Countdown for mainnet launch of Meta Pool

After several months on testnet (Live contract review) we are ready to launch Meta Pool on the NEAR blockchain. Meta Pool acts as a meta-staking-pool that distributes it’s delegated funds to several NEAR validators/staking-pools. By delegating to this smart contract, NEAR token holders greatly reduce the risk of getting no-rewards due to validator outages and also contribute to the decentralization and censorship-resistance of the network. In short, Meta-Pool is a staking shortcut, for maximizing yield and minimizing loss.

On August 5th the NEAR Hispano Guild will be hosting an AMA with the team, so we can answer any questions you have. It will be live streamed on their Youtube Channel at 10:00 Mexico City / 12:00 Buenos Aires / 17:00 Madrid / 22:00 Hanói — make sure to RSVP here.

The first liquid Staking platform on NEAR

The launch of Meta Pool is an important part of the DeFi ecosystem on NEAR because it introduces NEAR’s first liquid staking token (stNEAR) that can accrue staking rewards and represent staking positions with NEAR validators on NEAR.

Meta Pool governance decisions will be carried out via a Sputnik DAO controlled by Meta Pool stakeholders on NEAR, the governance token is called $META. There will be 1,000,000,000 $META to be distributed to NEAR stakers and liquidity providers.

A detailed and evolving technical spec sheet can be found here.

The main feature of the platform is to tokenize your stake, allowing users to use their staked near as a NEP-141 TOKEN, called stNEAR.

stNEARs represent staked NEAR. The stNEAR price is automatically incremented each epoch when staking rewards are paid.

Empowering NEAR token holders

At Meta Pool we believe that a healthy ecosystem needs diversity, so we want to offer NEAR token holders an easy to use platform that will generate interesting yield’s to them while creating a more decentralized network.

This is ultimately why Meta Pool will run as a DAO on Sputnik V2, which is NEAR’s native platform to run and manage Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. Originally launched in February of this year, Sputnik has seen rapid adoption within the NEAR ecosystem as it is frequently leveraged to provide transparency on how funds are managed by the different guilds.

As creators of Meta Pool, we want the Meta Pool platform to be governed by the NEAR ecosystem community. This means giving full control of the platform to the NEAR and $META token holders through a DAO.

The initial DAO council will be formed by members of Narwallets, NEAR Hispano Guild and the Open Shards Alliance Guild.

Diversification for DeFi on NEAR

When NEAR holders stake on Meta Pool they also get $META tokens every epoch (12hrs) on top of the native NEAR Protocol rewards which are around 10.2% APY.

The contract tokenizes and liberates your staked NEAR while keeping it generating staking rewards. It allows you to use it to operate on the NEAR DeFi markets.

Meta Pool will allow users to skip the unstaking waiting period by providing a liquidity pool for liquid unstaking. This simplifies NEAR staking, making staking and unstaking simple and immediate.

If at any given moment the NEAR Protocol implements slashing, the platform will help stakers de-risk their delegated NEAR tokens.

Another yield opportunity provided by the Meta Pool platform will be a liquidity pool for liquidity providers to earn fees. The liquidity pool is a stNEAR->NEAR swap pool, providing the Liquid Unstake functionality and generating fees for the Liquidity Providers.

Integration with Narwallet: NEAR’s chrome browser wallet

Narwallets is the only chrome-extension wallet focused exclusively on NEAR, we plan to do for the NEAR community what Metamask does for Ethereum. We are determined to bring liquid staking to NEAR holders so they can stake and liquid unstake directly from the wallet, and to help integrate stNEAR into the emerging NEAR DeFi ecosystem and beyond.

You can install the Chrome app from the Webstore — here.

Roadmap

• Phase 1: Development, Testnet MVP — done
• Phase 2: Mainnet launch Version 1.0 — August 23 -
• Phase 3: Community rewards — August 23 to September 10 2021
• Phase 4: Work on Initial DeFi Integrations and Development of Version 1.1 [Rest of 2021]
• Phase 5: Ongoing Maintenance, Upgrades, and Further Work on Integrations [from 2022 onwards]

Future Work

• Liquid Staking and Unstaking directly from the chrome-extension wallet (Narwallets V2)
• stNEAR collateralized pNEAR token. The pegged-NEAR contract token will allow users to “borrow” pNEAR tokens against their stNEAR. The pNEAR token is pegged to NEAR, so it can be used anywhere wNEAR is. By having a fixed price (instead of being incremented on each epoch), the pNEAR token can be used in Uniswap-style AMMs

$META initial Token distribution

The intent is for the initial distribution of $META to be distributed liberally to NEAR community members, stakers, platform builders, liquidity providers and project contributors in a fully transparent way.

Max Supply: 1,000,000,000

Initial Circulating Supply: 10,000,000 (after 3 month lock up)

These will be distributed to NEAR token holders that stake on the Meta Pool, also for Liquidity Providers to the stNEAR->NEAR swap pool and also you’ll receive $META proportional to fees paid when liquid unstaking.

How can you get involved?

Help us accelerate the growth of the DeFi ecosystem on NEAR and start staking on Meta Pool. For those early platform supporters can be part of the Community Launch rewards program for their contribution to Meta Pool, more information, please join our Discord Server.

If you are a community or individual that would like to collaborate in promoting the platform, we offer a partner program, please join our Discord Server.

For general information on upcoming releases and improvements, please join our mailing list.