Blast Ecosystem - Lending - Launch Alpha | Revelo Intel

Blast Ecosystem – Lending

Published April 03, 2024

Lending Protocols

Lending projects have been a staple in DeFi since its inception. Projects like Aave and Compound provided the groundwork for newer projects to build and iterate upon, often adding support for long-tail assets and permissionless market creation. Today, lending projects have grown to become quite complex, from facilitating the trade of LSTs and LRTs, to integrating looping features to make leverage more accessible for depositors. Blast’s native yield provides an extra competitive advantage for projects to continue innovating and differentiate themselves from competitors in other ecosystems. 

The latest generation of lending markets have put the points meta to great use, using the prospect of potential points earnings to reward desired behavior, including depositing certain assets, borrowing, etc. Options on the Blast network encompass all of these above attributes, giving users of the chain plenty of places to put their assets to work.

From Restaked lending vaults to NFT liquidity pools and everything in between, Blast is a chain in tune with the most recent trends. It will be interesting to watch how and where liquidity flows among the projects which we have outlined below. 

At this current point in time, Orbit Protocol leads the pack when it comes to TVL, with nearly $300M deposited. Pac Finance and Juice are not too far behind, both being in the top 5 protocols chain-wide by TVL. Juice Finance has notably already launched its token, $JUICE, currently commanding a ~$132M FDV. $ORBIT is also live, though the protocol is currently valued at an FDV of ~$40M.

Source: Revelo Intel

Juice Finance

Juice Finance is an undercollateralized lending protocol on Blast. It differentiates itself by offering cross-margin lending capabilities that allow for up to 3x leverage on $ETH collateral. This leveraged approach not only magnifies potential returns for users but also grants them access to a broader range of rewards and airdrops opportunities across the Blast ecosystem. Rewards are prevalent across Blast lending projects, or any projects on the chain for that matter. Juice emphasizes their offerings of ‘more yield, points, airdrops, & rewards’. Being the premier destination for yield optimization and points farming is the self-stated core vision of the protocol.

Despite not operating as a trading platform or managing its own order books, Juice’s seamless integrations with external protocols facilitate a broad spectrum of trading and farming activities, thus enhancing capital efficiency and promoting open-source collaboration within the Blast ecosystem. This is in a sense similar to the offerings of Gearbox, which may be an apt comparison to describe what Juice Finance brings to the table. Users can access leverage upon their deposited funds, and use this to farm various protocols within the Blast ecosystem.

Juice has introduced an $ETH lending feature and collaborated with top Liquid Restaking protocols, offering an enhanced yield farming experience. Participants can now enjoy up to 9x leverage in $wETH using their LRTs as collateral, along with earning various rewards such as EigenLayer points, 18x LRT points, Juice Points, and Blast points, among others.

Juice’s strategy vaults stand out by providing a customizable asset deployment framework, linking users to an array of strategies and vaults across the Blast ecosystem. This feature addresses diverse investment goals and risk profiles.

The platform supports various activities, including: 

Lending 

Users can deposit either $USDB or $WETH to earn a passive APY. Both $USDB and $WETH are passive deposits and don’t need to be managed. It should be noted that depositing into the Lending pool doesn’t allow users to borrow against this collateral. Lenders play a key role within the platform, as they enable other activities on the protocol to be possible by providing necessary liquidity.

When lending, users should be aware of risks of depositing to lending pools. These include sandwich attacks/ MEV, oracle risks, smart contract risks, as well as other protocol risk vectors. Lenders can also experience liquidity risk (inability to withdraw liquidity 100% of the time), as well as bad debt, which occurs when liquidations don’t cover loans that have been defaulted upon.

Juice Finance Lend UI

Borrowing or Looping 

Users can loop $WETH or LRTs up to 3x. $WETH is initially used as collateral, with borrows denominated in either $USDB or $WETH. Borrowing and looping strategies on the platform make use of other integrated protocols. After borrowing, funds can then be deployed into Juice Finance’s various vaults/ strategies (Farming).

Users should be cautious of liquidation risk, as well as additional risk from external protocols integrated. Minimum Margin Health Factor must be maintained to keep a borrowing position open without liquidation risk. 

Juice Finance Borrow UI

Farming $USDB or $WETH via JUICE vaults with integrations with Thruster, Hyperlock, Particle, and Wasabi.

