Yield Farmers' Latest Fields: BAL, AMPL, BTC
Also, DMM sale, Keycard integration, Opyn raise.
Hello Defiers! Busy days for farmers,
Balancer distributes BAL tokens in latest liquidity mining scheme
Ampleforth distributes AMPL providing yet another yieldmfarming opportunity
Synthetix, Curve and Ren team up to bring BTC into the yield farming frenzy
DMM $6.5M in token sale spurs some disgruntled buyers
Status announced Keycard integration
Opyn raises $2.2M
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[UPDATED AT 1:30PM EST: Added DMM CTO comment on DMG sale ]
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Yield Farmers Have Found Their Next Crop —BAL
Three weeks ago, Balancer started its liquidity mining program - allocating 145k BAL governance tokens to LPs each week. Yesterday, those first three weeks of crops were harvested as 435k BAL was distributed to over 1k honest workers.
In addition to BAL minted for liquidity mining, 35.4M tokens were allocated as follows:
22.5M for the founding team, advisors and investors
2.25M as stock options for future employees
5M for the Balancer Ecosystem Fund governed by BAL tokenholders
5M for the Fundraising Fund for future Balancer Labs financing
0.435M for the first three weeks of Liquidity Mining
With a total supply of 100M BAL, 65% is set to be issued through Liquidity Mining in batches of 145k tokens per week. Out of the 35.4M tokens issued, only 6M of them are actually circulating today.
BAL Price Explodes
Following the explosive growth of COMP, BAL is experiencing a similar moonshot, with tokens soaring from their base rate price of $0.60/token to a peak of over $20/token at the time of writing.
With a fully diluted market cap of over $2.2B, BAL overtook MakerDAO’s MKR to become the second-largest DeFi token by market cap after COMP.
To paint some color to such a bountiful harvest, the top BAL farmer was able to collect 94,194 BAL in just three weeks, coming out to nearly $1.9M at current prices. The second largest BAL holder is far behind with 25,533 tokens, according to this BAL Liquidity Mining report.
BAL rewards spurred an influx of nearly $10M worth of new liquidity as it climbs the DeFi Pulse leaderboard.
The neat thing about BAL is that different Factors have been put in place to allocate BAL more efficiently across the pools with the highest perceived value. With fees, weights and wrapping all playing into the existing formula, this tool built by Mike Honkasalo helps determine which pools will earn the most BAL at any given time.
For eager farmers out there, top pools are estimated to earn upwards of 400% APR when factoring in BAL from mining and swap fees. Time to get harvesting!
Ampleforth Launches Geyser Liquidity Mining Program
Ampleforth is another DeFi project which launched a liquidity mining program this week. The program has increased liquidity for the stablecoin, but it’s also causing it to come off its peg.
Ampleforth yesterday started distributing its token AMPL to users who provide liquidity to the ETH/AMPL pool on Uniswap V2, and then stake their Uniswap LP tokens in Ampleforth’s interface for the program, called Geyser.
AMPL is a digital asset whose supply automatically adjusts according to market demand to trade at its peg of the 2019 US dollar (the specific year is to avoid devaluing effects of inflation). The stablecoin has climbed to $1.12 from $1.02 on Monday, before the program started. The token is programmed to trade within a band of the target price, so supply should contract to bring it closer to $1.
So far, $490k of Uniswap’s LP tokens has been deposited in the Geyser program, for 24,998.30 AMPL to be distributed per month for three months. The estimated reward for participating in the pool is at 92% APY, as 1 Uniswap LP token yields 16,822 AMPL per month.
With one day in, the program caused 24hr volume on the ETH-AMPL pair on Uniswap to soar by more than 300% to $220k. This compares with the most liquid pools of $3.8M and $2.2M for COMP-ETH and USD-ETH, respectively.
BTC Joins Yield-Farming Frenzy
DeFi Yield Farming is pushing composability to its limits. Synthetix, Curve and Ren have teamed up to launch BTC liquidity incentives using Curve’s low-slippage pools.
The program combines three Ethereum-based flavors of Bitcoin - renBTC, wBTC and sBTC - to provide seamless swaps between the rising wrappers. Backed by 10k SNX and 25k REN worth of weekly incentives, those who provide liquidity can stake their LP tokens via Mintr to claim a pro-rata portion of the rewards.
