Entering April, the public chain Near has made more and more actions. First, on April 6, it announced the completion of a new round of financing of 350 million US dollars to promote the further growth of the Near ecosystem; there is news that Near will launch the native algorithm stable currency USN. .
Near’s new round of financing was led by Tiger Global, a traditional investment fund, with participation from FTX Ventures, ParaFi Capital and other crypto investment institutions. Not only has the public chain received financing, but many applications in its ecosystem have also recently received institutional investment, including the decentralized trading application Trisolaris, lending applications Burrow and Bastion, which shows the attractiveness of the Near ecosystem to capital.
Near (NEAR) was born to solve the expansion problem of Ethereum, and launched a high-performance block network based on sharding technology that can be expanded infinitely. This public chain is a typical representative of using sharding technology to improve the scalability of the blockchain. .
Compared with financing, what has attracted the attention of the crypto community is Near’s stablecoin plan. This plan was first disclosed by Crypto Insiders, a media in the field of encryption. Zoran Kole, the founder of the media, wrote that NEAR will launch the native algorithm stable currency USN on April 20, which is the same as the stable currency UST of the Terra chain (LUNA). , which provides an APR of about 20%.
In this regard, Near officials did not respond, but the community and the market became restless first. The native token NEAR of the Near chain has been rising all the way, reaching as high as $20, an increase of 69% in the past 30 days. This increase is very eye-catching in the overall decline of the crypto asset market. NEAR has been fluctuating at a high level and is currently around $16.
Following the rise of NEAR is the value of encrypted assets (TVL) locked on the Near chain, which has risen to 1.46 billion US dollars, an increase of 169% in the past 30 days, and the TVL growth rate ranks first among many Layer1 public chains.
In addition to the rise in Near TVL brought by the news level, what is more important is that the public chain broke through the previous development bottleneck at the end of 2021 - the launch of the Aurora network. This expansion network based on the Near blockchain has changed the limitations of Near's incompatibility with Ethereum in 2021, such as the difficulty of DApp migration and the poor access to funds.
Currently, the Aurora development team operates independently. Because it is compatible with EVM, it is convenient for developers to migrate applications to the Aurora network without changing the code, and then join the Near ecosystem. So far, the technical bottom layer of the Near ecosystem has formed a parallel structure between the main chain and the Ethereum-compatible Aurora network, which has opened up the interaction between Ethereum and other EVM-compatible Layer1 networks and the Near ecosystem, including developers and DApp users.
What applications are currently on the Near chain, which has been in development for 2 years? How are they progressing? This issue of DeFi Honeycomb will take stock one by one.
Liquid Staking Protocol MetaPool
Metapool (META) is a liquid pledge protocol (platform) in the Near ecosystem. Its business is similar to Lido in the Ethereum ecosystem. Its functionality is reflected in helping nodes or users to complete NEAR pledge, while improving asset liquidity and improving users' asset utilization. Rate.
Like many public chains, the Near chain also adopts the PoS (Proof of Stake) mechanism. The verification node needs to pledge the underlying token NEAR to obtain the verification qualification to ensure the stability and security of the network. Nodes can obtain block rewards (NEAR). ).
In general, the more Tokens are pledged, the higher the credibility of the verification node. Therefore, institutions that operate verification nodes often have financial and technical strength. When ordinary users get a piece of the pie from the verification nodes, they often need to delegate the tokens they hold to the verification nodes. This requires the user to operate the delegation process on the smart contract, and also needs to judge the reliability of the node by himself, which increases the user's operation and knowledge costs.
In addition, after the user pledges the token to the node, it cannot be redeemed or circulated during the given pledge period, and the income obtained is only a fixed share of the block reward. In the large blockchain financial system of DeFi, this reduces the efficiency of users' asset use.
Metapool came to solve the above-mentioned pain points. Users can get pledge income by staking NEAR in this protocol, and the platform will automatically match the NEAR pledged by users to the verification nodes. Staking users can obtain pledge certificates stNEAR in a ratio of 1:1, and can obtain pledge rewards by holding stNEAR, and can also participate in DeFi applications on the Near chain. When the user releases the pledge, he only needs to exchange stNEAR for NEAR in the "stNEAR-NEAR" liquidity pool provided by Metapool.
stNEAR and NEAR are released to users at a ratio of 1:1. Since stNEAR can be regarded as NEAR in the ecosystem, it supports DeFi scenarios, such as exchange or lending, which is equivalent to releasing NEAR’s liquidity and improving NEAR’s asset utilization. , In addition, staking NERA itself can also get rewards from Metapool. Currently, the annualized rate of return for users to stake NEAR on the Metapool platform is 11%.