Farmers or users of the vaults can choose a strategy of their choice based on risk appetite, desired yield, etc.

These options allow users to maximize their yield, rewards, and points accumulation. The protocol ensures a comprehensive optimization of returns for all participants while maintaining lender security through effective collateral liquidation processes and a dynamic interest rate model. 

Juice Finance Vaults UI

The options listed above allow users to maximize their yield, rewards, and points accumulation. The protocol ensures a comprehensive optimization of returns for all participants while maintaining lender security through effective collateral liquidation processes and a dynamic interest rate model. 

This may be particularly useful for those looking to increase their exposure to the Blast ecosystem as a whole and interact with native projects, as through the Vaults this can be done through one UI. Also, Juice provides another way to gain exposure to restaking and earn EigenLayer points on an L2, avoiding the high gas fees associated with Ethereum mainnet. Other solutions that fall into this camp include $mETH on Mantle, and Pendle YTs on Arbitrum, which both saw huge growth. 

Juice Finance is among the Big Bang winners. Their previous venture, OMEGA, was a Bitcoin DeFi protocol that raised $6M in a round led by Borderless Capital, featuring Lightspeed Venture Partners, Wormhole, Kronos Research,Blockchain.com, Delphi Ventures, XBTO, Bankless Ventures, Caladan, Wave Digital Assets, Hyperithm, Side Door Ventures, Psalion VC, Cadenza, M1 Ventures, Blockchain Founders Fund, and Humla Ventures. OMEGA currently still serves as the parent company of Juice Finance, and Juice retains some of the original investors, which are presented below.

Juice Finance Investors

When it comes to security, the Juice protocol contracted Trust Security for a smart contract consultation report which can be accessed here. The project’s price feeds are powered by RedStone Oracles. Juice also includes an integration with Munchables, the project that was notoriously exploited recently

The Juice LBP allowed users to collectively contribute up to 350 $ETH to help create the native $JUICE LP. The LBP follows a maximum allocation of 0.25 $ETH per contributor. The LBP is currently live, with ~20 $ETH still available to be allocated in total. As mentioned above, the $JUICE token is now available for trading, and can now be found on coingecko here. When it comes to token utility, $JUICE can be staked. This consists of users depositing the governance token into a $JUICE / $WETH LP on the platform to earn $JUICE staking points, Juice Season 2 points, Blast points and Blat Gold via a multiplier, as well as Thruster points and Hyperlock points. LPs will also earn the Blast Gold allocated to Thruster and Hyperlock. A 3rd optional step can be taken; users can lock their LP with a rewards multiplier applied in alignment with the time period locked.

Multiplier for Hyperlock Staking

Particle

Particle is a leverage trading protocol on Blast designed to facilitate leveraged trading of any ERC20 token in a permissionless environment. Drawing inspiration from Uniswap’s pioneering approach to AMMs that made it possible to trade any token on-chain, Particle aims to extend this functionality for leveraged trading. This innovation allows traders to either long or short various tokens with leverage, provided there is sufficient liquidity. The extent of leverage available is determined by the concentration of the supplied liquidity.

The differentiating factor between Particle and some other Perp DEXs is that it simply uses the existing AMMs already available in the space. This can create a positive sum game that drives volume to other projects rather than taking TVL or trading volume from them. The Blast ecosystem may already experience this in the near term just due to market conditions and the ‘newness’ of the chain attracting deposits, but this won’t always be the case. Users can observe that protocols partnering, integrating etc. with other protocols is a bit of a theme in the Blast ecosystem, and one that can help to create flywheels for liquidity.

Unique to Particle is its operation without traditional price oracles, removing a common vulnerability to manipulation seen in other platforms. This is achieved through a design that mathematically ensures liquidity providers (LPs) are compensated for their risk, thereby sidestepping the pitfalls associated with oracle-based systems. The Liquid Automated Market Maker (LAMM) model innovatively addresses liquidation risks, shifting away from conventional price-triggered liquidations to a premium model that mimics fixed-term loans. This model diminishes the likelihood of liquidations triggered by volatile price movements, offering a more stable trading environment.

Furthermore, Particle introduces a liquidity restaking feature that allows LPs to continue earning yields on their capital, even when it is utilized in leverage trading. This mechanism aims to provide LPs with superior yields while minimizing impermanent loss risks, often a concern in traditional AMM settings like Uniswap v3. By ensuring that trading profits or losses are linked directly to the asset’s price movements rather than counterparty positions, Particle minimizes counterparty risk and enhances the potential for consistent returns.

