⍺ DeFi Alpha: Wield Excalibur For 200% APR on Stablecoins + Curve Boosts With Concentrator

DeFi Alpha is a weekly newsletter published every Friday, contributed by Defiant Advisor and DeFi investor at 4RC, DeFi Dad, and our Degen in Chief yyctrader. It aims to educate traders, investors, and newcomers about investment opportunities in decentrali...

Motivation

Two years ago, DeFi investors could easily name every yield farming opportunity without much effort. It was a simpler time, where only a handful of teams had launched with any liquidity to trade, lend, borrow, provide liquidity, or even demonstrate new primitives such as no-loss savings by PoolTogether.

But times have changed! DeFi liquidity has grown to hundreds of billions of dollars across Ethereum with new burgeoning DeFi economies taking shape on EVM-compatible chains such as Polygon and Avalanche and non-EVM chains such as Terra and Solana. Any given day, a new DeFi or NFT project is launching. So after writing and creating countless DeFi guides and tutorials since 2019, we at The Defiant agreed it’s time we publish a more detailed weekly guide on all you need to know to keep up with new and old yield earning opportunities.

This is DeFi Alpha by The Defiant.

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📈 Yield Alpha

Each week we will provide options to earn yield on ETH, WBTC, stablecoins, and other major tokens.

ETH - ThorSwap 50/50 LP for ETH/RUNE for a total of ~25% APR
- This yield is issued in trading fees paid in ETH + RUNE.
- Be aware there is impermanent loss, and for anyone using a single deposit of only ETH, the pool will still split a deposit of 100% ETH into 50/50 ETH/RUNE, meaning you’re no longer exposed to just the price of ETH, but also RUNE like in other AMMs.
- For LPs who do deposit 2 tokens (ETH + RUNE), there is impermanent loss insurance, 1% more added each day as an LP, so LPs are 100% protected after 100 days.
- To participate, go to the Pools tab on ThorSwap and search for “ETH” with Native showing. One will have to connect their Ethereum wallet to deposit 100% ETH, unless they hold RUNE on Thorchain to pair with ETH.
BTC - ThorSwap 50/50 LP for BTC/RUNE for a total of ~21% APR
- This yield is issued in trading fees paid in BTC + RUNE.
- Be aware there is impermanent loss, and for anyone using a single deposit of only BTC, the pool will still split a deposit of 100% BTC into 50/50 BTC/RUNE, meaning you’re no longer exposed to just the price of BTC, but also RUNE like in other AMMs.
- For LPs who do deposit 2 tokens (BTC + RUNE), there is impermanent loss insurance, 1% more added each day as an LP, so LPs are 100% protected after 100 days.
- To participate, go to the Pools tab on ThorSwap and search for “BTC” with Native showing. One will have to connect their Bitcoin wallet to deposit 100% BTC, unless they hold RUNE on Thorchain to pair with BTC.
AVAX - On YieldYak, you can earn compounding lending interest with AVAX on Aave at 8.2% APY
- This yield is issued in AVAX and is auto-compounding thanks to YieldYak
- To participate, Deposit AVAX into the Yield Yak Aave AVAX single-asset farm.
SOL - Lend stSOL with Francium on Solana to earn 9.33% APY (from Francium) + 5.7% APR from the underlying SOL staking rewards in stSOL
- This yield is backed by borrowing interest paid by leveraged yield farmers on Francium as well as the 5.7% APR in staking rewards thanks to the liquid staking derivative stSOL by Lido.
- To participate, go to the Francium dApp under Lendand deposit stSOL (by Lido).
LUNA - LP with LUNA-LunaX in TerraSwap to earn up to 50% APY in soon-to-launch SD tokens + trading fees
- This yield is backed by auto-compounding LUNA staking rewards thanks to LunaX, trading fees on TerraSwap, and SD token rewards by Stader.
- To participate on Terra, deposit 50% of LUNA into LunaX and then go here to TerraSwap to pair 50/50 LUNA<>LunaX as an LP and sit back to passively collect rewards.
- The LunaX staking derivative alone is earning 8.71% APY.
ATOM - mint pATOM and stake the pATOMs on Ethereum to earn more pATOMs on pSTAKE at a rate of 12.02% APR
- The yield earned is issued and claimable in pATOM and this yield is expected to hold steady for weeks/months unless pSTAKE changes their liquid staking model.
- To participate, one must first mint a 1:1 representation of ATOM as pATOM on Ethereum by using the pSTAKE dApp under Deposit
- Then, deposit/stake pATOMs to get stkATOMs and earn 12.02% APR
Stablecoins - earning 19.5% APY with UST on Anchor Protocol on Terra
- This yield is issued in UST.
- To participate, deposit UST into the Earn tab here on Anchor on Terra.
- Here’s a great tutorial from a while back by Robin from our team at The Defiant.

