As Solidly emissions are less than ten days from starting, we thought it’d be a good time to explain Solidly in a condensed and hopefully easy to understand manner.
What is it?
Solidly is an AMM based on Uniswap v2. It allows swapping between two tokens in a liquidity pool in a fully decentralized way. The first initial twist is that Solidly, unlike Uniswap v2, also supports low slippage trades between pegged assets like stablecoins.
Users who provide their liquidity in a whitelisted Solidly pool receive liquidity mining rewards in the form of SOLID, the governance and revenue token for the Solidly protocol.
The token
Solidly token exists in two forms: the main one is SOLID which is tradeable but doesn’t grant you voting power or revenue. The other one is veSOLID which is a locked state of SOLID. ve stands for vote escrowed, a popular new DeFi primitive, which was first introduced by Curve Finance.
If you own SOLID and wish to participate in Solidly governance and receive a share of protocol revenue, you lock your SOLID and turn it into veSOLID. Locks can last between one month and four years and can be extended at any time. Different lock lengths mean you receive different amounts of veSOLID:
- 1 SOLID locked for four years = 1 veSOLID
- 1 SOLID locked for two years = 0.5 veSOLID
- 1 SOLID locked for six months = 0.125 veSOLID
Your veSOLID balance decays linearly over time if you don’t extend it. Once your lock expires, you can withdraw your SOLID.
Once your lock is created, you receive trading fees (protocol revenue) from the gauges you voted for, a boost as well as voting power to direct SOLID emissions — but more on that below.
ve(3,3)
Another important change from existing ve models is the concept of ve(3,3) where lockers also receive a share of emissions based on the circulating supply. The idea behind this change is to prevent dilution of existing early lockers.
The percentage of emissions received by existing lockers is below:
veSOLID.totalSupply() / SOLID.totalSupply()
This creates some interesting game theory as more people locking will reduce the amount of SOLID given to liquidity providers in any given week.
SOLID lockers increase their holdings proportionally to weekly emissions. This makes the value proposal of locking very attractive as your lock does not get diluted by new SOLID emissions.
Trading fees
On Solidly, all trading fees will go to users who voted for the gauge attached to the pool. Liquidity providers receive SOLID and trading fees are given to those who vote for it thus creating a positive feedback loop where a pool generating a lot of fees will attract more voters and more SOLID incentives.
If the pool is not whitelisted and does not have a gauge, trading fees then go to liquidity providers. Anyone can deploy a gauge for a pool if both tokens are whitelisted.
Emissions
Several Solidly mechanisms are borrowed from Curve Finance. The core one is the gauge system which has been gaining attention thanks to the so-called Curve wars and Convex bribes. Having deposited liquidity into a pool, liquidity providers will stake the LP tokens they receive into the corresponding gauge, where they begin earning SOLID emissions.
The concept is simple, every week SOLID emissions will be distributed starting from 20,000,000 per week decaying at a rate of 2% per week. From week 167, emissions decrease further as the total supply reaches 1 billion SOLID. veSOLID holders decide which liquidity providers receive those emissions.
Having the power to dictate which pools are to receive SOLID emissions is extremely valuable for protocols that wish to deepen their on-chain liquidity. It’s equally important for ve-holders, who have an interest in directing emissions towards pools that will net the most fees for themselves.
Emissions are updated on a weekly basis on Thursdays at midnight UTC.
Boosting
Just like on Curve, on top of deciding where SOLID emissions should go, lockers can also boost their SOLID rewards. Based on how much veSOLID a user owns, they may be able to receive up to 2.5x more SOLID rewards. Each gauge has a working balance which can be calculated as per the formula below:
This is the main reason behind the success of Convex, as it allowed liquidity providers to earn boosted rewards without the need to maintain a 4 year long ve-lock.
Bribes
The concept of bribes was made by popular by Convex which came to control a large share of Curve voting power. As users kept chasing high CRV rewards, protocols realized they could grow their protocol and on-chain liquidity by bribing veCRV holders to vote for their pool.
On Solidly, it’s possible for anyone to attach bribes onto a gauge and those who vote for it are then able to claim them.
Solidly also introduces the concept of negative voting which allow users to prevent emissions from going to a pool.
Launch
Solidly has already launched and SOLID emissions are expected to begin on the 24th of February, although Andre Cronje warned a redeployment may happen if any critical vulnerabilities are found before that date.
Those wanting to vote on emissions for the launch will need to do so before midnight UTC on the 24th of January.
You can visit the protocol there: https://solidly.exchange/ and find out which pools will receive the more SOLID emissions there https://solidly.exchange/vote
What about Solidex?
Solidex is meant to be to Solidly what Convex is to Curve. Built from the ground up and tailored to harness the capabilities of Solidly, users receive boosted SOLID rewards without the need to maintain their own lock.
Solidex has partnered with some of the best teams in DeFi such as Curve, Multichain, Geist, REN, Yearn, veDAO and Saddle who commit their voting power to bootstrap the protocol.
If you want to learn more about Solidex, you can read our pre-launch announcement by clicking here.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SolidexFantom
Telegram: https://t.me/SolidexOfficial
Discord: https://discord.gg/tbgR6RCVk7