Particle UI

The protocol’s strategic approach to leveraged trading, which is similar to that of Infinity Pools, has garnered significant attention, culminating in its selection as one of the Big Bang winners. It has closed its seed round led by Polychain Capital with additional participation from Nascent, Inflection, Neon DAO, Arthur Hayes, and DCF God.

Particle has rolled out its Leaderboard and Points system By participating in the Particle protocol, users can earn rewards such as Particle Points (convertible to Blast Gold), Thruster Credits, Blast Liquidity Points, among other incentives. The system is designed to reward users for engaging with the protocol, especially through liquidity provision, which yields the highest points. 

Efficient liquidity provision is prioritized, favoring activities such as offering liquidity in narrower ranges, larger sizes, and for extended periods, especially in pools with high trading volumes. Particle’s integration with Thruster means that liquidity providing and trading on Particle also contribute to Thruster metrics, as well as other protocols which users will be rewarded for, similar to Juice Finance use cases including allocations from integrated protocols. The initial phase includes multipliers and is set for a two-week trial, exploring various incentive mechanisms. Multipliers were assigned based on criteria including ownership of specific NFT collections (like Pudgy Penguins and Bored Ape Yacht Club), participation as Uniswap LPs, involvement in Particle’s testnet phases, and those who used Blast bridges prior to the Mainnet launch.

MetaStreet

MetaStreet introduces a form of borrowing, a way to access credit for NFTs. Users can borrow against deposited NFTs and access liquidity. This can help to alleviate some of the inherent problems with NFTs, namely, the fact that they are non-fungible, meaning they can’t simply be put in a pool on an AMM or anything of this nature. Like other non-fungible markets, e.g. Real Estate, automobiles, businesses, etc. in real life, NFTs can be hard to sell when collection holders want money. 

Metastreet enables NFT depositors to use their NFT as collateral and borrow funds against it, so they are not quite selling. This is notable in the world of NFTs, as some people hold an online identity that may be predicated in part just by the fact that they hold a certain NFT. 

The other side of this equation is the lenders, who lend the funds to NFT holders. Lending is isolated based on collection, e.g. a user can specify Cryptopunk holders as the target collection holder demographic to lend money to and earn interest from upon repayment. 

The protocol that focuses on transforming high-yield sources into tradable assets through its innovative Automatic Tranche Maker (ATM) and Liquid Credit Token (LCT). The ATM is a permissionless lending protocol that organizes capital in pools based on the depositor’s preferences for risk and returns. LCTs, representing each lender’s stake within a pool, are liquid, composable ERC-20 tokens, enhancing the scalability of digital asset markets through several high-yield opportunities.

MetaStreet’s ATM addresses three critical issues faced by existing lending protocols: the reliance on centralized price oracles, fixed interest rate models governed by static policies, and the restrictive nature of pool creation. It introduces a dynamic interest rate model driven by deposits, removes oracle dependencies for loan-to-value limits, and allows for the permissionless creation of lending pools.

LCTs serve to enable long-duration loans, providing lenders with the flexibility of liquidity during the loan term, supporting market prices by deepening lending markets, and maximizing yield through their full composability within DeFi ecosystems.

Lenders have optionality and can customize certain risk parameters. Some lenders will be comfortable lending at higher LTVs than others. What Metastreet does is aggregate these lenders stated lending intents. These separate offers are stacked; one interest rate is given to the borrower, with this interest then being split proportionally among the lenders who contributed to the deal. Lenders who are willing to undertake lending funds at higher LTVs will receive a greater share of the interest earned, a reward for undergoing greater risk. 

If several lenders all specify the same duration and the same LTV, then the protocol will provide the offer with the lowest interest APR to the prospective NFT provider. This is the first parameter used to prioritize offers from lenders, with the second being the longest duration of the loan, so assuming all other parameters are equal, the lender who specifies a willingness to lend for the longest period of time compared to other offerers will have his offer prioritized. 

