Ref Finance is a community-led, multi-purpose DeFi platform built on NEAR Protocol.
Ref takes full advantage of NEAR’s low fees, one-to-two second finality, and WebAssembly-based runtime (hello, Rust smart contracts!).
In addition to the advantages of being built on top of NEAR, Ref Finance provides:
- Multiple pools in one contract
- Atomic transactions
- Customisable pool fee
Features
↔️ Trade
Trade tokens with our automated market maker (AMM) exchange
💰 Pool
Provide liquidity and earn revenue from swap fee
🌾 Farm
Stake LP tokens into farms and earn rewards in return
🌈 Stake
Stake REF tokens to earn more REF tokens, by earning fees generated by the protocol
Genesis
Ref Finance was initially created by Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol. The first commit on Github was made on March 9, 2021.
Following the deployment of the application in April 2021, Proximity Labs, a research and development company focused on NEAR, received a grant from the NEAR Foundation to bootstrap and scale Ref Finance.
Early June 2021, Proximity set up the Ref Finance DAO. DAO members were selected based on their value, contribution, and activity across the board (mainly Telegram and Discord).
Tokenomics
General Information
REF is a Governance token that also rewards its holders with a protocol revenue sharing model.
- Token name: Ref Finance
- Ticker: REF
- Fungible Token Contract: token.v2.ref-finance.near
- Fungible Token Standard: NEP-141
- Fixed Supply: 100,000,000
- IDO: 2,500,000 auctioned via Skyward Finance (July 26–31, 2021)
Token Allocation
| Categories | Allocation | Release Schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Liquidity Incentives | 60% | Year 1: 25% Year 2: 18.3% Year 3: 11.7% Year 4: 5% |
| Community Contributions | 20% | N/A |
| Development Fund | 10% | 4-year linear release |
| Early Users Airdrop | 1% | 3-month vesting with 3-month cliff |
| Future Airdrop(s) | 2% | TBD |
| IDO (Skyward Auction) | 2.5% | 1-week auction |
| REF Token Liquidity Provisions | 2.5% | N/A |
| Strategic Airdrop | 2% | N/A |
Token Utility
- Speculation: Users who buy REF tokens with the objective to sell at a higher price in the future
- Earning protocol revenue: Users who stake REF tokens to earn fees generated by the protocol
- Pooling: Users who provide liquidity with any REF token pairs earn swap fee from the associated pool(s)
- Farming: Users who stake their LP tokens into different farms, thus earning additional revenue
- Governance (Under Development): Users who stake xREF to participate in the governance and vote on key proposals
Governance
DAO
The current DAO (ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near) uses SputnikDAO contract to manage its affairs.
The DAO has two different roles:
- Council: Council members can create proposals and vote. Only Council members can create proposals. If the majority of the Council confirms or rejects a proposal, that decision will stand
- Community: Community members can vote on proposals. If the majority of the Community confirms or rejects a proposal, that decision will stand. For most proposals, the Council will defer to the Community's decision, and refrain from voting
Core Values
Beyond voting power, anyone in our community is welcomed and encouraged to participate in the activities of the project, including, but not limited to:
- Project Management: planning, project methodology, and documentation
- Product Testing: unit test and end-to-end test
- Product Strategy: benchmark, market analysis, and go-to-market plan
- User Support and Moderation
- PR and Communication
In addition to proactiveness, Community members shall:
- Challenge project proposals
- Share their opinion about different matters raised by the Community
- Be proactive and act in the protocol’s best interests
- Exercise independent judgement (Community members should not be delegates who simply implement the commands of other parties)
- Exercise their voting right
- Participate in the Community calls and meetups