Hundred Finance: Celebrating veDay
For the last 3 weeks, Hundred Finance has been at the center of a whirlwind of activity. Sparked by a January 6th article released by famed blockchain developer Andre Cronje on his upcoming project, Solidly, we found ourselves, as a Fantom-deployed ve-token project, squarely in the running to become a major stakeholder in a potential cryptocurrency powerhouse. Little did we know at the time, however, quite the intensity of the war that was brewing. In this blog post we would like to provide a rundown of what has occurred over the last few weeks (as well as celebrate our happy victory in battle), before then summarizing developments and providing further details on just a few of the many upcoming benefits our community of veHND token holders and liquidity providers will be receiving.
The Fantom TVL War
While accurately recounting history is never usually a simple matter, it would be fair to say that the outbreak of the Fantom TVL War was widely declared with the following Tweet:
In the article that accompanied the Tweet, Andre revealed that the initial distribution of his much-anticipated Solidly project would be protocol based, with the Top 20 projects on Fantom by total value locked (according to a DefiLlama snapshot of TVL at a then undisclosed time) receiving the lion’s share. At that point in time, Hundred Finance had been enjoying a week of attention owing, in large part, to ve-tokenomic’s in-vogue status and our proactive adoption of them in December of 2021. This had led to a boost in our TVL across our Fantom markets and despite only launching on Fantom relatively recently, we were placed at number 15.
In many ways, the Fantom TVL War could be said to be a new front in the ongoing Curve Wars, the race between various protocols to accrue influence over the governance of Curve Finance. Bribes are a key mechanic that have long been used within the Curve Wars, with Andre’s own bribe.crv.finance providing a means by which protocols participating in the war can reward those that help them win votes carried out within Curve’s governance system. With Solidly looking set to be a major player in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, what soon followed was perhaps predictable but nevertheless quite a sight to behold.
In the first week or so after the distribution method had been announced, volume moving towards Fantom increased but the Top 20 largely remained pre-existing players jostling for position. Around the same time that an announcement of the snapshot date of the 23rd of January was made, however, this rapidly changed. Established projects that did not previously possess much of their value on Fantom, such as Sushi, Ren, etc., began moving over vast sums held in treasuries and other contracts in order to jump up the rankings. What is more, “vampire attacks,” a controversial but within-the-rules tactic also started to occur.
Vampire attacks are the phenomenon in which newly created projects attempt to win TVL from existing protocols. The distribution of Solidly’s veNFTs, the means by which the winning projects will help manage the platform and receive fees, became a prime target for the strategy. Both veDAO and 0xDAO were formed with the backing of some recognised names in the space on their multisigs, giving them legitimacy, and set about gaining traction. This was done by using a classic, single-sided farming contract that emits the DAO’s token within a short period while incentivizing the creation of DEX liquidity that grants these farms incredible APRs. Since these are all tokens minted out of thin air, there is a difficulty in establishing how to value the token. Nevertheless, given the hype around the snapshot and the big players involved, the tactic worked like a charm and their TVL rocketed to the billions in a matter of days.
In the face of increasing competition, many of the projects that had previously been firmly entrenched in the Top 20 began to find themselves being pushed out, ourselves included. In response, boosting yields on liquidity incentives occurred pretty much across the board, along with the creation of new incentives. These were initiatives we ourselves chose to do, with a doubling of our Fantom HND emissions announced along with the creation of a one-time airdrop program that would grant 100k tokens (comprising 62.5k HND and 37.5k FTM) to anyone with liquidity deposited in our markets and Backstop at the point the snapshot was taken.
Despite seeing our TVL move up and down dramatically yet keep us within the Top 20 for many of the days prior to the snapshot, just a few hours before it was due to be taken we had dropped to around the 25th position with not much more we could do. Even our good friends at Beethoven X were looking a little shaky at 19 and LiquidDriver, a project of which we’re great fans, had been pushed out entirely. Yet in the last hour, with only one approximately more refresh of DeFiLlama left, we watched as close to $100m USD in liquidity surged into our markets causing our position to shoot up. And so, just prior to Andre Tweeting a message that seemed to imply the conclusion of the war, we found Hundred Finance again in the Top 20 and our community recorded among the victors.
To the Victors belong the Spoils
Even though in blockchain we’re used to associating a snapshot with a degree of finality and certainly, the veNFT snapshot proved this might not always be the case.