MetaStreet simplifies the lending process for both lenders and borrowers. Lenders specify their lending terms regarding collateral, maximum price, term, interest rate, and amount, which are then matched with borrowers’ needs. This system organizes capital by price, term, and rate tier before aggregating it to present single loan offers with optimal terms to borrowers. The ATM’s structure promotes collaboration among lenders of varying risk appetites and aggregates capital efficiently, making single offers to borrowers simple and streamlined. Borrowers then see single offers according to these terms and can borrow from these pools. 

MetaStreet UI

In 2022, MetaStreet raised some $24M in seed and venture rounds. On February 9, 2022, MetaStreet announced it had secured a combined total of $14 million in seed financing and initial protocol liquidity, with the purpose of expanding the rapidly growing collateralized NFT lending market. This funding round was led by Dragonfly Capital, alongside strategic investments from Ethereal Ventures, Sfermion, Nascent Capital, Delphi INFINFT, Alliance, Seed Club Ventures, Animoca Brands, Republic Realm, Volt Capital, Kerve Capital, CMT Digital, Bitscale Capital, QCP Capital, BigBrainHoldings, and Taureon.

In 2022, MetaStreet raised some $24M in seed and venture rounds. Subsequently, on October 13, 2022, MetaStreet announced a $10 million funding round to launch “PowerSweep,” a new NFT leverage trading platform, raising its total funding to $24 million within a year. However, it appears that the “PowerSweep” platform has been abandoned, as there has been no further mention of the platform from the team in a while and the site is currently offline. This additional round featured support from existing investors such as Dragonfly Capital, Nascent, and Ethereal Ventures, and welcomed new investors including Fintech Collective, DCG, TheLAO, Focus Labs, Mirana Ventures, Metaversal, Opensea Ventures, Ledgerprime, Meta4, and Flying Falcon, to bolster its infrastructure for the digital economy’s growth by enhancing the liquidity and functionality of NFT-backed debt markets. 

As of now, MetaStreet’s total funding amounts to $49M. This comes after a more recent raise of $24M occurring on February 15th, with investors including Andrew Kang, dingaling, GMoney, MrBlock, DCF God, Sisyphus, FreeLunchCapital, Jae Chung, GoodAlexander, and Spencer.

It should be noted that the project’s native $MSTR token is not live yet. The team has released the Ascend XP program, similar to a points program, in which users can earn points in a variety of ways. This program allocates 80% of XP towards ‘Reserve Actions’, namely depositing wstETH to mint LCTs (1,000 XP + additional bonuses per $ETH deposited) and supplying liquidity to LCT pools on Curve Finance (3,000 XP per deposit + additional daily bonuses).

MetaStreet assets, currently available for purchase on the Ethereum Mainnet, can be bridged to the Blast network. While MetaStreet is not yet live on Blast, it plans to offer direct lending opportunities on Blast soon. In the meantime, these assets can be traded or used for liquidity provision on Blast through platforms like Thruster or Particle, with an attractive yield range of 10-17%. 

Orbit Protocol 

Orbit Protocol is a money market on Blast, leveraging the native yield capabilities of the chain. It is an open-source and non-custodial decentralized liquidity protocol designed to enhance the lending and borrowing experience on the Blast network by leveraging Blast’s native yield. Orbit offers a unique system for users to lend and borrow Blast assets through a defined money market. Lenders supply assets to earn additional yield, receiving Orbit Assets (oAssets) which embody both the principal and accrued yield over a lending period. These oAssets can later be redeemed for the initial principal plus the yield, simplifying the yield collection process.

Users looking to borrow can do so by offering supported Blast assets as collateral within the protocol’s loan-to-value (LTV) ratio guidelines. Orbit introduces a novel approach by utilizing native yield from lender assets and collateral to accumulate to the $ORBIT token. This is accomplished in a few main ways;

  • Open Market Purchases; Blast native yield is used to purchase $ORBIT on the open market via DEXs. This buy pressure of course competes with the native staking inflationary rewards. 
  • Supply Removal; Another portion of the native Blast yield is used to simply remove $ORBIT from supply via burning, reducing the amount of tokens in circulation (without accounting for emissions). This buy and burn pressure grows greater over time, linearly increasing to 100% of Blast native yield going to this initiative over a 4 year period.