But, the fun doesn't stop there. Synthetix and Ren have teamed up to issue those SNX & REN rewards in the form of Balancer Pool Tokens (BPTs) - meaning LPs are also earning BAL from Liquidity Mining. As if that wasn’t enough, contributors will also earn Curve’s soon-to-be announced governance tokens - CRV - which will take into account preexisting positions upon launch.
Best of all, with all three wrappers essentially pegged 1:1, there is no risk of impermanent loss - a major reason why Synethtix’s sETH/ETH Uniswap liquidity incentives became so popular. Paired with the Ren Bridge for permissionless Bitcoin onramps, the ability to put your capital to work in DeFi has never been more attractive.
To get started, head over to Curve’s newly deployed sBTC pool and deposit any amount of renBTC, WBTC and/or sBTC. Once deposited, navigate to Mintr’s LP rewards tab and stake those tokens in the Curvepool sBTC section. Beware of transaction fees though, as getting into this position can cost about $20 at current gas cost!
The program is set to run for 10 weeks starting today, so load up your yield tractor and get farming!
Tim Draper-Backed DMM Sale Spurs Disgruntled Buyers
Lending platform DeFi Money Market, or DMM, raised $6.5 million in less than two days by listing its DMG token on decentralized exchanges. But now alleged buyers are complaining online about glitches with the sale.
DMM’s DMG token is trading at $0.83, up from $0.36 at the start of the sale, and at $4.5M has the highest trading volume on Uniswap in the past 24hrs after ETH.
DMM sold 25k DMG tokens on dmg.defimoneymarket.com, built on the Loopring protocol, and on Mesa, built on the Gnosis Protocol. The project previously raised $2M in a private sale for 9.3M DMG tokens, and plans to continue holding “Public Token Sales over time” until it sells 30% of total token supply of 250M, according to a Medium post.
Twitter, 4chan Threads
The project’s upbeat Twitter post on the sale was overrun by comments from alleged buyers having problems withdrawing and swapping DMG tokens. Separately, a thread by an anonymous user on 4chan claims a group of buyers want to sue the project after they lost money due to the confusing interface used for the sale.
Some buyers were refunded while the confusing interface on the Mesa exchange was updated, DMM CTO Zachary Rynes, said in a Twitter message responding to a request for comment, where he added that “the sale was an overwhelming success as it has completed with 48 hours.”
“There was a scam article posted in our Telegram that led some users to sending funds to the wrong address but we have since refunded them with the DMG tokens they should have gotten,” Rynes wrote. “Some users did have a little bit of trouble with the UI of Mesa mixing up DMG/USD with USD/DMG, but an update for Mesa has been rolled out to make the exchange rate more clear.”
DMM says on its website users depositing ETH, Dai and USDC will get a consistent return of 6.25%, from “real-world, income producing assets, all viewable on chain.” The DMM’s website shows it holds almost $8.8M mostly in cars it owns, for which it provides IPFS links to their liens.
Privacy Issues
But researcher Frank Topbottom posted privacy issues with these documents, as the team didn’t successfully redact personal information about car owners.
Billionaire Tim Draper’s venture fund backed DMM in March for an undisclosed amount. Draper famously invested in Tesla and Coinbase, but it also backed Theranos. A famous name on the investor list isn’t an excuse to blindly buy a token.
Status App Integrates With Keycard Hardware Wallet
Blockchain infrastructure builder Status Network updated its Status App, a mobile messaging app, crypto wallet, and Web3 browser. This update will integrate the application with Keycard, an open-source hardware wallet also built by the Status Network, which allows users to authorize transactions and two factor authentication for logins by tapping the device against their phone. The app will initially be available on Android devices.
Opyn Raises $2.16M in Round Led by Dragonfly
Decentralized options platform Opyn raised $2.16M in financing led by Haseeb Qureshi and Tom Schmidt at Dragonfly Capital with participation from venture funds including Version One Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures, 1kx, and angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan and Robert Leshner. The company will use this funding to grow its team, make key hires, and further protocol development and security, according to the company’s Medium post.
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About the editor: I’m Camila Russo, a financial journalist writing a book on Ethereum with Harper Collins. (Pre-order The Infinite Machine here). I was previously at Bloomberg News in New York, Madrid and Buenos Aires covering markets. I’ve extensively covered crypto and finance, and now I’m diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.