Project Spotlight: Moonwell Artemis
Moonwell Artemis has landed on Moonbeam with a bang, quickly surpassing the $100 Million in Total Value Locked milestone, and effectively increasing the network’s TVL by almost 250% in its first 24 hours. The Lending & Borrowing protocol has made its entry into the Polkadot ecosystem, accompanied by the listing of the platform’s native token, $WELL, on both Kucoin and Huobi.
Moonwell Artemis has been in the works for some time now by the Lunar Technology Foundation, led by former Coinbase engineer Luke Youngblood. Artemis was preceded by Moonwell Apollo, the platform’s deployment on Moonriver (Moonbeam’s canary chain on Kusama), which allowed the team to test the platform under live conditions and fine tune it before coming into Polkadot. But, although more experimental, Apollo had an equally explosive launch, reaching almost $350m TVL. To this day, Apollo remains as the DeFi protocol with the most TVL on Moonriver.
The Private Round and Public Sale held before Artemis’ launch already hinted at the platform’s success. Through the Private Round, Moonwell secured a $10 Million strategic fund for the development of the platform, co-led by Hypersphere Ventures and Arrington Capital, but also with the involvement of several other crypto and Polkadot ecosystem funds, and later joined by Coinbase Ventures. Through the Public Sale, the project amassed $13 Million, with all three rounds selling out and 500 Million $WELL token being distributed to participants.
The launch was finally made possible on Moonbeam after the integration of Chainlink’s Price Feeds, the industry-leading decentralized oracle, responsible for ensuring that the collateral value of all assets are backed by accurate market price data. But, to further ensure safety and security, Moonwell has also onboarded of Halborn Security through their Security Advisory as a Service, that provides ongoing security advisory, as well as Gauntlet’s financial modeling and simulation platform to mitigate economic risks in the protocol.
Lending & Borrowing DeFi Strategies
Moonwell Artemis opens a whole new world of possibilities and DeFi strategies for users on Moonbeam, from simply parking your assets in the protocol to earn rewards, to more risky plays such as leveraging your assets on long and short positions.
The most simple and obvious strategy is to deposit assets into the protocol. As part of Moonbeam’s Harvest Moon DeFi Campaign, Artemis currently rewards both Lenders & Borrowers with $GLMR and $WELL for using the protocol, but Lenders also earn interest on assets deposited which is paid by the Borrowers. Being a Lender is the less risky strategy, as you’re basically getting paid for simply depositing your assets in the protocol. At this point, the platform supports $GLMR, $xcDOT, $wETH.mad, $wBTC.mad, $USDC.mad and $FRAX. It should be noted that mad assets are those bridged over to Moonbeam through Nomad.
A more risky strategy is to leverage your assets to amplify your exposure and increase potential returns. For example, let’s say you’re holding 10,000 $GLMR and feeling bullish. To leverage your position you can deposit your $GLMR in Artemis, and borrow enough $USDC to buy another 5,000 $GLMR. This way you get 1.5x leverage on your initial position. With $GLMR currently priced of $0.66 you would’ve had an initial position of $6600 deposited in the protocol. Then you would’ve taken a 3,300 $USDC loan to buy another 5,000 $GLMR, increasing your position to $9,900. If $GLMR goes to $1, your leveraged position will be worth $15000, and $11700 after repaying the loan. That’s a $1700 extra than if you had simply held $GLMR. Obviously, this is a simplified explanation not taking into account lending and borrowing interest, so values may vary. However, leveraging is always a risky strategy. If $GLMR price drops, you run the risk of being liquidated and losing your deposited assets.
On the other hand, you could also create a short position if feeling bearish on $GLMR. In this case, you would deposit $USDC in the protocol, take a $GLMR loan and immediately sell it for more $USDC. If the price of $GLMR drops, you can buy-back the same amount of $GLMR to repay the loan by spending less $USDC and bagging the rest as profit. Once again, this is a very risky strategy where you run the risk of being liquidated if the market turns against you.
Other strategies, even more riskier, may be cooked up involving the use of other protocols in ecosystem, but we’ll leave it here for now.
The $WELL Token
$WELL is the native governance token of Moonwell Artemis, being reward to both Lenders & Borrowers in the protocol.
Instead of selling $WELL for immediate profits, holders may stake it in the Safety Module for more $WELL rewards. The Safety Module backstops the Moonwell Artemis protocol in the event of a shortfall event. But, $WELL deposited in the Safety Module stays locked for at least 10 days. To unstake the tokens users much activate a 10 days cooldown, after which there’s a 48h window to withdraw.
Another use for $WELL is to pair it with $GLMR and stake the LPs on StellaSwap to earn $STELLA and $WELL. Great to see the two biggest DeFi platforms on Moonbeam working together!
Moonwell Artemis
Website: https://moonwell.fi/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MoonwellDeFi
Discord: https://discord.gg/moonwellfi
Telegram: https://t.me/moonwellfichat
Medium: https://lunartechfdn.medium.com/
GLMR News
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlmrNews
Telegram: https://t.me/MOVRNewsChat
Disclaimer: This article has educational purposes only and should not be taken as Financial Advice. Always Do Your Own Research before you invest in crypto and never risk more than you can afford to lose.