$ORBIT also acts as a means to advance future yield value to the present, benefiting both lenders and borrowers by subsidizing the yield through token distribution (inflation/ emissions). Those who lend, borrow, and stake $ORBIT will receive 20% of the protocol’s Blast Gold. Stakers already will receive rewards up to 500% APY, denominated in the $ORBIT token, in addition to a boost in Blast Gold. Staking rewards are in alignment with how long a user opts to stake their tokens for, up to 4 years as a maximum amount to achieve the 500% APY figure. Upon specifying a time period to stake for, no $ORBIT withdrawals are possible on Orbit.

$ORBIT has a maximum supply of 100,000,000 tokens, with distribution as follows:

Source: Revelo Intel

Central to Orbit’s operations are its lending and borrowing components, delineated as Orbit Lend and Orbit Borrow. Orbit Lend facilitates the process of lending assets to the protocol, where users interact and compute their lending contributions. Conversely, Orbit Borrow oversees the mechanics of borrowing assets, allowing users to obtain liquidity against collateral. Both components utilize mechanisms for employing native yield and redistributing it as subsidies, supported by a price oracle for accurate collateral valuation and the strategic deployment of the $ORBIT token to bridge future yield to the present. This framework helps create a dynamic lending market on Blast.

Orbit Protocol UI

Like most lending markets, Orbit Protocol operates without traditional intermediaries, allowing it to benefit from all of the attributes associated with DeFi protocols. Orbit capitalizes on the native yields of $ETH and $USDB assets from Blast, indirectly subsidizing lenders for a yield boost and offering borrowers interest discounts.

Staking rewards within Orbit play a crucial role in enhancing protocol engagement and aligning incentives. Stakers receive benefits in the form of boosted $ORBIT emissions and Blast Gold points, with the distribution of Orbit’s Blast native yield for staking rewards starting at 100% and linearly decreasing to 0% over four years. Instead, the Blast native yield will go towards a buy-back-and-burn mechanism that increases linearly, trending towards 100%. This structured decrease encourages early participation while aligning long-term interests. Moreover, the protocol incentivizes stakers to opt for longer lockup periods by offering amplified distribution of staking rewards. This not only increases the value received by stakers but also bolsters the stability and longevity of its tokenomics, which contributes to the health of the protocol overall.

The list of participants in Orbit’s Strategic Round includes Gainzy, HAL Capital, Andrew Kang from Mechanism Capital, Hype, GBV Capital, DEFI^2, and more, demonstrating broad confidence in Orbit Protocol. Furthermore, Orbit Protocol has achieved an impressive milestone with the most Total Value Locked (TVL) of all dApps on the Blast network with nearly $300 million as of March 19th, 2023. 

Orbit Protocol’s integration with Blast is carefully considered to maximize the network’s features, such as native yield and gas revenue sharing. It addresses the direct distribution issue of native yield by innovatively forwarding future yield value through the $ORBIT token, ensuring a competitive and attractive yield for lending on Blast.  

Pac Finance

Pac Finance

Pac Finance is a lending and margin trading protocol, built on the Blast. Leveraging Blast’s $USDB, it introduces a unique self-repaying mechanism where users can leverage future earnings to automatically pay off existing debts, thereby facilitating a more streamlined borrowing experience. This is similar to Alchemix, the protocol which originally introduced the concept of Self-repaying loans to the space. Pac Finance makes their intentions very clear; users can access higher yields with their protocol compared to other options.

Proposed Pac Finance Value Proposition

By supporting both peer-to-peer and peer-to-pool lending models, Pac Finance significantly enhances capital efficiency and offers a flexible borrowing and lending environment. This dual approach enables users to benefit from a stable liquidity pool while also engaging in more personalized transactions. With its model, Pac Finance both offers the features of AAVE V3 and Morpho optimizers. The team plans to expand on this customized approach, recognizing the value it can provide as a more tailored product that what is currently accessible for users. 

Pac Finance Lending UI

Pac also recognizes the intention of many lenders on Blast; to borrow against their deposits. There may be more incentive to borrow on Blast than on any other chain. Alongside the long list of rewards and incentives that most projects on the chain include for their users, $ETH and $USDB also earn a native yield, which can help to negate some of the borrowing fees that users must pay in interest. It may be easier to run a net-positive looping or lending-and-borrowing position on Blast native protocols than on other chains like Solana, Base, etc. 

Pac Finance in particular features some helpful optionality with its Collateral Swap page. This feature can be used while positions are active and being borrowed against, enabling it to serve as a protective measure of capital if health factors are declining or just as a means for users to change their positioning on the fly. Borrowers can access additional funds to deploy without necessarily being locked into a position. 

