Welcome to DeFi exec

Bridging between L2s looks like a simple transfer, but the mechanics are different from a normal swap. The path you choose decides how long funds are locked, how many contracts you trust, and how many fees you pay on a small wallet.

I wanted a wallet that forces me to slow down, confirm intent, and keep clean separation between daily use and long-term custody. A Safe multisig is a smart-contract wallet that executes transactions only after a threshold of owner signatures is collected, which fits the way I want to run personal ops: no single hot key can drain the wallet in one click. Safe documents the owner + threshold model and the account contract architecture, which is what I followed here (Safe docs).

Stablecoins are the first stop for nearly every DeFi workflow: swaps, lending, collateral, and cash parking. The decision I had to make was simple on paper but messy in practice: should I mint directly from an issuer or just buy on the market? For a sub-$1k wallet, that choice determines fees, time-to-settle, and how much issuer risk I am actually taking.

Gas cost is the most predictable drag on a small wallet. If I do not know the typical fee range for a swap, approve, or deposit, I cannot tell whether I am overpaying, or whether the chain is simply expensive that day. This post is my short, repeatable process for building a gas baseline from real receipts and using EIP-1559 math to interpret those receipts.

Block explorers are the fastest way I know to understand how a wallet really behaves. Before I move any funds, I map a wallet’s activity to see which contracts it touches, which tokens it moves, and how much gas it burns per workflow. This post covers the exact explorer tabs I use, how I interpret traces, and a small Python helper for normalizing CSV exports so I can compare activity across chains.