The Ribbit: #1
Welcome to the first edition of “The Ribbit”. This is the start of my bi-weekly newsletter about the Frog Nation and #OccupyDeFi movement. I’ll use this space to update you on the latest happenings with Abracadabra, Popsicle Finance, and Wonderland.
A little about me
I’m Revolutionary Spaces (most people in crypto call me ‘Rev’) and I truly believe that blockchain technology, and the decentralized apps it enables, is a revolutionary space. Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, the metaverse… we’re witnessing a revolution in how people organize, make decisions and use their resources.
The Frog Nation, and the movement to #OccupyDefi is a central part of that revolution and deserves a highlight. What the teams at Abra, Popsicle, and Wonderland are building is truly revolutionary. Every other week, I’ll use this space to keep you updated on the latest happenings!
With that let’s get into some updates from the last two weeks!
(Want to make sure you never miss an edition of the Ribbit? Follow me here.)
Abracadabra
Burn baby burn
In line with a past approved governance proposal, the team continues to reduce $SPELL farming emissions. A 20% reduction has been made and 8.7 billion $SPELL were burned on November 1.
Why the farming rewards reduction? Since the concept of $MIM and Abra has been confirmed it’s no longer necessary to spend a huge amount on marketing the protocol. You can think of $SPELL rewards as part of the marketing budget or cost to acquire a customer. The team will continue to assess the emissions as time goes on.
Why burn the $SPELL? Burning $SPELL removes it from market supply and ensures that the price stays competitive for farmers. $SPELL stakers win, farmers win, and the frogs are happy!
New Collateral: $SHIB and $FTT
You can now deposit your $SHIB or $FTT and borrow $MIM against it. $SHIB is new collateral as the result of a community vote and should be an interesting play in the memecoin space. $SHIB holders now have more utility for their token while Abra investors benefit from the interest, opening, and any liquidation fees. $FTT from FTX looks like a great partnership between Abra and FTX.
Avalanche users: new SPELL/AVAX farm
New Avalanche Rush rewards are live at Trader Joe on Avalanche. You can now farm SPELL/AVAX and receive both $JOE and $AVAX. As well the rewards for lending $MIM on Trader Joe are now boosted.
BSC Deployment
With a recent Abracadabra governance vote the community decided to deploy to BSC. With over $19 billion in TVL BSC is the number two chain currently. Abra’s deployment to BSC should bring a huge boost to TVL and is a smart expansion play.
The First Degenbox Market
Got some $SPELL sitting around? Now you can borrow against it using the first lending market on Abracadabra using the new Degenbox format. The Abra team will utilize more of the Degenbox in the future since it allows more complex strategies for lending and leveraging.
TVL: $4 billion!!
Last, but not least, in the last two weeks Abracadabra’s TVL has increased to over $4.15 billion according to Defi Llama. The next top protocols by TVL are Anyswap at $4.61 billion and Uniswap at $5.5 billion. This TVL dominance means huge things for $SPELL stakers since all of the protocol fees generated are sent as a rewards to them. Speaking of which, did you see how big Merlin’s candle was this week?
Popsicle
Performance Fee Increase
The Popsicle team put forward and passed a proposal to increase the performance fee for Popsicle Liquidity Pool management from 10% to 20% of profits.
It sounds like the team is confident that Popsicle’s management of users' liquidity will increase earnings enough to make this fee worthwhile. This is bullish for $ICE holders who are staking it as $nICE in anticipation of this profit in the form of a buyback.
Wen lunch ser?
The Popsicle team also announced the timing of relaunch, but may have been a little too specific about timing. A week came and passed without a launch of Popsicle V2 but this seems to have been for the best: better a secure protocol that is a little late on deployment, than an insecure but on-time release.
Also good news? Look at the price of $ICE!
Hack Repayment
Daniele and the team were very excited to announce that the repayment of all lost funds from the Popsicle Finance exploit is now complete. The team sent out $ICE as $nICE to all affected wallets repaying what was stolen during the exploit. With $ICE recently reaching a price of $37 after the repayment this actually may be the first time that a hack lead to users making more than their original deposit.
For users that hold their repayment $ICE? They’ll be rewarded for diamond hands, as they should be.
Wonderland
Facelift
The Wonderland site received some interface and design updates this week that definitely allude to future plans for the text-based RPG. The change was slightly controversial for early adopters but is still available here.
CEX Listing
$TIME got its first listing on a top ten central exchange. Users at Gate.io can now trade TIME against USDT. See the listing here.
Audit Launch
Despite being a fork of the heavily utilized $OHM protocol the Wonderland team has decided to go through a ground up audit by Paladin Blockchain Security. You can track the progress and results when available here.
Growth growth growth
Finally, over the last two weeks, the Wonderland project has seen some incredible growth: marketcap is up by over $500 million, the treasury balance has grown by $131 million, and the protocol has seen almost 24,000 new users.
What’s coming?
There’s a lot to look forward from each of the Frog Nation projects. The deployment of the first Degenbox strategy means more are coming. Watch out for the deployment of a new UST-MIM strategy that could have incredible APY for a stablecoin. With the Popsicle relaunch coming shortly we’re sure to see some incredible things as well with LP management and leveraged LPs. We’ll see as well how Wonderland benefits from the recent announcement of further Avalanche Blizzard rewards!
Until next time…
Revolutionary Spaces is a writer, educator, avid DeFi user. You can catch him on a number of Discord servers as community manager or at his Twitter. He’s always looking for more side hustles so feel free to reach out for community management or product management opportunities in DeFi.
Into NFTs?
Are you on Avax and looking for a fun NFT project? Avalanche Party Animals are minting on 11/11. The Party Animals are based off the unofficial mascot of Avalanche, Wolfie, and have a unique tokenomics. The team is on Discord here.
Got questions about the Frog Nation?
Join the Frog Nation Discord to organize with other DeFi users, get your questions answered, or start a new project. We’re always glad to help!
