Beta Finance’s 2-Phase Launch on Ethereum starts August 18

We are excited to announce that Beta Finance, the first Alpha Launchpad project, will be launching on Ethereum on August 18! For those joining now, Beta Finance is a permissionless money market protocol for lending, borrowing, and shorting crypto assets. Our mission is to offset crypto volatility by enabling DeFi users to hedge risks through on-chain shorting, and facilitate greater stability in DeFi. With our launch, DeFi users will be able to earn additional high yield on their assets, borrow crypto assets, and have access to a seamless, integrated short selling experience.

Our launch will be broken down into two phases, with Phase 1 starting August 18. In Phase 1, we will be allowing users to lend, borrow, and short assets on Beta Verified Markets only. These Beta Verified Markets are tokens of protocols that have been evaluated to be safe for our users to interact with, and users who interact with special Verified Markets will receive additional BETA rewards. For launch, all Verified Markets will be using Band Protocol and Chainlink price oracles via Alpha Oracle Aggregator. In Phase 2, we will enable users to create money markets for tokens permissionlessly and automatically, and immediately be able to lend, borrow, and short assets on all markets.

Our native BETA token will not be launching with Phase 1, and will come at a later date to be announced. Fear not, there will be a sizable retroactive BETA reward distribution for early adopters of Beta Finance who begin lending, borrowing, and short selling upon our launch August 18.

How to use Beta Finance on launch?

Early users of the protocol — lenders, borrowers, and short sellers — will be entitled to BETA rewards through a retroactive reward distribution. To interact with the Beta Finance protocol, users will need a MetaMask wallet that is connected to Ethereum Mainnet. To set up a MetaMask wallet, please go here.

Lenders

Lenders will be able to deposit tokens to Beta’s money markets and begin earning additional yield on their tokens. On the protocol, once users interact with the money market and lend their tokens out, they will receive bTokens in return that represent their interest-bearing stake in the lending pool. Lenders redeem their bTokens on the protocol to receive their deposits in the lending pool and the earned interest, paid in the lended token. There is only one lending pool for each token, so lenders will always be earning the maximal yield for the lended token on the protocol. Additionally, lenders during our Phase 1 launch will be able to earn BETA rewards through retroactive distribution.

Borrowers

Borrowers will be able to short tokens from Beta’s money markets by posting collateral for their positions. Upon launch, Beta Finance will support ETH, USDT, USDC, and DAI as collateral. Additions to the supported collateral list can be made by submitting a proposal to the community for vote once Phase 2 is launched. When initiating a borrow position, borrowers interact with the money market for the token of interest and post sufficient collateral. The borrowed token will be deposited into the users MetaMask wallet, and can then be freely used by the borrower. Additionally, borrowers during our Phase 1 launch will be able to earn BETA rewards through retroactive distribution.

Short Sellers

Short Sellers will be able to short tokens from Beta’s money markets by posting collateral for their positions. Upon launch, Beta Finance will support ETH, USDT, USDC, and DAI as collateral. Additions to the supported collateral list can be made by submitting a proposal to the community for vote once Phase 2 is launched. When initiating a short position, Beta Finance will execute a flash swap by immediately swapping the tokens being shorted to the collateral token supplied, and return the additional collateral obtained from the flash swap to your position for you. This means your short position’s collateral is the principal collateral posted + the collateral equivalent value of the shorted token. Swaps happen through Uniswap V2, Uniswap V3, or Sushiswap based on user specification.

User can initiate a short position in 3 simple steps:

1. Select the token to short and collateral you wish to use.
2. Enter in the amount of collateral to be used and the amount of token to be shorted.
3. Select the DEX you wish to swap through, and click “Short”.

Additionally, short sellers during our Phase 1 launch will be able to earn BETA rewards through retroactive distribution.

Managing Positions

Lenders, borrowers, and short sellers will be able to easily view and manage all their positions on the Beta Finance dashboard. They will obtain an overview of important metrics, including APY, position amount, interest, debt, and loan-to-value (LTV) ratio. Lenders will be able to withdraw their lended tokens, and borrowers and short sellers will be able to add additional collateral or close out their positions by interacting with the dashboard.

Short sellers will be able to repay in the underlying token or directly with the collateral associated with the position. This means closing a position takes a single button click without needing to leave the Beta Finance protocol, providing a seamless, integrated user experience.

Liquidators

Liquidators play a critical role in the health of the protocol by repaying positions that have become unhealthy and exceeded the respective liquidation LTV threshold. To reward liquidators for repaying debt, there is a liquidation bonus that will be received upon a successful completion. Similar to Compound and Aave, Beta Finance will allow liquidators to repay at most half of the debt share in a single transaction.

Next Steps

We have much more to announce to our community as we move forward towards the Phase 1 launch on August 18, and we will share more details about the opportunities for early users of Beta Finance. We’ll continue to keep the community updated through our socials, so be sure to follow us on Discord, Twitter, and Telegram!

We are hiring!

Beta Finance is looking to expand our team and is actively hiring. If you are passionate about DeFi and excited to build the next generation of infrastructure for DeFi, we’d love the chance to learn more about you! Whether you’re a Solidity developer, Web3 magician, business development & marketing, or DeFi strategy specialist, please reach out to careers@betafinance.org.