Staking NEAR can get 11% annual income.
META is the native governance token of the Metapool platform, which can be voted to determine the proportion of the pledged revenue of the protocol. In the early days, in addition to the staking yield, users in Metapool can also get the protocol's native token META reward. However, in February this year, the META part of the staking reward has been suspended, and the META reward is currently only allocated to users who provide liquidity to the relevant asset pool (stNEAR-NEAR) exchanged with stNEAR.
According to Deflama data, the current value of NEAR pledged on the Metapool platform is $126 million.
One-stop DeFi platform Ref.finance
Ref.finance (REF) is the first decentralized AMM (Automated Market Maker) trading application on the Near main chain. It was first launched in April 2021 and has received official support from the Near Foundation.
Ref.finance aims to build a one-stop DeFi platform that integrates trading, lending and issuance of Near ecological assets. The platform launched the stablecoin exchange pool function in December 2021, allowing users to quickly exchange stablecoins with minimum slippage and fees.
Ref.finance
Different from previous DEXs, Ref.finance has optimized the asset exchange path. It has a built-in "aggregation transaction function" and integrates the DEX liquidity pool transaction data on Near and Aurora. Through the smart path function, the application will automatically Find the best exchange path for asset exchange users, including splitting a transaction into multiple pools, or a transaction containing multiple implementation processes, etc.
For example, when exchanging 100 NEAR to USDC, in order to help users find a low-slippage exchange path from time to time, the transaction may be split into two parts, of which 90 NEAR is first converted into DAI, and then DAI is converted into USDC. The path It is NEAR-DAI-USDC; the other 10 NEAR may be converted into USDT first, and then into USDC, the path is NEAR-USDT-USDC.
REF is the native token of Ref.finance, with a total issuance of 100 million. Currently, users can earn REF rewards by providing liquidity to the platform’s liquidity pool.
According to Deflamama data, the current TVL of the Ref.finance application is US$208 million, and the REF is temporarily quoted at US$4.
The most traded DEX Trisolaris
Trisolaris is the TVL and decentralized exchange application (DEX) with the largest transaction volume in the NEAR ecosystem. It runs on the Aurora network and is the first DEX on the network. The DEX mainly supports the exchange of native assets on the Near and Aurora networks, and supports all EVM-compatible Layer 1 public chain assets to cross-chain to the Aurora network.
Trisolaris page
It should be noted that since Trisolaris is built on the Aurora network, the gas fee paid when using it is ETH, which means that as long as users have ETH, they can enter the Near ecosystem, which reduces the threshold for participation in the Near ecosystem.
On April 3, Trisolaris received a strategic investment of $4.5 million led by Electric Capital. The official said that it will use the funds to expand the team and continue to invest in key products.
According to Deflamama data, the current TVL of Trisolaris’ app is $289 million.
Fund pool lending platform Burrow
Burrow (BRRR) was launched on March 29. It is a decentralized lending platform on the Near mainnet. Borrowers and lenders conduct transactions through liquidity pools. The interest rate of each loan and loan is determined according to the changes in supply and demand of the pool. Similar to Compound, a lending protocol on Ethereum.
Burrow improves the utilization rate of users' funds by releasing the liquidity of "interest-earning assets". The so-called "interest-earning assets" can be simply understood as assets that can bring income, usually obtained by locking the native assets on the chain. You can understand it as the deposit certificate or receipt obtained by the lock-up of the native asset, and some people call it the tokenization of "interest-bearing bonds".
Burrow allows users to convert their "basic assets" into interest-earning assets first, supporting interest-earning assets as "collateral" to lend other assets, and improving the efficiency of capital use by making full use of interest-earning assets in a revolving lending method.
If users hold NEAR, they can pledge to stNEAR on the Metapool platform and earn about 11% interest every year; then deposit stNEAR in Burrow to obtain interest income, or use stNEAR as collateral to lend other assets.
Burrow's deposit and loan income
Like Aave, the lending app on Ethereum, Burrow uses an "overcollateralization" approach to maintain the safety factor of assets and keep them in a healthy range. For the mortgage rate of each asset, Burrow introduced the concept of asset volatility, that is, each asset has its own price fluctuation range, and then calculates the volatility according to the price fluctuation range. When other factors are stable, when assets with higher volatility are used as collateral assets, the utilization rate of funds is lower.
On March 29, Burrow announced the launch of the Near mainnet, and announced the completion of a $5 million round of financing the next day, with investors including Dragonfly Capital, ParaFi Capital, IOSG Ventures, etc.
