Jan 282021
 
Buy DPI, the DeFi Index

This guide on how to buy DPI, the DeFi index fund will walk you through what DPI is and why it is powerful to get a diversified exposure to DeFi with minimal effort.

DeFi, or decentralized finance, is having a moment on Ethereum. The rise of “blue-chips” like AAVE, SNX, and YFI has been followed by the rise of newer tokens like UNI and SUSHI and then a long-tail of promising projects from there on out.

For a regular crypto investor who isn’t spending 24/7 in Discord channels and Telegram groups, keeping up with everything can be daunting. Even then, buying and rebalancing a DeFi portfolio isn’t trivial due to increasing gas costs.

What is a DeFi Index Fund?

A DeFi index fund is an index that is backed by several other DeFi tokens. This index itself is tokenized and assets held in reserve, i.e. each token of the DeFi index fund can be redeemed for underlying assets and each token can be created by supplying the underlying assets in the specific ratio.

A DeFi Index is an ideal instrument that grants exposure to underlying DeFi tokens and does the rebalancing automatically on behalf of holders. Its value is fully backed by the DeFi tokens backing the index, just like a regular Index Fund in traditional equities.

What is the DPI Index?

The DPI index is maintained by the popular DeFi Pulse team and built using the Set Protocol.

As of this writing, there are 10 components of the DPI. They are as follows:

  • AAVE at 25.80%
  • UNI at 23.79%
  • SNX at 16.31%
  • MKR at 9.42%
  • COMP at 7.20%
  • YFI at 6.50%
  • LRC at 3.89%
  • REN at 3.67%
  • KNC at 1.98%
  • BAL at 1.63%

Now of course you may not agree with the weighting here and that’s the whole point of the index. For example, YFI feels underweight in the index at the current valuations, but that’s a personal opinion.

How to Buy DPI Index

In order to buy the DPI index, you can simply need to buy the DPI token from any exchange. However, due to the nature of the index being backed by other tokens, you can also “create” a token of DPI by supplying the underlying assets.

If you want to supply all the assets and get DPI tokens, we refer you to the tokensets page of DPI. This may be a good play for DeFi whales who may get better pricing and even find arbitrage trades in volatile markets and make a profit off of price discrepancies.

If you’re a smaller investor or don’t want to deal with the creation and redemption process, then buying DPI off an exchange is the easiest way to gain exposure to this DeFi index.

To buy DPI, follow these steps:

Step-1: Go to a DeFi aggregator like 1inch to find the best pricing for DPI.

Step-2: Connect your Web3 wallet like MetaMask.

Step-3 (optional): Make sure you have ETH or another ERC20 token in your wallet. If not, you can buy from exchanges like Binance or Coinbase.

Step-4: Select which token you want to convert to DPI, or just stick with ETH.

Step-5: Execute the trade and you should have DPI in your Web3 wallet.

This should route your order through the best DEXes on Ethereum even for pretty complex paths. For example, here is a sample routing to convert from RLC to DPI.

If you are an investor DPI, let us know your thoughts in the comments below and what tokens you would like to see added to DPI.

Jan 212021
 
How to buy BADGER from Badger DAO

This is a guide on how to buy the BADGER token from Badger DAO. Badger DAO is a very interesting community driven Decentralized Finance (DeFi) project with the aim of bringing Bitcoin into DeFi.

Bitcoin of course is the OG of crypto. However, Bitcoin is also slow to move when it comes to making changes on-chain. “Smart Contracts on Bitcoin” is a meme we have been hearing for over 5 years now, and more recently, “DeFi on Bitcoin” has become a meme with some Bitcoin maximalists who don’t understand anything other than “number go up”.

For good reason perhaps, Bitcoin should remain conservative. The way forward then is to bring Bitcoin to the DeFi ecosystem instead of the other way round. This is where Badger DAO comes in, with its governance token BADGER.

What is BADGER?

BADGER is the native governance token of Badger DAO. The goal of Badger DAO is to build tools that bring Bitcoin into DeFi and Ethereum. Badger is not a single product – instead, it has multiple products and tokens.

The first product is the much awaited DIGG from Badger. DIGG is an elastic supply token similar to Ampleforth (AMPL). It tracks the price of BTC by expanding or contracting the token supply with a 24 hour rebase period. DIGG can be earned via farming, which has become a great way to get wide distribution of token these days in the DeFi world.

Other products might follow suite depending on the success of existing products and the community that has gathered around Badger.

How to Buy BADGER

Step-1: Go to 1inch (a DeFi aggregator) and check the best price of BADGER for ETH (or any other ERC20 token).