Collateral Swap UI

Pac Finance Asset-specific Risk Parameters

Pac Finance prioritizes the profitability of lenders with its reward system, including Supply APY and native yield, to ensure liquidity providers are adequately compensated through dynamic interest rates and additional returns over time. Pac Finance addresses the common challenge of high gas fees by refunding 100% of transaction costs, promoting a zero gas fee model. Technically users still have to pay gas, but they will be refunded by Pac Finance. This initiative is supported by the underlying Blast chain team themselves, as they refund gas fees associated with usign the protocol to Pac Finance, who then passes these funds back to the users proportionally. 

Additionally, its one-click leverage and loop features streamline the trading process, making it safer and more accessible. Future plans include expanding to support an even wider, diverse array of assets than what is currently available. For $ETH, users can access 1.7x leverage while still retaining a net positive APY, without accounting for Pac points and Blast points also earned.

Pac Finance is among Blast Big Bang winners and is committed to distributing 100% airdrop to its users. The protocol is already live with a TVL of more than $300M. It launched a point program and is likely to airdrop its token to users. Pac Finance is incubated by Parallel Network, having raised an undisclosed amount from DeGods and Manifold.

Users can accumulate points via several methods:

  • Initial Points were awarded to users who participated Blast Early Access 
  • Daily Points are awarded to users who simply engage with the protocol each day, a low hanging fruit.
  • Referral Points consist of 20% of invitees’ points, and 10% of any further invitees’ points.
  • Team Points are awarded to users who join or form their own team with fellow Pac Finance users. 
    • Team’s who reach full membership are entitled to 30% extra points of their team’s total tally. 
    • Those who form their own team will additionally receive 15% of total team points.

Curvance

Curvance

Curvance is a modular multi-chain money market, catering primarily to yield-bearing assets and a wide array of ERC-20 tokens. Planned to be launched across several major blockchain networks such as Ethereum, Arbitrum, Blast, Base, Optimism, and Polygon zkEVM, Curvance is designed to become the quintessential money market for virtually any ERC-20 token. Its inception is driven by the desire to enhance capital efficiency in the DeFi space, allowing for greater flexibility and utility of yield-bearing assets.

The core value proposition of Curvance lies in its comprehensive approach to DeFi composability, yield optimization, providing features like auto-compounding, offering higher APRs on supplied assets, and facilitating loan acquisition against these assets. The platform’s modular design, built around the implementation of ERC-4626 vaults, ensures compatibility with a broad spectrum of ERC-20 tokens, enabling seamless integration with various protocols and markets based on user demand. 

What sets Curvance apart is its embrace of DeFi composability and multi-chain equivalence, leveraging Wormhole’s tech stack for deployment across multiple blockchains. Users can provide liquidity on a lending protocol and use the LP token as collateral to borrow. This will unlock previously idle capital for the users.

Curvance’s importance in the DeFi ecosystem stems from its potential to unlock unprecedented levels of capital efficiency and yield optimization for users. By accommodating a wide variety of yield-bearing assets and enabling users to leverage these assets through borrowing, Curvance paves the way for innovative financial strategies that were previously unattainable. This positions Curvance as a pivotal player in the DeFi space, potentially transforming how users interact with yield-bearing assets and expanding the possibilities within the DeFi ecosystem.

Curvance is among the Blast Big Bang winners; the project hasn’t launched yet. Curvance has raised $3.6M from Offchain Labs and Polygon Founder Sandeep Nailwal for seed raise.

Key Institutional & Angel Investors for Curvance

A token has been confirmed for Curvance, $CVE.The token’s planned airdrop aims to reward power users of the protocol, instead of just being based on previous activity. In the project’s recent raise, 6% of the token supply was sold, with each investor having a $250k cap in allocation. $CVE’s primary utilities include governance, as well as a heavily modified version of ‘ve’ tokenomics; these are expected to come to fruition within H1 2024. 

The project’s eventual launch is slated to happen in 3 parts:

  • Testnet inception is expected to happen soon, using an invite code scheme. 
  • Beta will follow, launching on mainnet over a period of ~4 weeks and in alignment with audits.
  • Official Launch will see the project deploy across multiple chains, including Blast.

Runner-Ups

Runner-Ups of the Big Bang competition Lending category include:

  • Abracadabra.money: a multi-chain DeFi lending platform leveraging interest-bearing tokens as collateral to mint its stablecoin, Magic Internet Money ($MIM). It allows assets to continue earning yield while being used as collateral, and introduces staking strategies for assets to generate yield. Abracadabra notably launched back in June of 2021, rising to prominence towards the end fo the previous bullrun. The project’s TVL currently sits at ~$127M, down from ~$6B+ at its peak.
  • Fortunafi: an investment fund protocol enabling US and international investors to invest in real world assets via tokenized shares. Investments are managed through smart contracts with regular net asset value updates for transparent investor information.
  • INIT Capital: a liquidity hook money market designed to democratize access to liquidity for both DeFi users and protocols. INIT Capital uses ‘Liquidity Hooks’ to enable seamless liquidity integration for DApps, enhancing lending and borrowing experiences. INIt initially launched on Mantle before deploying an instance on Blast; of it’s ~90M in total TVL, ~$30M of this resides on the Blast chain.
  • Seismic Finance: a hybrid lending market on Blast, focused on providing competitive rates and maximized rewards. It access to leveraged lending, and explicitly outlines it’s plans to offer outsized rewards, including “Blast points, Lootboxes, multipliers, and a higher share of Blast developer points than anybody else”.

Honorable Mentions

Projects that received Honorable Mentions in the Big Bang competition Lending category:

  • Natrium Protocol: a permissionless lending platform that allows users to customize lending and borrowing pairs and optimize returns through high-yield vaults. It empowers users with control over their lending experience, focusing on individual risk tolerance and asset selection.
  • Term Finance: a protocol offering non-custodial, fixed-rate lending with a unique auction mechanism for matching borrowers and lenders. It models traditional finance tri-party repo arrangements, providing market-clearing rates for loans and leveraging ERC-20 tokens for transaction management.
  • Zest: a protocol that decouples yield from asset price volatility, offering leveraged derivatives for risk-averse yield seekers and leverage enthusiasts. It introduces products like mirrorETH, allowing users to benefit from ETH price movements without direct exposure to price volatility.

Revelo’s Take

From inception, Blast has taken a pragmatic approach in attracting users, discarding some long-held stigma around decentralization and crypto ethos in favor of incentives and native yields. The team behind Blast recognizes how much points programs, airdrops etc. are valued by participants in this current market meta; this rings true for the teams building atop the chain as well, especially as it pertains to lending. 

Other chains have seen lending protocols dominate when it comes to TVL, with Marginfi and Kamino Finance on Solana being some prime examples of protocols popular with users. Blast may be following in these footsteps; 3 of the top 5 projects by TVL are lending protocols in Orbit, Pac Finance, and Juice Finance. These are notably Blast native projects; the Blast team’s efforts to attract new protocols that are native to the chain rather than just new deployments of opportunistic projects with many different instances is clear. There might even be more future rewards for these protocols in the future.

Several of the projects listed above allow users who don’t wish to actively trade or engage with a protocol allow those interested to earn a relatively risk-adjusted return on core assets. Yield has long been a fixation, a point of interest for on-chain degens. Depositing LP tokens to DEXs and facing the perils of impermanent loss has fallen out of favor to the likes of protocols providing boosted yields on single-sided liquidity, with points and airdrop farming replacing token emissions. 

Some of these projects on Blast do indeed compete with each other for TVL and users, which can sometimes be observed in daily and weekly TVL inflows/outflows. Nonetheless, all these protocols contribute to the chains’ overall perception as a top L2 destination for yield, free from the constraints of high gas fees on mainnet with even lower fees post-EIP4844.

Juice Finance and Pac Finance both stand out as a couple of protocols which seem to be attracting users and deposits as of late. Juice Finance’s integration of Renzo’s $ezETH with both Renzo and Restaking points set to be awarded soon has seen nearly 600 $ETH allocated alone. Pac Finance provides some very attractive APRs with high bonus thresholds for native $PAC points.

Disclosures

Revelo Intel has never had a commercial relationship with BLAST or any other project mentioned. This report was not paid for or commissioned in any way.

Members of the Revelo Intel team, including those directly involved in the analysis above, may have positions in the tokens discussed.

This content is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. You should do your own research and only invest what you can afford to lose. Revelo Intel is a research platform and not an investment or financial advisor.