For a while now, yield farming has been a popular way for projects to bootstrap their liquidity and gain new users. However, lately, the cost of the process has been on a steady rise to a point that it’s becoming increasingly prohibitive for a majority of individuals. In fact, thanks to the Ethereum gas prices being extremely high, the whole process has become a whale game. As a result, a lot of people have started shifting their focus to a more affordable solution, the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
BSC is the second-largest blockchain platform after Ethereum in terms of TVL (Total Value Locked). At the moment, in the BSC ecosystem, Alpaca Finance has a TVL of $1.7 billion USD. It lies only behind Venus and PancakeSwap. Wondering what Alpaca Finance is and how it works? This article attempts to answer all these questions. Stick around to the end of the article to learn how you can exchange your current token holdings to ALPACA. Let’s dive in!
Alpaca Finance is the biggest lending protocol on BSC (Binance Smart Chain) that features farming with leverage. The platform offers borrowers undercollateralized loans for leveraged farming positions while helping lenders earn safe and stable returns. Therefore, it is seen as an important project within the DeFi community. Alpaca itself is a fair launch project, which means that it had no pre-sale, no pre-mine, and no investor. Thus, right from the start, it was always a product that was built by the people for the people.
The way Alpaca Finance works is pretty simple. There are two ways in which you can participate in the platform. Each way provides you with some benefits. They include:
You can participate in the platform as a lender where you can deposit your tokens into lending vaults where you can earn safe and stable returns. Once you deposit them into the vault, farmers can borrow them to leverage the positions.
As a yield farmer, you have the option to borrow tokens from the lending vaults and use them to open a leveraged position. Thus, multiplying your APR by up to 6 times. This mode comes with potential risks such as impermanent loss or liquidation.
There’s another participant in the system – the liquidator. These ones are responsible for monitoring leveraged farming positions and liquidating them in case their prices drop and approach the risk of default. All liquidators are bots.
Graze is an awesome concept for those who wish to invest their Alpaca into other projects. You just need to choose an ideal pool and stake ibALPACA tokens to exchange them for other tokens from other projects. The pools vary from time to time and have a timer to show how much time is remaining to stake ibALPACA to acquire tokens of the platform. You will also be able to choose which token reward you want to graze on. If you stake ibALPACA in a pool from the beginning to the end, there is a chance that you might receive a special reward, such as an Alpaca NFT.
The ALPACA token is the platform’s native and central token responsible for governing and also capturing the platform’s value. Some of the benefits of the Alpaca token include:
Alpaca is working on launching a governance vault that will allow any users to stake their ALPACA tokens in order to acquire voting rights. 1 ALPACA will equal 1 vote. Anyone who stakes their token holdings will be able to vote and decide on key Alpaca governance decisions.
There are plans to integrate Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) with utility into Alpaca. To gain access to these NFTs and enjoy other benefits such as exclusive Alpaca merch, users will have to hold ALPACA tokens first.
There are several mechanisms put in place to ensure that economic incentives are captured on Alpaca. Some of these mechanisms include: a tenth of the 19% performance charge is distributed as “Protocol APR” to ALPACA platform depositors. 4% of the 5% of every liquidation bounty goes towards buybacks and ALPACA token burns. 10% of the 19% of the lending interest that lenders earn will go towards buybacks and ALPACA token burns.
ALPACA tokens are long-term deflationary. This means that as the platform continues to grow, more ALPACA tokens get burned. As more tokens get burned, the value of each token will continue rising steadily and permanently.
Wondering where to buy ALPACA? Don’t worry, JansWap is the best Alpaca coin exchange platform in the crypto market today. To conduct an Alpaca exchange on JansWap: