!

Once you have some BNB in your Metamask wallet, you should be set to begin using Pancakeswap to buy coins on the exchange. You can also send other coins to your BSC metamask wallet such as BUSD to buy coins on Pancakeswap using the Binance stablecoin (BUSD).

Now head over to the Pancakeswap website. When you get to the website, the first thing you’ll want to do is Connect your Metamask wallet to begin using the exchange.

A pop-up window will appear confirming you to select the option to connect your Metamask wallet with the exchange, click Next and on the following screen click Confirm:

At this point you should now be connected to the correct network and can begin trading coins on the exchange.

From here, if you want to buy/sell coins on the exchange, go under Trade > Exchange on the left column:

Now in this guide and example, I’ll use BNB to buy CAKE:

I selected the amount of BNB I’m willing to spend to buy CAKE, and in this example at this time, I will get 1.95147 CAKE for 0.1 BNB.

Click on Swap.

Now it will show you the screen to confirm the swap, how much BNB you’ll be paying to buy CAKE. In this case, you can see that the amount of CAKE I’ll receive for 0.1 BNB fluctuated (volatile market right now). Click Confirm Swap to confirm it! Once you’ve done that, a window will pop up in Metamask to pay the transaction fee which under the Binance Smart Chain, will automatically use BNB to pay for it (instead of ETH if you were on the Ethereum mainnet using a DEX like Uniswap for example). Once you pay the fee in Metamask and confirm that, you will then successfully have completed your swap and received the tokens/coins that you were looking to buy.

For US Users

I will write a short extension to this guide for people who are living in the US because a lot of the options listed here may not be available to all members of the US. The basics of setting up metamask are going to be all the same. You just want to set up BSC to work with your metamask. I will add a tidbit near the end about setting up hardware wallet with ledger to your metamask.

The one difference that you will need to think about for US users is first of all there is no way for you to buy BNB bep20 without a vpn, so at the very least you will need to download trust wallet, its similar to setting up metamask. I will go through different options of acquiring BNB bep2. There is expensive easy way and the more complicated cheaper way. Both ways you will with end up with BEP20 BNB. I also will add another step if people want to use VPN so they can use binance bridge to bridge over BTC or ERC20 tokens to bsc.

Pre-requisite exchanges you will need to set up accounts with are Gemini/CB pro , nexo wallet and trust wallet. Optional step is to include metamask. The two exchanges I will talk about with FIAT on ramps are gemini and CB pro since both have fairly low fees and are available in every state in the US that I know of. I personally use gemini because its one less step compared to cb pro. First step is depositing money into Gemini and then you have a few choices BTC ETH or DAI. I like DAI because it has the least volatility so when you do this trade shouldn’t be a problem with prices fluctuating too much. At gemini its .25% maker and .35% taker so a bit better than cb pro when we are talking about trading prices. Also I should add you want to make sure you are using active trader , if you are using gemini app the prices are quite ridiculous for trading. Once you have purchased dai you are going to want to use geminis free withdrawal to send your dai to nexo wallet. At nexo you will use their service to do an exchange of dai for BNB bep2. They also have one free withdrawal a month , so you can withdraw your BNB bep2 and send to trust wallet. At trust wallet you will do a swap of BNB bep2 to bep20 , this part will be your most expensive part of this process. The last time I did this it cost about 1 usd in fees. Once you have your BNB bep20 you can start using it for pancakeswap. The optional step here is if you made a metamask with BSC network enabled. You can send over your BNB bep20 from trust wallet to metamask when I did it last it cost 7 cents so practically nothing in my opinion. For me I did it because I have HW wallet attached to my metamask account.

I can quickly go over the easier methods to getting BNB to work with Pancakeswap. I personally didn’t like this method because it cost a bit more twice as much as they above method. If you have kucoin account you can buy BNB bep2 or CAKE, you will need at least some BNB for gas fees though. If you buy some cake and some BNB bep2 you will still need to go through same process of sending BNB bep2 to trust wallet for the swap to bep20. The problem here is the withdrawal fees for BNB and cake I think if you buy both at kucoin you are going to have to spend ten dollars on withdrawal fees. There is also the option of buying BNB at trust wallet and doing swap there but I have never done that before.

Now for the people who aren’t afraid to use vpns to use binance bridge to bridge over your erc20 tokens or BTC. Again I think gemini is the best option to use with this because of free withdrawal so you won’t get hit by any eth or btc gas fees. I picked Toronto as my vpn location since it closest international city to me. You will have to use this bridge . You will notice there is a connect wallet section , the wallet you want to connect is the one where you want to be sending your crypto to so for most people this will be metamask BSC one. From the pull down menu you can choose which asset you want to send over. For eth the min is .036 and max is 13.1, so if I remember correctly min was around 70 usd or so , the price of eth was different when I last did it. This part is important when entering the amount you have to enter 0.036 not .036 the former will work the latter will not and you will have a greyed out continue box. I chose to send from my own wallet option even though its really gemini I am sending from. After clicking continue you accept terms and make sure you are sending the right amount of ETH. They will give you an address you are going to be sending your eth from gemini or whatever exchange you are using to . Just copy the address so you don’t mess any thing up For me I go to gemini and then click withdraw eth and paste that address. You just have to wait for eth transfer to go through eth and BTC for that matter are quite slow so could take up to 30 min or so. Now you have Binance pegged eth on BSC in your metamask wallet.

So onto metamask with a hardware wallet. I have been reading about issues with people getting cake stolen from their metamasks , I personally have never had this happen but to be extra careful I have set up my ledger nano s to work with my metamask so every transaction that’s made has to go through hardware wallet. That’s also the main reason I use metamask over trust wallet as meta mask has support for both major brands of HW wallet.

The last thing I will add about using any of the BSC exchanges sometimes you will have to custom add tokens to work with metamask or trust wallet because they may not be active by default. I will show you how to set up binance pegged ethereum on metamask because I believe that isn’t one of the ones that available by default. You will want to go to bscscan and search for ethereum, it should be first choice binance pegged ethereum. Under profile summary there is a contract, you want to click near the end so you copy it. Now under metamask there is a selection all the way at the bottom is to add token. You will want to go to custom section and paste in the address you copied from BSCSCAN. It should add eth to your bsc chain metamask.