Currently, Burrow supports users to deposit assets such as NEAR, stNEAR, ETH, USDC, USDT, DAI and wBTC to earn interest, or to lend the required assets as collateral.
As of April 21, Burrow had $432 million in deposits and $281 million in borrowings.
Lending App Bastion
Bastion is a lending application built on the Aurora network. The lending rate is determined by the supply and demand of assets in the capital pool.
It is similar to Compound. After users deposit encrypted assets, they will get a deposit certificate cToken. cToken is also equivalent to an interest-earning asset. Over time, the interest income of the underlying asset increases, the higher the value of the cToken. When users exchange cTokens back to the underlying asset, they will receive more of the underlying asset than originally deposited. When borrowers want to lend other funds, they need to deposit encrypted assets into cTokens, and then use cTokens as collateral to lend out the required assets.
Although Bastion is similar to Compound in terms of lending mechanism, it improves the user experience in terms of product functions. It has launched a stable currency exchange pool, which supports low slippage exchange of stable currency, cToken, packaged assets, and pledged assets. Users can implement lending, trading and other processes on the Bastion platform.
Users can earn interest income by depositing assets on the Bastion platform, and they can also combine the deposit certificate cToken with similar assets to provide liquidity to earn transaction fees.
For example, Xiao Ming holds NEAR. In the previous loan agreement, Xiao Ming could deposit NEAR to obtain a deposit certificate cNEAR. At this point, cNEAR is either used as collateral to lend other assets; or it can be held continuously to obtain interest income deposited into NEAR. However, on the Bastion platform, Xiao Ming can first exchange NEAR for the pledge certificate stNEAR, and then deposit stNEAR into Bastion to obtain cstNEAR. The cstNEAR he holds can be paired with similar assets related to NEAR, such as cstNEAR-stNEAR, cstNEAR-cNEAR, cstNEAR- NEAR, etc., and then provide liquidity to these asset pools for liquidity rewards.
In this way, Xiaoming's basic asset NEAR "multiple uses for one capital", and at the same time, he obtained triple income from pledge income, deposit interest, and transaction fee, which improved the utilization rate of funds.
Bastion Operational Data
Bastion was launched on March 7, and announced on March 23 that it had completed a round of financing led by ParaFi Capital and participated by DCG.
It received capital support within 3 weeks of its launch. Many users believe that this is mainly due to the issuance method of Bastion platform’s native token BSTN. Bastion does not use the "airdrop" method commonly used by DeFi protocols in the past, but uses the "Lockdrop airdrop" form, that is, users need to lock up their assets to Bastion first, and the lock-up time is 1-12 months, and BSTN rewards can be obtained after expiration. , and get back the original assets. The longer the lock-up time, the more BSTN you will get. This airdrop method has greatly curbed the wool party, and also left enough time for the platform to accumulate TVL.
Bastion attracted a large amount of funds after launching the lock-up airdrop, forming a "blood-sucking" effect on other lending applications, and once pushed it to the TVL champion throne in the Near ecological application.
Currently, deposits in Bastion are worth $428 million, and on April 21, the app announced the launch of BSTN, which will begin trading on Trisolaris the following day.
Lending platform Aurigami Finance
Aurigami (PLY) is a lending application running on the Aurora network. Users can use it to earn interest on deposits or lend out encrypted assets. The lending rate also changes at any time according to the supply and demand of assets in the capital pool.
In the Aurigami application, depositors will get a deposit certificate auToken after depositing encrypted assets, which is also an interest-bearing asset, and users can use it to withdraw the deposited assets on demand. Additionally, AuTokens are tradable and transferable. Borrowers who want to lend assets on Aurigami need to deposit platform-backed assets as collateral, which, of course, is also an over-collateralized loan.
Aurigami lending data
Aurigami is an earlier lending application in the Near ecosystem. On February 6 this year, the app announced that it had received investment support from well-known crypto venture capital institutions such as PolychainCapital, Alameda Research, and Coinbase Ventures. The specific amount was not disclosed.
In addition, from April 22 to May 6, Aurigami will open a super reward of NEAR (about 145,000) worth 2.5 million US dollars. Users who deposit encrypted assets on the platform can get NEAR rewards in addition to interest income. , the reward distribution weight of each lending pool is different.
This move is more like a countermeasure against the latecomers Burrow and Bastion on the lending track. It can be seen that the battle for the loan application TVL on the Near chain will continue.
Currently, Aurigami has a total deposit value of $200 million and a total borrowing value of $97 million.
( Disclaimer: Readers are requested to strictly abide by local laws and regulations, this article does not represent any investment advice )
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