CRΞ8R - Interview With @mr_Pool_Day - Founder of YEL
Primer: Learn more about YEL finance from its pseudonymous founder @mr_Pool_Day in this AMM hosted by Gabriel Haines. YEL finance wants to help boost liquidity for young and interesting projects while also providing users of the platform with a way to automagically allocate funds to the most profitable farms.
Pool Day - the founder
Who is Pool Day?
In crypto for about 5 years
Runs a development agency building many products, like hardware and mobile wallets, as well as centralized exchanges
Inspired by the DeFi space and the opportunities it can bring
Started building Yield Enhancement Labs (YEL) this year (2021) and going live now
This is the first DeFi project personally for him but the other developers in his team had been involved in several projects that are ongoing now
He is not a developer - have an economics background and had worked in the finance sector before
Why anonymous?
Not afraid to show identity and had been around in the space for a long time
Did not want to be associated, in terms of legitimacy with past KYC, with 3 different market agencies that dealt with their past projects
The past projects are all recognizable names
Had been Pool Day for 15 to 20 years - that's what his girlfriend used to call him from childhood
Already passed KYC with several agencies and currently talking to Binance exchange which requires KYC to be done, which he is fine
He just doesn't want the publicity and credibility can be built up even though one remains anonymous
E.g. Sushiswap team
The most inspiring thing about DeFi
DeFi is decentralized, transparent and no one makes the decisions for you
From the technical standpoint, what takes months to happen in the TradFi world just takes weeks to happen in DeFi
Most challenging aspects of DeFi
The security issues keep him up at night
Popsicle finance had their audits done twice by leading auditors and still got $22 million stolen
There is a huge responsibility in handling other people's money
"And I mean, just living with the understanding of the responsibility that you're caring for, you know, tens of thousands of people? Probably, this is the most challenging thing."
- Pool Day
Every time a developer completes his work and delivers the smart contract, the team will have it checked thrice by 3 different developers
Then the codes are sent for audit, with testing being done by a dedicated developer who only does testing and not working on any other things
Why did he start up YEL finance?
Currently, there is a lack of a platform that can boost young and interesting projects and help them gain exposure and awareness
These projects just started operating so they lack trading volumes and lack price stability, so it becomes hard for them to raise liquidity
Might lack the funds and marketing arm to increase the liquidity of their projects
"In this market, we don't have any boost now for actually cool projects who deserve eyes from the investors, that are built by genius individuals and not like hedge funds. So we are trying to solve this problem."
- Pool Day
Hard to be backed by investors, or even get into PancakeSwap or Sushiswap Miso
YEL finance intends to solve this problem
To help projects become more multi-chain
Any project that runs on one chain can be run on multiple chains
Doing so will allow more price dynamics, increase trading volume and arbitrage opportunities and gain more token holders
What is YEL finance?
Introduction
Yield Enhancement Labs (YEL) is a multi-chain yield enhancement and aggregation platform to help projects raise multi-chain liquidity
Currently operating on four chains - Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon and Fantom Opera.
Provides good investment opportunities for investors to maximise their yields
Combination of large pools with low annual percentage rate (APRs) and smaller pools with very high APRs with automated farming strategies to get the maximum possible APRs
They are open to any projects that want to jumpstart their liquidity or get extra liquidity
The team will review the application and do their due diligence and once done, the project will be listed in the Spectre section where the farm will be set up and marketed
Once the minimum desired liquidity is established, YEL finance will collect performance fees denominated in YEL tokens, which are then used to cover all the incentivization of the large pools
How are new pools elected and added to the automated farming strategies?
The analytics team will prepare a summary and an economical observation of the farm, with the pros and cons of why it should be added
These will be then be passed to the DAO for voting
"We actually aim to build a healthy community of not just, you know, like, short term profit takers, but actually educated believers and people who actually understand the economics and how the protocols would be working."
- Pool Day
YEL finance compared to Harvest finance
Similar to Harvest finance
However, Harvest finance focuses on larger pool incentivization but YEL finance is more on helping smaller projects jumpstart their liquidity
Harvest finance is more like a yield aggregator but YEL finance helps to bring eyes to the young and promising platforms that may otherwise be neglected
They have different business models and are not competing, and may even be collaborative
Vision for the YEL finance
To become like Yearn finance but for farming so that users can find the best possible APRs at different risk levels automatically
People can just enter YEL finance, join automated farming strategies, allocate, specify desired risk level and enjoy the profits
Want to realise that vision in 4 to 6 months time
Tokenomics
Creating buying pressure
All the fees generated by the protocols in the Spectre section will be allocated as enhancement rewards in farms
All the protocols that gathered the desired liquidity from YEL finance will be subjected to a performance fee that had to be paid in YEL tokens
This means that the protocol will have to go to the market to buy YEL tokens, creating a buying pressure
The fees collected in YEL tokens will then be channelled back as enhancement rewards for providing LP on farms
Automated farming strategies, called Equilibrium, pay the profits in YEL tokens
Equilibrium is a portfolio management product that will automatically allocate funds to the most profitable farms and stake them,
Users have to choose between 3 strategies with different risk levels and different fees
Funds will be auto allocated, staked, and automatically compounded
Profits from Equilibrium will be converted and paid in YEL tokens creating another buying pressure
The performance fees charged will be collected in YEL tokens too and channelled back to the farms as enhancement rewards
Governance token
YEL tokens are the governance token that is used for voting
Any projects listed in the Spectre section can be voted to join the enhanced pool for enhanced rewards in YEL tokens
So supporters of the community will buy YEL tokens to vote for that, creating a buying pressure
Removing selling pressure
Since the YEL token is also the governance token, after farming YEL tokens, there is less incentive to sell in order to continue voting to keep a particular pool eligible for enhanced rewards
This reduces selling pressure so that there will be less dumping of the tokens
Coming up this week
Launching chromosome - for Ruler protocol and Mogul STARS, around Wed 11th Aug
Chromosome provides an opportunity for users to stake their LP tokens, receive rewards from DeFi platforms, farm tokens and receive YEL on top.
E.g. if you LP in Sushiswap in the RULER/ETH pool, you'll get SUSHI and RULER tokens. If you take the LP tokens and deposit them in YEL finance, you'll be getting SUSHI + RULER + YEL tokens
Launching a governance model where people can use the YEL tokens to participate in voting proposals - on Friday 13th of Aug
Centrifuge, which is the lottery, will be out soon
Their automated farming strategies, Equilibrium, will be out around 25th to 28th of August
How do users participate and join YEL finance early?
Join their Discord server to ask questions to the team
There are NFTs giveaways where holders can gain access to a secret chat room where they will share some alpha and get early access to test all the upcoming features
Have contests inside held by community managers
Key highlights
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