You see, the Top 20 as listed in Andre’s tweet was entirely missing one especially notable project, Tomb. Tomb is an algorithmic stablecoin on Fantom that possesses vast amounts of funds in pools paired with its own token. The issue is that, by default, DeFi Llama does not include such pools in its ranking (our own HND-FTM and HND-FTM-USDC also suffered this fate). This, as well as several other long-time projects with ties to Fantom losing their spots, created some controversy around the justness of the Solidly launches proposed initial distribution. Thankfully, it seems apparent with the release of Andre’s latest blog post containing a link to the project addresses that are to receive a veNFT that all was well, with the total number increased to 25 and Hundred Finance placed firmly among them.
In order to receive and make use of the veNFT we will (in theory) need to create new pools and gauges, as well as vote with our NFT for the gauges to be incentivized by the Solidly protocol. Token emission will then begin shortly after the Solidly ecosystem has been deployed. As the projects receiving the veNFT’s will own 25% of the protocol in perpetuity, this means that veHND holders will have a permanent stake in the project and we will be able (optionally) to regularly claim emissions and fees. This will potentially provide the fantastic boon of a long term revenue stream for Hundred Finance and the veHND-holding community, as well as a say in the future of a major project.
Fantom TVL War Airdrop and POAP
As was mentioned during the above summary of the Fantom TVL War, in order to incentivise the depositing of liquidity on our Hundred Finance deployment we promised to airdrop 100k tokens should we make it into the Top 20. Despite more than a little ambiguity in the aftermath of the war about precisely who did make it in, we’re more than happy to honor this promise. As such, we’re currently doing the necessary collection and collation of data in preparation for distributing the tokens to all eligible addresses. The distribution will most likely occur through interaction with either one or two claim contracts, though we’re still in the process of finalizing the details. As soon as this is ready to go ahead, we will be dropping an announcement on Twitter.
Given how momentous an occasion it was (the activity on Discord in the run up to the snapshot time was craaazy), we have also decided to release a special POAP to all addresses that qualify for the TVL War Airdrop. This will join the four we released to mark our launches on Arbitrum, Fantom, Harmony and Moonriver, making a fine set that marks the ongoing evolution of the project and the community.
Hundred Finance Governance: HIPs 1 & 2
The last two weeks have also included other big developments for Hundred Finance, with the release of our first two governance proposals among them. With both votes having concluded, we’re happy to announce that veToken and LiquidDriver will be whitelisted on our smart contracts and able to integrate Hundred Finance into their applications. Both of the proposals were received with overwhelming enthusiasm by our community and we look forward to building productive relationships with both projects.
What is more, we’re also pleased to be able to remind our veHND token holders that due to the veToken Finance proposal passing, you are now entitled to 0.6% of the VET token supply upon product launch and the completion of a vesting period. This 0.6% will be split, with 0.4% going to those who voted “Yes” and 0.2% going to veHND holders regardless of their position.
FTM Token Airdrop Program: Part 2
Last, but by no means least, today we can announce that the second part of the FTM Token Airdrop has now launched. All those who held veHND when the multi-chain snapshots were taken are now able to move to Fantom and claim their free bonus of FTM tokens. As a reminder, this airdrop is a thank you to our community funded by a grant received from the Fantom Foundation. For more details about the background of the initiative, please see the original blog post.
As before, qualifying wallets from all chains that had veHND will receive their FTM on Fantom Opera. Our hope is that this will encourage users who have not yet had the opportunity to experience the Fantom ecosystem to do so, incentivized not only by its wealth of dApps, fast transaction times and incredibly low fees, but also by the opportunity to receive its native token for only the cost of the time or money necessary to acquire the FTM to carry out the claim transaction.
To perform the claim, qualifying users can visit hundred.finance, where on switching the network to Fantom Opera they will find the additional button in the header depicting their claim amount. Next, all they need to do is click the button to initiate a transaction that will deposit their share of the second 18750 FTM tranche and, if they didn’t yet claim, their portion of the first 18750 FTM tranche into the connected wallet. In the interest of efficiency (preventing a claim costing more than the drop itself), we set a minimum threshold of 0.1 FTM required for an address to be added to the list of eligible recipients. The full list of eligible addresses can be found here.
Conclusion
To say the last few weeks have been busy would be an understatement. Yet we on the team have come out of it with incredible enthusiasm to see Hundred Finance continue to grow and stake a claim to the title of number one multi-chain lending protocol. We owe a large debt to our community for carrying us through these weeks and assisting us in creating a positive atmosphere around the project during a time when we all strove together for a singular goal. As a community, we will be moving forward with a position of influence on Fantom Opera and beyond that we will be used to benefit veHND holders across all chains, bridging ecosystems and spreading the benefits of cost-effective decentralized finance as far as we possibly can.
