Meta Pool Explained — AMA Recap with NEAR Nigeria
TL;DR
- We held an AMA with NEAR Nigeria recently and want to bring the same content
- We want to explain how Meta Pool works by answering some of the questions we received during the AMA
- Meta Pool and its main projects explained in detail!
Overview
Last week, we hosted an AMA with NEAR Nigeria. After reviewing the questions and answers provided during the Twitter Space, we realized that there are some basic questions we can answer concisely for groups or users that are new to the NEAR community.
We are going to recap some of the most basic questions and hope that our community can use this article as a resource for explaining and understanding the principles behind liquid staking. We’ll explore what liquid staking is, how it works, and what value our flagship fundraising product Meta Yield is bringing to the NEAR ecosystem. Check out more information about Meta Yield here!
Liquid Staking Explained
What is Liquid Staking?
We wanted to start with a question that we saw asked a few times in our AMA with NEAR Nigeria. Liquid staking is functionally a more complex, and useful method of staking. Proof of Stake (PoS) networks such as NEAR use validator nodes to validate transactions on the network, and users can stake their $NEAR token with validators to earn staking rewards at a ~10% APY.
With traditional staking, your $NEAR tokens get locked in one validator — to get your tokens unstaked, you must wait a period of 4 epochs, or roughly 48 hours. You are not supporting decentralization of the NEAR network and you can’t benefit from DeFi protocols.
With Meta Pool you are simultaneously earning NEAR staking rewards and maintaining your liquidity to participate in DeFi protocols on NEAR and Aurora. When staking on Meta Pool, our users can unstake without the waiting period, and are supplied stNEAR which can be used on NEAR DeFi ecosystem while still earning staking rewards.
Further, you are contributing to the censorship-resistance of the NEAR network because we delegate your NEAR to the best validator nodes (roughly ~84 out of 104) The process is quite easy. Users staking NEAR and wNEAR with Meta Pool receive in exchange stNEAR (staked NEAR) tokens:
- Stake $NEAR on Meta Pool (~10.5% APY)
- Get stNEAR (Yield-bearing token)
- Go DeFi on NEAR & Aurora (More APY and more rewards)
How Meta Pool Works
What is stNEAR and what does it do?
stNEAR is a NEP-141 standard liquid token that: simultaneously accrues staking rewards (~10% staking APY) and unlocks users’ liquidity enabling them to participate in DeFi activities (e.g. lending, farming, borrowing) on NEAR and Aurora.
Basically, stNEAR is your gateway to DeFi. stNEAR enables liquid stakers to obtain a superior yield of their staked $NEAR because it gives users a liquid asset while still earning 10%+ through Meta Pool.
For members of the NEAR Nigeria guild, we wanted to emphasize the utility value of stNEAR. Users who stake on Meta Pool will trade their NEAR for stNEAR, and can go to any number of farms across the NEAR ecosystem like Ref Finance, Trisolaris, or OIN, and earn an additional % on those tokens.
In short, Meta Pool gives users a way to increase their APY by up to double or triple. In a bear market, and emerging crypto markets like those building in Africa (NEAR Nigeria) against inflationary currencies, this function is extremely valuable.
Meta Yield
What is Meta Yield and how does it work?
In our humble opinion, Meta Yield is the new generation of fundraising. It is a mixture of crowdfunding and IDO platforms that allows users to support NEAR Projects to raise funds in a kickstarter-like fashion and to get exposure to the NEAR community.
The big difference with traditional IDO platforms is that for backers (financial supporters of projects), Meta Yield offers a unique risk-free lossless staking rewards-based financing mechanism. What this means is that you are supporting a project on Meta Yield through the APY your locked tokens generate, not the actual tokens themselves.
And at the same time, by financially supporting a NEAR project on Meta Yield, backers mint project tokens. Users are rewarded with tokens early in the project, and expose themselves to tremendous upside!
Meta Yield works in 4 simple steps:
- Liquid stake $NEAR tokens with Meta Pool and get stNEAR.
- Commit and lock your stNEAR to support crypto-based projects.
- Earn tokens: get tokens from new projects launching on NEAR at seed price.
- Recover your $NEAR: At the end of the locking period, you recover 100% of your NEAR.
We are also conscious that locking NEAR for a long period of time (despite the zero-risk of losing the tokens themselves) can be tough for some users who need immediate liquidity.
In the short term, a secondary market platform will be aggregated to Meta Yield so that backers can trade their IOU (contract proving stNEAR commitment to the project) and recover liquidity. This is just another way we are making the DeFi world more open, liquid, and decentralized. You can support NEAR Nigeria by following them on Twitter here.
Support Cheddar Farm on Meta Yield Today!
About Meta Pool & stNEAR
Meta Pool is the leading liquid staking solution for $NEAR and wNEAR token holders. With Meta Pool you earn NEAR staking rewards and maintain your liquidity to participate in DeFi protocols on NEAR and Aurora.
Users staking $NEAR and wNEAR with Meta Pool receive in exchange stNEAR (staked NEAR) tokens. stNEAR simultaneously accrues staking rewards and unlocks users’ liquidity enabling them to participate in DeFi activities (e.g. lending, farming, borrowing) on NEAR and Aurora.
Stake $NEAR on Meta Pool (~11% APY)
Get stNEAR (Yield-bearing token)
Go DeFi on NEAR & Aurora (More APY and more rewards)
Meta Pool also solves the problems associated with Proof-of-Stake networks staking: illiquidity, immovability and accessibility. Meta Pool also aims to distribute staking in multiple validators to improve censorship-resistance of the NEAR network.
With a TVL of ~9 Million $NEAR and growing, Meta Pool has become in just a few months a cornerstone element of the NEAR ecosystem. Meta Pool is making NEAR Protocol more decentralized and therefore more secure. In February 2022 Meta Pool has been successfully audited by BlockSec, confirming the implementation of the highest security standards.
For more information visit https://metapool.app.
Join Meta Pool & stNEAR Community
If you have any questions or wish to be part of our project, don’t hesitate to join our official platforms and reach out to the team!