Step-1b (optional): Buy ETH with your BTC or local fiat at Coinbase or Binance or another local exchange.

Step-2: Connect your MetaMask or another Web3 wallet and execute the transaction.

Step-3: Just wait for the above transaction to confirm and you’ll have the BADGER in your Web3 wallet.

Remember to use an aggregator like BADGER so you get the best price, instead of going to a single exchange like Uniswap of Sushiswap. This is especially true if you want to convert a non-ETH token into BADGER.

For example, here is a path shown by 1inch to buy BADGER with YFI instead of ETH. As you can see, 1inch will automatically split the order and then route it to the best DeFi exchange for you to get the best price execution.

Buy BADGER with YFI on 1inch order routing

(the PMM1 in the above is a private market maker. These contracts source liquidity from centralized exchanges like Binance in addition to DeFi exchanges).

If you are feeling especially bullish (or bearish) on Badger, you can also buy BADGER futures on FTX. The advantage is, you can go long (or short) with leverage of up to 100x so you can make big bets on the direction of this token. If you want to go this route, you want to buy the BADGER-PERP token, which is a perpetual futures contract.

Jan 102021
 
buy BAO token from BAO finance

This is a post on how to buy BAO Token from Bao Finance but also how to farm BAO token instead of buying and why it has been quite attractive for DeFi enthusiasts.

BAO Finance is an interesting DeFi project that describes itself as a synthetic asset and lending platform, kinda like a combination of SNX and Aave. However, more immediately the reason it has caught the imagination of a lot of people and projects is its somewhat unique take on yield farming.

The broader product idea from BAO Finance is to use Uniswap, Sushiswap, and Balancer LP (liquidity provider) tokens to collateralize synthetic positions. Think of this as SNX but instead of SNX being the collateral, the LP tokens will be. To that end, it made sense for BAO Finance to first release a yield farming product.

Per their site,

The BAO token acts as a governance token for the fully community run project. It is also backed by the insurance fund where all Bao fees go.

How to Farm BAO Token

Before you decide to buy BAO, it might make sense to first look at how to farm BAO token instead since this could be more profitable with lower risk. This is especially the case if you have any Uniswap LPs sitting around doing nothing. Instead, you can stake them in BAO Finance and earn some BAO tokens immediately.

The most interesting thing about BAO yield farming is that there are hundreds of LP pairs available to yield farm.

However, one thing to note upfront is that you will only get 5% of the BAO tokens that you farm upfront. The rest will vest over a period of 3 years with a 1 year cliff. Therefore, if you are looking for a short-term farm, make sure to figure out if these numbers work out for you or not.

This is also why the advertised APYs are so high, since only 5% of this is “real” at the moment.

Also, make sure to read the docs, especially around fees and penalties before you start farming. There is both a deposit and withdraw fee.

BAO token APYs

The good news though is there are hundreds of LP pairs available so there are a lot of options. Check out all the BAO Farms here.

How to Buy BAO Token

BAO token has been one of the top performing DeFi tokens the last few days.

BAO token price coingecko bot

If you want to directly buy BAO token, make sure you buy via 1inch so you can get the best possible price. 1inch will automatically aggregate all of DeFi liquidity sources for you including Uniswap and Sushiswap. Uni and Sushi have the largest BAO pools of liquidity since they are incentivized with BAO farming currently.

You can also easily convert non-ETH ERC20 tokens into BAO via 1inch automatically via the best price execution and by splitting your order the right way.

YFI to BAO token on 1inch

If you want a more centralized exchange experience especially when gas is high, you can always go to Binance. If you need to buy ETH via USD, Coinbase is best.

You can also find the information on BAO/ETH pairs on Uniswap and Sushiswap. This is the BAO token on Etherscan.

Jan 052021
 
Buy GRT Graph Token

This is a guide on how to buy GRT or the Graph Token from the project The Graph. The Graph has emerged as an essential middleware for a number of decentralized finance (DeFi for short) applications over the last few years. It allows developers to quickly build their applications and pull data from the Ethereum blockchain without having to write a lot of custom code. They can create ‘sub graphs’ that contain this data their applications need. Applications like Uniswap rely on The Graph’s middleware to show trading data. It has become an important piece of the developer stack in DeFi.

The Graph recently announced the launch of its own token, GRT.

Before you decide to buy GRT, note that there is a pretty large inflation and a lot of new supply coming into the market over the next few months from VCs and founders. This could depress the price, somewhat similar to CRV, in the short to medium term.

