SnowSwap Rudolph’s Pool Liquidity Mining Quick Start Guide
Note: This guide was originally published in February 2021.
Remind me, what is SnowSwap again?
SnowSwap is a DeFi project that provides liquidity pools for swapping between several kind of assets: yield bearing stablecoins (in conjunction with other platforms such as yEarn and Curve), and different flavors of wrapped tokens (including yield generating wrapped bitcoin and locked eth2 staking derivative tokens). One can earn SNOW tokens by providing liquidity to these pools, earning APYs between 20–200% depending on demand. The highest earning pool is Rudolph’s Pool, which can pay 100%–200% APY. This guide will explain how to stake tokens in Rudolph’s Pool.
Note: DeFi Pulse recently wrote up a great summary about SnowSwap here.
In addition to using the liquidity pools to swap tokens, one can also earn SNOW tokens by providing liquidity to the pools, liquidity to the ETH/SNOW pair pool on Uniswap, or simply staking SNOW tokens for yield. At the time of writing, these different options are offering APYs between 21% and 229%, payable in SNOW tokens.
Note: Yields are not guaranteed and can change daily. Liquidity mining is high risk. This article is not investment advice.
What is the SNOW token?
SNOW is the governance token of the SnowSwap platform. It is a standard Ethereum ERC-20 token. The SnowSwap DAO is currently under development. When it is finished, SNOW token holders will be able to directly participate in governance of the platform, including voting on changes to the protocol, such as changing fees or adding additional tokens and pools, or distributing a portion of fees to SNOW holders.
SnowSwap pays out the yield of staked tokens in SNOW. This SNOW can be withdrawn at any time, and staked for more SNOW, HODLed or sold on the open market.
I just want to get the highest yield, what do I do?
As mentioned, the top performing staking option is to provide liquidity to the ETH/SNOW pair pool on Uniswap then stake one’s LP coins in Rudolph’s Pool. Basically, one must acquire equivalent amounts of ETH and SNOW, and add them to the liquidity pool on Uniswap. One then receives UNI V2 LP (Liquidity Provider) tokens representing one’s ownership share of the liquidity pool. Finally, one stakes these LP tokens on the SnowSwap platform, under “Stake.”
The rest of this post will focus on how this is done. Other staking methods may be described in future posts.
Providing Liquidity on Uniswap (Deposit SNOW & ETH and receive SNOW-ETH LP tokens)
If you have already provided liquidity on Uniswap, you can skip parts of this section. For more information on Uniswap pools, please consult the Uniswap documentation.
First, a word of caution. When trading on Uniswap, one has to always ensure they are trading the correct token, and not some scam copy with the same name. The address of the official SNOW token is 0xfe9a29ab92522d14fc65880d817214261d8479ae. You should verify this is the same address in Uniswap.
Uniswap hosts the SNOW/ETH pool which allows anyone to buy and sell SNOW tokens in exchange for ETH:
ETH-SNOW Pair Statistics (Uniswap)
https://info.uniswap.org/pair/0xE4f8F3CB9b33247789e4984A457bb69A1a621Df3
SNOW Token Statistics (Uniswap)
https://info.uniswap.org/token/0xfe9a29ab92522d14fc65880d817214261d8479ae
Before one can add liquidity, one must possess both SNOW and ETH tokens in one’s wallet. This article assumes that one has already configured a web3 wallet using MetaMask or an alternate web3 browser, acquired ETH, and transferred it to one’s wallet. To get SNOW tokens we need to use an exchange such as Uniswap, Bilaxy, or Gate.io.
We can swap some ETH for SNOW right on Uniswap
https://app.uniswap.org/#/swap?inputCurrency=0xfe9a29ab92522d14fc65880d817214261d8479ae
Make sure your wallet is connected, select the right direction of the trade, input the desired quantities, and click on Swap. On the confirmation screen, verify the details are correct, then click “Confirm Swap” and wait for the transaction to be confirmed on the blockchain.
After ensuring we have an equivalent amount of ETH and SNOW to stake, we can continue to actually add the liquidity to the ETH-SNOW pool.
ETH-SNOW Add Liquidity (Uniswap)
https://app.uniswap.org/#/add/0xfe9a29ab92522d14fc65880d817214261d8479ae/ETH
Navigate to the pool above, enter the quantity to provide, and add the liquidity. Your wallet will then hold UNI V2 LP (SNOW-ETH) tokens which represent your stake of the pool’s liquidity. We next need to stake these tokens into Rudolph’s Pool on SnowSwap.
Staking ETH-SNOW LP Tokens on SnowSwap for Massive Yield
After staking on Uniswap, go back to SnowSwap stake page and select Rudolph’s Pool. Enter the amount of LP tokens you want to stake (presumably all of them), and click on Deposit. If you want to make future staking transactions faster (and trust the security of our smart contract), you can select the “Infinite approval” option if you like. Authorize the transactions that follow.
Your liquidity tokens are now staked on SnowSwap. Come back to the same screen and check the “Snow Earned” which is updated every block and can be withdrawn at any time. You may wish to periodically withdraw your rewards and stake them in Frosty’s Pool (currently 21% APY), or sell them.
A Word About Gas Costs
MetaMask and the SnowSwap platform attempt to recommend the optimal gas cost for each transaction. However, using the Ethereum network during periods of congestion will cost more. If you are not in a hurry, we recommend consulting gas information websites such as ethgasstation.info or gasnow.org and executing transactions at a time when it is cheaper to use the Ethereum network. Gas costs are the same no matter what quantity of tokens you are transacting, so it is economical to do one transaction of many tokens rather than many transactions of small amounts of tokens. Also, see What Is The Best Time To Transact On Ethereum?
More information about MetaMask is available at https://metamask.io.
