New month, and a new monthly recap. In today's article, we'll see the highlights of July, which among many things include the conclusion of the swap competition, the arrival of the final part of the grant from Optimism, and the release of a new use case.
Today, we will follow this points:
- Project Updates
- Learning Articles
- Development Preview
- Community Activities
Project Updates
Optimism Grant
As you probably know, MetalSwap won a 30k OP token grant from the Optimism Foundation. The first part of this grant, 40%, was immediately sent to MetalSwap’s addresses, while the remaining 60% was scheduled to be sent once the project reached some critical milestones, such as the releasing of the hedging swaps on the Optimism blockchain.
These milestones have been achieved, and thus the remaining 60% of OP tokens has been sent to the MetalSwap team. The new OP tokens have followed the same allocation ratio, with 1/3 allocated for incentivizing liquidity providing and 2/3 for incentivizing the use of hedging swaps.Now, the rewards on liquidity providing are even more interesting and open, and taking hedging positions is, a lot of the time, premium-free, depending on the pool balance.
MetalSwap swap competition
With the arrival of hedging swaps on the Optimism blockchain, the team incentivized the opening of positions through the swap competition. This competition rewards the top 25 addresses that have opened positions on the dApp. The swap competition "Optimism Mania" lasted throughout the month of July, and numerous addresses participated.
The prizes were very enticing, with the first position even securing 200 USDC, and the total prize pool divided among all the winners amounted to 1.3k USDC. The competition concluded on July 31st, and the top-performing address achieved an incredible result of 265.67%.
End of the Hedging Swap Journey on Galxe
MetalSwap launched its own campaign on Galxe, one of the most popular platforms for building Web3 communities, with the aim of reaching new users. This campaign has been a real success, with 453 participants.
The quests required for participation were diverse, with the simpler ones asking users to follow the MetalSwap Twitter channel, while the more complex ones required participants to open an on-chain hedging position on the Optimism blockchain.
Moreover, those who participated in the campaign were also eligible for the Swap Competition and Grant distribution Rewards.
News about buyback-driven smart pool
Attentive swappers will have noticed that, given the large use of the dApp verified in recent weeks, the token buyback system, which I recall using 80% of the premium paid to open a position, has increased the percentage of rewards to 10% in the XMT staking pool.
Specifically, thanks to the buyback, about 85,5k XMT tokens have been added to this pool.
Grant reporting - Some stats about the last 30 days
As mentioned, the usage of the dApp in the last 30 days was highly incentivized (and will be the same in the next months) leading to a remarkable increase in the number of opened hedging swaps and liquidity offered to the pools.
But enough with words, let's take a look at some usage statistics of the dApp since its release on the Optimism blockchain:
OP token distribution
At the time of writing this article, 4300 OP tokens, which currently amount to over $7k, have already been distributed to all those who have opened hedging positions within the dApp.
At the beginning of the distribution, 8k OP tokens were deposited into the distribution pool, but over the last few weeks, an additional 4k OP tokens have been added, and the rewards have increased for each opened position.
I'd like to remind you that the total OP tokens allocated as incentives for those who open hedging positions are 20k OP so, in the next weeks others refill will be done, boosting the rewards.
Opened Swap
Since the hedging swaps were released on Optimism, which was on June 26, the dApp has witnessed a steep increase in open positions. In just over a month, the following positions have been opened within the dApp:
- On Ethereum, 106 positions have been opened.
- On WBTC, 3 positions have been opened.
- On OP, 140 positions have been opened.
Liquidity providing
At the beginning, the DeFi foundation provided $60k in four different assets (30k USDC, 10k WBTC, 10k ETH, 10k OP) to bring the initial liquidity and enable the opening of the first positions.
But, as liquidity providing is now incentivized not only with XMT tokens but also with OP tokens, the liquidity within the dApp has increased to reach $133k, representing a growth of over 100%.
In the last week, MetalSwap entered the top 10 of the dApps on Optimism that increased their total value locked the most.
Learning article
Velodrome hedging strategy with MetalSwap
As always, the team is focused on developing new use cases that can suggest strategies, even complex ones, for using MetalSwap's hedging swaps in the DeFi world.
The article released this month explains how a liquidity provider on the decentralized exchange Velodrome could and should protect themselves from the volatility of the assets they provide on the DEX by simply opening a hedging position on MetalSwap.
This application allows liquidity providers to achieve more stable rewards over time, removing the risk of the assets provided as liquidity losing value and reducing profits.
Development Preview
As mentioned in the last monthly recap, the team's focus will now shift towards the project's DAO structure, and in the upcoming weeks, we may see the first updates... stay tuned.
All swappers are invited to share their ideas within the official forum.
Furthermore, more articles will be released, including use cases and more technical articles showcasing the technological aspects of the dApp.
The team is also continuously collaborating with Chainlink to explore new solutions in the context of the oracle. There may be upcoming solutions involving smart contract automation to improve and enhance the tool.
Community activities
Thanks to the campaigns conducted on Galxe, the social media profiles have grown, reaching an all-time high in the number of followers on all platforms.
Within the forum, there are always interesting topics arising to improve the future of MetalSwap. In the last month, the discussion launched in the forum has been related to the target user typology of MetalSwap and a proposal for adding a new token to the dApp.
The forum is the heart of the MetalSwap community and the primary place to communicate ideas regarding the protocol.
This was a very long monthly recap, a sign that development does not stop for the dApp. The arrival on the Optimism blockchain, combined with the OP token incentive has given an incredible boost to the use of the dApp, which protects many DeFi users against asset volatility every day!
And now, the month of August starts with a brand-new Swap Competition, a new Galxe Campaign and the official MetalSwap's Guild!
What a time to be in DeFi!
To the MetalSwap!
… and beyond!
-The DeFi Foundation
✎ What is MetalSwap?
With MetalSwap we enable hedge swap transactions through the use of Smart Contracts, AMM style.
It's great to Hedge the Risk of Price volatility with MetalSwap dApp !