Defiant Degens: How to Farm in DeFi’s First Protocol for Push Notifications

This is a weekly tutorial on the most compelling opportunities to consider yield farming, written by our friend DeFi Dad, an advisor to the Defiant and the Chief DeFi Officer of Zapper. The goal is to expose more Defiant readers to new DeFi applications and their associated liquidity mining programs.

Background on Protocol: When you use an iPhone, one of the most common features is push notifications. Push notifications instantly draw your attention back to your phone. It might be a new email, a new text message, or a reminder from your favorite app to check in. Research shows push notifications can boost app engagement by 88%, with 66% of users on average returning to that app when push notifications are enabled. For users receiving an in-device notification, app retention rates can increase 3-10x.

So what happens when you nudge DeFi degens about a new yield farm earning 500% APY or you mention an upcoming governance vote or you warn them about a protocol hack? We will soon find out when the Ethereum Push Notification Service launches on Mainnet Ethereum in Q3 / Q4 2021!

EPNS will be another crucial part of the DeFi builder stack much like The Graph. Push notifications at the protocol level means that DeFi users will become accustomed to reliable instant communications with protocol teams. With EPNS, you can message DeFi participants based on their wallet address and nothing else. Thus, you preserve their right to privacy by not forcing them to dox themselves while establishing a more reliable infrastructure for communications.

EPNS requires its users to opt into “channels” with an Ethereum wallet address. Once you opt in, the channel owner (ie DeFi protocols) can alert you about a variety of things including:

• Exploits and hacks
• Liquidation warnings (ie on Aave or Compound)
• Loan expiry dates
• New product announcements
• Crucial governance votes
• Instructions for token migrations
• New yield farming programs and end dates

The list of possibilities is endless. We live in a world where we invest our life savings into applications that have no direct way of reaching us. Can you imagine opening a home mortgage without an email or phone number to be contacted in case of emergency? With over $100B invested in DeFi protocols, does it really make sense that we should have no direct line of communication between protocols and investors while maintaining the right to privacy?

The answer is clearly no. DeFi is ready to move beyond centralized, indirect communication channels like Twitter, Discord, and Telegram to a Web3 native tool like EPNS.

Opportunity: To distribute the governance token PUSH, EPNS offers liquidity mining rewards currently at a rate of 131% APR for staking PUSH or 221% APR for providing liquidity to the PUSH / ETH LP in Uniswap v2. All liquidity mining rewards are issued in weekly epochs which complete every Wednesday at 8:30 am UTC. One must remain in either staking pool until the epoch completes or else they forfeit their accrued PUSH rewards.

Time to Complete: 5 mins if paying the recommended FAST gas price on gasnow.org

Gas + Protocol Fees: Based on the FAST gas price on gasnow.org currently between 50-300 Gwei with ETH at $4000, I would estimate paying the following gas fees.

• Adding liquidity to PUSH/ETH LP = $40 to $300
• Staking LP or staking PUSH = $20 to $100

Risks: As always, this is not financial advice and you should do your own research. Consider all these risks if you choose to participate in the liquidity mining program.

• Smart contract risk in Uniswap and EPNS
• Oracle failure
• Liquidity crisis
• Systemic risk in DeFi composability
• Estimated APRs can go up or down with the price of PUSH and pool liquidity
• If I become an LP for PUSH/ETH, I’m likely to experience impermanent loss.

Tutorial:

1. First, go to incentives.epns.io.
2. If you donated to EPNS in Gitcoin Grants Round 6 or 7 or if you used their Alpha dApp before March 20, 2021, click on the Gratitude Drop to claim 1200 PUSH as a thank-you from the team!
3. Whether you received PUSH or not, you will need PUSH to stake PUSH at ~121% APR. One can trade for PUSH using Zapper Exchange, which sources liquidity from Uniswap v2.

1. Then go to the Yield Farming tab on the EPNS incentives page.
2. On the right, one can find the Staking Pool (PUSH) optionand click the pink button Deposit. Then choose to Approve to give permission to deposit PUSH tokens.

1. After the MetaMask transaction above confirms, one should see the option to Deposit and specify how much PUSH, click Deposit, and confirm on MetaMask.
2. Return to the EPNS Incentives page on Wednesdays at 8:30 am UTC or later to use the Harvest option to collect earned PUSH. Remember, if one withdraws before the weekly epoch completes, they forfeit all PUSH rewards earned for the week.

Earning 221% APR as a PUSH / ETH LP in Uniswap v2

1. Separately to earn ~221% APR as a PUSH/ETH LP, one must become a liquidity provider for the PUSH/ETH pool. One can add liquidity (aka zap in) to the LP using any token on Zapper Pools. Here’s a link to add liquidity on Zapper.

1. Next, go back to the EPNS Incentives page (Yield Farm tab) and use the far left Uniswap LP Pool (UNI-V2) and click Deposit.

1. Then click MAX to fill in how many UNI-V2 LPs or simply press Approve and give infinite permission to spend however much UNI-V2 LPs. Confirm on MetaMask.
2. If one hasn’t already specified how much to stake, do so and click the pink button to Deposit.
3. Return to the EPNS Incentives page on Wednesdays at 8:30 am UTC to use the Harvest option to collect earned PUSH. Remember, if one withdraws before the weekly epoch completes, they forfeit all PUSH rewards earned for the week.

About Author: DeFi Dad is a DeFi super-user, educator, and investor. You can subscribe to his YouTube channel at defidad.com and get started on your DeFi journey with Zapper Learn with DeFi basics and tutorials.

Disclosure: DeFi Dad is an investor in EPNS and holds PUSH. This is not an endorsement or recommendation to buy PUSH . Please do your own research.