🪂 Airdrop Alpha

In each DeFi Alpha guide, we update a list of the most obvious DeFi protocols that have yet to announce and/or launch a token.

Arch Finance - a protocol for comprehensive indices that provide access to differentiated sources of market risk.
Arbitrum - one of the leading L2 solutions for Ethereum with live dApps such as Uniswap, SushiSwap, Hop, and more, we expect a token to eventually launch so by depositing assets or transacting, one might earn a future airdrop
Cosmos Ecosystem : Staking $ATOM and $OSMO usually makes one eligible for airdrops from new apps that launch on Cosmos. Staking guide here in a previous edition of DeFi Alpha.
DeFi Saver - a one-stop dashboard for creating, managing and tracking DeFi positions across Aave, Compound, Maker, Liquity, and Reflexer
Element Finance - stake/lend to earn fixed interest with fixed terms on Ethereum
Euler Finance - a non-custodial protocol on Ethereum that allows users to lend and borrow almost any crypto asset, just launched but has yet to launch a token.
Francium - leveraged yield farming similar to Alpha Homora but on Solana, one can choose to simply lend single assets or hold leveraged LPs to potentially earn an airdrop here
Hop Protocol - become an LP to enable bridging instantly between Ethereum Mainnet, Polygon, Arbitrum, or Optimsm without waiting for long delays in withdrawals; DeFi Dad has a full-blown video tutorial on how to become a Hop LP and potentially earn a future HOP airdrop.
Optimism - one of the leading L2 solutions for Ethereum with live dApps such as Uniswap, Hop, Synthetix and more, we expect a token to eventually launch so by depositing assets or transacting, one might earn a future airdrop
Opyn - one of the OG decentralized options protocols on Ethereum, with major investors that signal a token has to be in their future. Buy/sell puts or call options to earn a possible future airdrop.
Polymarket - one of the strongest players in the DeFi prediction market vertical, bet on an outcome related to crypto, politics, sports and more or add liquidity
Set Protocol - one of the earliest DeFi protocols yet to launch a token for DeFi asset management, popular for TokenSets and known for powering IndexCoop indexes
Stader Labs - The SD token sale happened January 25th, and there’s still time to earn SD before the TGE by depositing LUNA into LunaX (a liquid staking equivalent of LUNA) and pairing LUNA<>LunaX as an LP here on TerraSwap.
Volmex - Volmex is a tokenized volatility protocol, similar to the VIX but ETHV
Yield Protocol - a newer protocol for fixed-term, fixed-rate lending in DeFi, backed by Paradigm, one might earn a future airdrop by lending DAI or USDC
Zapper - participate in Zapper trading, lending, providing liquidity, or yield farming; given the Zapper Quests and NFT Rewards program, it can be surmised that if Zapper ever releases a token, this is one way they might do a retro airdrop
Zerion - same can be said speculated about Zerion; if they ever release a token, they’re likely to reward those who interacted with their smart contracts swapping, lending, providing liquidity, or borrowing.

🧑‍💻 Defiant Starter Tutorial

How to Boost 7 Curve LP Yields Up to 50% with Concentrator

Opportunity: Concentrator is a new dApp built by the team at AladdinDAO. AladdinDAO has worked to create a community of experts in DeFi. Since its launch in 2021, AladdinDAO has been working to help reduce information asymmetry and enable curated farming strategies.

Over the last few months, given the community’s enthusiasm for Curve and Convex, a part of the core team at AladdinDAO worked to design and build this new tool called Concentrator, which would be ideal for Convex depositors.

Prior to Concentrator, Curve LPs would commonly stake their LP tokens on Convex (over $12B TVL) to boost returns in the form of CRV, CVX, and other tokens.

Concentrator is designed to automate another part of a farming strategy by periodically auto-claiming Convex rewards, auto-selling these tokens for cvxCRV, and staking the cvxCRV to boost yield. This saves users from higher gas fees having to claim rewards individually.

Here’s how it works!