How to Buy GRT

If you want to buy GRT, the best way is via an aggregator of DeFi exchanges like 1inch. This should give you the best pricing as far as DeFi exchanges go. You don’t need to manually check Uniswap, Balancer, Matcha, etc. to find the best execution anymore.

If the gas is too high, you can always use Binance to buy GRT. Trading fees here should be much lower (and no 0.3% LP fee either) due to it being a centralized exchange.

If you don’t have any Ether ETH yet, buy on Coinbase and then use 1inch or Binance as described above.

If you want to buy GRT with leverage, you can do that on FTX. Buy the GRT-PERP to get up to 100x leverage on a futures position into GRT. Use this if you are especially bullish (or bearish) on GRT.

Dec 252020
 
How to buy 1inch token

This is a guide on how to buy 1INCH token from the 1inch project. 1inch is an aggregator of decentralized exchanges, but is expanding beyond that into an ecosystem of DeFi products (such as Mooniswap, a DEX by itself). The team launched the 1INCH token on 24th December 2020 which will act as a governance token for the products they build.

The token has just launched is already over $1 billion fully diluted marketcap. This is because the 1inch DEX aggregator does insane volume and the product makes a lot of revenue and is already profitable. Combine that with a technical team that is known to ship top DeFi products, and you have a killer combination that people want.

1inch has become the go to place to buy DeFi tokens without KYC. It has more recently supported private market makers or PMM. This means someone could arbitrage from a centralized exchange but you never need to create an account and risk custody of funds – you just approve your metamask transactions and the trade happens.

How to Buy 1INCH token

First, connect your Metamask (or another Web3 wallet) to check if you already have any 1INCH tokens. This is because the team did an airdrop similar to Uniswap’s UNI. You can sell 1INCH tokens the same way as outlined below.

Buy on 1inch

If you want to buy 1INCH tokens via a DEX in a decentralized way, head over to the 1inch DEX aggregator. Here you can buy 1INCH token via any other token like ETH. Now that 1inch also has its own liquidity pools, this is the best way to buy 1INCH tokens instead of Uniswap.

Buy on Binance

Binance has immediately added support for 1INCH so you can buy and sell 1INCH token on Binance already.

The reason you may want to buy on Binance is because gas prices are pretty high on Ethereum right now, and trade costs can be anywhere from $10-$15 per transaction or higher (edit: now that gas prices for a single trade are hovering around $40-$50, this is unfortunately more of a case of switching to Binance) which is practically free on Binance. If you want to buy 1INCH token in small quantities, this may be your preferred option.

Update: Binance has enabled margin trading up to 5x on 1INCH/ETH pair, which is a nice feature for traders.

Yes, we see the irony in buying the token of a DEX aggregator on a CEX but if the amounts are not large, Binance really could be a more economical options. Just make sure you understand the tradeoffs between DEX and CEX in this case.

This is some more information on 1inch so far from the team:

Resources

Etherscan link to 1inch token

1INCH launch post

Dec 192020
 
Basis Cash tokens BAC, BAS, BAB

This is a guide on how to buy Basis Cash tokens BAC, BAS, and BAB. It is crucial to understand the difference between these tokens before you buy any Basis Cash tokens. This is because the risk/return parameters for these tokens are completely different. This guide will help you understand the Basis Cash protocol and the role that BAC, BAS, and BAB play in the ecosystem.

What is Basis Cash?

Basis Cash is a seigniorage based stablecoin ecosystem. This means the Basis Cash protocol is able to mint new “stablecoin” units at a price cheaper than its face value, and give this newly created value to the “shareholders” of the protocol. Here’s the definition of seigniorage:

profit made by a government by issuing currency, especially the difference between the face value of coins and their production costs.

The Basis Cash protocol is based on an older idea during the 2017 ICO boom from a team called Basis. The original Basis team produced the whitepaper and explained how they want to build this system. Unfortunately, due to VCs aping in with zero due diligence (literally – they raised $100s of millions without a real product in the market), the project shut down after regulatory concerns.

As we now enter the 2020-2021 period of DeFi boom where projects like YFI are close to billion dollar protocols, there is a renewed interest in these projects. The Basis Cash team has chosen to remain anonymous and launch the protocol. There are no VCs or investors. There is no pre-sale. There are no regulators to please. It is a free market of ideas.

How Does Basis Cash Work?

Since Basis Cash is an algorithmic seigniorage stablecoin, the main question to answer here is how the peg to the dollar is maintained. Basis Cash technically targets the DAI price which itself targets a value of 1 USD.

In order to do this, the Basis Cash protocol has stabilizing mechanisms whenever the value of the stablecoin deviates from 1 DAI.