Source: Concentrator FAQs

Before we get started, please exercise caution with such a new dApp like this. While the team is doxxed through AladdinDAO, any new application code like this carries the risk of unknown bugs to exploit funds. Understanding this risk, I will walk through how a Curve LP in these 7 pools can boost their yield APYs as high as 50% more with Concentrator.

stETH
frax
tricrypto2
cvxcrv
crveth
cvxfxs

Time to Complete: 5 minutes if paying the HIGH gas fees on Etherscan Gas Tracker

Estimated Length of Rewards Program: There’s no time limit to these vaults on Concentrator.

Gas + Protocol Fees: Based on gas prices of 30-60 Gwei on Ethereum, one is likely to pay $20-$50 right now.

Fees: Other than network fees paid for Ethereum transactions, Concentrator also takes 1% of yields from all vaults, where half of this fee is directed to fund the harvesting function. For the auto-compounding Concentrator vault, a 5% fee is charged on all yields, with half of that funding the auto-compounding function. And, all vaults have a withdrawal fee specified per-vault between 0.05 to 0.3%.

Risks: As always, this is not financial advice and you should do your own research. The following are risks I incur when participating in this opportunity.

Smart contract risk, oracle failure, and economic design exploits in Concentrator, Convex, and Curve
Systemic risk in DeFi
Pegged assets such as stETH or cvxCRV may de-peg

Tutorial:

First, assuming I have one of the 7 Curve LPs listed here on Concentrator, I connect my Ethereum wallet (ie Metamask) and decide which I’m willing to deposit and earn with. I should also click on the Withdraw option under to consider the Vault Withdraw Fee ahead of time.

Assuming I want to earn with my Curve stETH pool LP, I’ll click Deposit.

Then I specify how much and follow the prompts to Approve and then Deposit (2 MetaMask transactions).
That’s it! I can monitor my accumulating rewards here in Concentrator and return to withdraw my Curve LP anytime in the future.

🦍 Defiant Degen Tutorial

200% APR on Stablecoins Using Excalibur Exchange on Fantom

Excalibur Exchange is a new DEX on Fantom that is “built with a focus on sustainability and capital efficiency”, according to its website.

In addition to vanilla LP staking, Excalibur offers bonus rewards for locked LP staking with variable time periods of up to 30 days. More details about tokenomics can be found here.

Smart contracts have been audited by Paladin, and token emissions started a few hours ago at 3pm UTC on March 11.

Bear in mind that you will be charged a deposit fee of 2% on most farms, which you should be able to recoup in a few days at current yields.

EXC currently has a marketcap of under $2M and TVL of $9M, leaving ample room for growth.

Warning: Depositing assets in a brand new protocol is risky! Please do your own research before participating.

In this tutorial, we’re going to focus on the DAI-USDC farm that is currently yielding 186% APR.

However, UST-USDC and fUSDT-USDC are also viable options and interested users can swap their stablecoins on Curve’s Fantom deployment.

For those looking to earn yield on ETH or BTC, ETH-USDC (280% APR) and BTC-ETH (270% APR) pairs are also available.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Add the Fantom Opera network to MetaMask. Navigate to Chainlist and connect, or add it manually using these parameters.

Step 2: You’ll need some FTM tokens to pay for gas fees. You can get some for free using this faucet.

Step 3: Multichain (formerly AnySwap) is the preferred bridge for most assets. Ensure that your MetaMask wallet is connected to the Ethereum network, enter the asset you wish to transfer and confirm the transaction.

Deposits generally arrive within 10-15 minutes.

Step 4: Navigate to Excalibur Exchange and add liquidity to your pool of choice.

https://app.excalibur.exchange/liquidity

You’ll be asked to approve spending your assets. Confirm the transactions to receive your Liquidity Provider (LP) tokens.

Step 5: Once you have obtained LP tokens, head over to the Farms page.

https://app.excalibur.exchange/farms

Click on the farm corresponding to your LP tokens and you will be directed to a staking page.

Note that you have a choice of unlocked and locked staking, which you can access by clicking on the slots.

Stake your LP tokens to start earning $EXC rewards.

Note that you will not earn any token rewards if you miss this step.

📰 Elsewhere on The Defiant

Tuesday Tutorial on The Defiant YouTube: This week, Robin took a look at XDeFi, a cross-chain wallet extension. Learn how and subscribe to The Defiant on YouTube!

The information contained in this newsletter is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, financial advice. The authors are not financial advisors and the information contained here is not a substitute for financial advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. We have done our best to ensure that the information provided are accurate but neither The Defiant nor any of its contributors shall be held liable or responsible for any errors or omissions or for any damage readers may suffer as a result of failing to seek financial advice from a professional.