If the stablecoin falls below 1 DAI, then BAB is issued. If the stablecoin rises above 1 DAI, then seigniorage rewards are given to “shareholders” to increase supply and bring price back to parity.

Understanding Basis Cash Tokens: BAC, BAS, and BAB

It is paramount to understand the different tokens in the Basis Cash ecosystem before you put any money to work.

  • BAC: This is the stablecoin of the Basis Cash ecosystem, aka “Basis Cash”. The target rate is 1 BAC = 1 DAI. If there is a deviation of more than 5%, measured via a Time Weighted Average Price (TWAP) over the last 24 hours, then the protocol stabilization mechanisms kick in.
  • BAS: This represents the “shares” of the Basis Cash protocol, aka “Basis Shares”. When the price of 1 BAC exceeds 1 DAI, the supply of BAC expands. This costs nothing to the protocol, hence seigniorage. This seigniorage is captured by the BAS holders (who stake BAS in the ‘Boardroom’). BAS therefore works like a ‘share’ – if the BAC price rises, the supply increases and the increase in supply goes to BAS holders in the form of a ‘dividend’.
  • BAB: These are “Basis Bonds” priced at the square of the price of BAC when BAC is below 1 DAI. Therefore is 1 BAC = 0.8 DAI, then 1 BAB = 0.64 DAI. In this scenario, anyone can take 64 DAI and get 100 BAB. If the price of BAC gets back to parity of 1 DAI, then each BAB can be exchanged for a BAC. Therefore, the conversion is 64 DAI -> 100 BAB -> 100 BAC -> 100 DAI (when parity is reached) for a profit of 36 DAI or 56.25% returns on initial investment.

How to Buy Basis Cash Tokens

If you want to buy Basis Cash tokens, first decide what you want to buy.

  • Buy BAC if you believe BAC will retain its peg to DAI and that’s what you want.
  • Buy BAB if you believe BAC will eventually reach DAI parity and make a short-term investment with high returns.
  • Buy BAS if you believe the overall BAC marketcap will go up due to BAC demand and stake in the Boardroom to capture seigniorage from BAC minting (via dividends).

To buy BAC and BAS, the best way is via a DeFi aggregator like 1inch. This sources liquidity from multiple decentralized exchanges including private market makers. This will usually give you the best execution price. You can buy BAC on 1inch or buy BAS on 1inch.

You can also buy directly on Uniswap. Buy BAC on Uniswap or buy BAS on Uniswap.

Important Links

Basis Cash App

Basis Cash documentation

BAC on Etherscan

BAS on Etherscan

Nov 302020
 
List of YFI acquisitions from Yearn Finance

Yearn Finance has been on an acquisition spree. The list of YFI acquisitions continues to grow as more and more DeFi projects get acquired or run deep collaborations with the YFI ecosystem.

Before we dive into the list, note the meaning of the word “acquisition” is very differently used than a traditional corporate acquisition. Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn, explains it as such. Acquisition here could mean any of merger, acquisition, partnership, or collaboration (albeit somewhat deeper collaboration than “crypto-collaborations” which are notoriously unreliable).

Let’s look at the list of YFI collaborations

  • Pickle: Pickle has been working on similar projects to yVault via pJars or pickle jars. Therefore, a merger of sorts here was not unsurprising. Pickle moved faster than Yearn but unfortunately already experienced a $20 million hack. The time was right for YFI to swoop in. Pickle developers will now focus on strategies within the Yearn ecosystem – basically, an acquisition of the dev team.
  • Cream: Even since the early days, Yearn has been focused on money markets, lending, and yield generating products via the y-tokens. Cream was a natural extension of that. Cream is more of a deep partnership or collaboration and Cream can become the go to protocol for lending for Yearn strategies. We’ll see how this plays with Aave, Compound, and Maker.
  • Cover: Similar to Cream, this is more of a deep partnership or collaboration. Insurance has been something the Yearn team has worked on in the past with yInsure. Cover just makes it more robust, scalable, and usable. Read the post here.
  • Akro: Akro, the “Greek DeFi” is similar to Pickle in that it is combining developer effort to building out the yield ecosystem. Akro contributes the frontend and users already using their system and contributes investment strategies to Yearn tailored to their userbase. You can read their announcement here.
  • Sushi: Announcement here

These are the list of YFI acquisitions, mergers, partnerships, and collaborations to date. Yearn has emerged from the DeFi bear market with guns blazing – time will tell if this translates into higher AUM, higher revenue, and higher YFI value, especially with the v2 vaults launching to the public in a few months.