Everything you do on [mintbase](http://mintbase.io/), you can do via code. That’s what mintbase is all about. Still, if you are not a coder, like me who is writing to you, this does not make us jump right in, does it?

Gladly for us, this can be done easily even by non coders. Learn how in this article :)

The fact that everyone can interact with mintbases open source contracts means that DAOs on NEAR can do anything they want on mintbase — via custom function calls.

What are Custom Function Calls (CFC)? A way to insert code into proposals on the [AstroDAO](https://app.astrodao.com/) Dapp — which will fire up actions on [mintbaseJS.](https://github.com/mintbase)

So DAOs can — mint NFTs, buy NFTs, transfer NFTs, burn NFTs, list NFTs for sale, create smart contracts, add minters to that smart contract, remove minters from that smart contract, send funds to that smart contract, and even transfer the ownership of the smart contract to another wallet or DAO.

This means that the funds used will not be of the user / proposer of the function call — but the DAOs.

Every store on mintbase is its own smart contract. You can interact with this smart contract via the mintbase.io UI. Or — you know it by now — via code.

There are **two options for DAOs to act on top of the smart contracts**. Either the DAO is added as a minter via the UI, or the DAO is the creator of the smart contract.

This article is divided into 12 parts,

1.  How to create a custom function call
2.  How to get the information needed (method name, JSON)
3.  Buy NFT
4.  Mint NFT
5.  Transfer NFT
6.  Burn NFT
7.  List NFT for Simple Sale
8.  List NFT in an Auction
9.  Create a Smart Contract = Store on Mintbase
10.  Add minters to that Contract
11.  Remove minters from the Contract
12.  Transfer Store Ownership to a wallet or a DAO

## 1\. How to create a custom function call on AstroDAO?

When you go to app.astrodao.com and select any DAO — we will be using the [MintbaseDAO](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/mintbase.sputnik-dao.near) as an example here, you will be confronted with the following visual

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*BBboFazrf-piqzrN)

Clicking on the green plus will open another window which is by default: Propose a Transfer.

We do not want to propose transfer now — we are looking into CUSTOM FUNCTION CALLS — which is the last option when clicking on “Propose a Transfer”.

When you click custom function call you will see this template:

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*plXCKMQuvTy3QKnY)

Above you can see several fields that need to be filled in:

*   The description (free for you to choose)
*   A link (purple) to insert (optional)
*   The smart contract address on which the action should be fulfilled
*   The method name you want to realize
*   The JSON — the bit of code needed
*   The deposit — how much near that action will cost — will be taken off the DAOs treasury
*   The Tgas (2x) — gas needed for the transaction

Important note: only the **last vote** — which will effectively realize the action you are trying to take — will actually interact with the mintbase protocol. Therefore the last vote often needs more gas than the normal voting votes if that makes sense :). So keep in mind that you can use 300tgas for the last vote for pretty much every CFC.

## 2\. How to get the bits of code you need to create your custom function call:

This article is supposed to be a cheat sheet so you do have a place to verify that the JSON and method name you are using are right. Still — for every custom function call described here, you will need to do a certain set of steps:

You need to have a near wallet

You need to sign in to mintbase with that near wallet

You need to pretend to do any action you want to via the DAO with that individual wallet. (Minting, listing for sale, anything you want to do really)

Then, when you click mint, deploy, transfer, list, etc, you’ll be redirected to the near wallet page.

Click “more information” below the transaction costs and your ballance

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*P6F3Wc-yMwz_6S37)

Click on the method name (make\_offer, nft\_batch\_mint, create\_store, etc)

The JSON will be displayed. Copy everything without the word ‘Arguments’. From “{“ to “}”.

## 3\. Buy NFT

Right now **AstroDAO already offers a default buy NFT on mintbase function** (YAYYYY). You will need to click on custom and select “Buy NFT on Mintbase.”

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*JpkfQQmTj1-7IYSD)

Here you need to fill in:

Description

*   (whatever you want to write there… example: Buying NFT from X)

Token Key

*   you will need to get in the wallet, in the JSON, like described above…

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1036/0*fXGEzMqRQsg7RkXk)

Here you can see that the token key is: 7070:gambiarra.mintbase1.near, which you will need to insert into the astrodao.

Deposit: Value of the NFT to be bought. You can deposit a little bit more

Tgas x2: 100

Last vote 300

[Link of a successful buy](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-37)

## 4\. Mint NFT

If you want to Mint on Mintbase via the DAO, **the DAO needs to be added as a minter** via the UI or via CFC. CFC only makes sense if a DAO is the owner of the store — because only the owner can access the settings — in other words: has the right to change the smart contracts proprieties.

When you mint an NFT on Mintbase via CFC, you need to actually go to mintbase.io, realize the action you want to do but not approve it. Instead of approving it, you will click on more information and discover the method name & the JSON.

You can change some things about the JSON. For example, you can change the owner\_id and the num\_to\_mint. I would not recommend messing around with it too much though…

An example:

*   Method name:

nft\_batch\_mint

*   JSON

{  
“owner\_id”: “mariamneu.near”,“metadata”: {“reference”: “cY7KvY5ncw9JrbPkSuk3gSnJqd5eKcM\_K87YvY1fgbg”,“extra”: null},“num\_to\_mint”: 1,“royalty\_args”: {“split\_between”: {“mintbase2.near”: 3000,“mariamneu.near”: 7000},“percentage”: 1000},“split\_owners”: {“mintbase2.near”: 3000,“mariamneu.near”: 7000}}

*   Smart contract: the store you want to mint it on. In this case it was reginamintbase.mintbase1.near
*   Tgas: 30 (in both Tgas fields)
*   Deposit: 0,1N

**Last vote 300 gas**

[Link to a successful mint.](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-25)

## 5\. Transfer NFT
================

The DAO needs to OWN the NFT to be able to transfer it to someone/someDAO else. You can transfer the NFT to the DAO via the Mintbase UI really easily.

*   Method name

nft\_transfer

*   JSON:

{  
“receiver\_id”: “mintbase2.near”,“token\_id”: “24”}

*   Smart contract: where the NFT was minted on. In this case: reginamintbase.mintbase1.near
*   Tgas 30
*   Deposit : 1 yoctoNEAR (0,000000000000000000000001 )

Last vote was 300

[Link to successful transfer](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-38)

## 6\. List — Simple Sale

The DAO you are proposing to needs to own the NFT to be able to list it.

*   Method name

nft\_approve

*   JSON:

{“token\_id”: “3”,“account\_id”: “market.mintbase1.near”,“msg”: “{\\”price\\”:\\”5000000000000000000000000\\”,\\”autotransfer\\”:true}”}

*   Smart contract: the store the NFT was minted on. In this case it was reginamintbase.mintbase1.near
*   Tgas 200
*   Deposit 0.00081

Last vote 300

[Link to a successful list.](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-17)

## 7\. List — Auction

DAO needs to own the NFT to be able to list it.

*   Method name

nft\_approve

*   JSON

{  
  “token\_id”: "3",  
  "account\_id": "market.mintbase1.near",  
  "msg”:    “{\\”price\\”:\\”4000000000000000000000000\\”,\\”autotransfer\\”:false}”}

*   Smart contract: the store the NFT was minted on. In this case it was reginamintbase.mintbase1.near
*   Tgas 200
*   Deposit 0.00081

Last vote 300 gas

[Link to successful list for auction](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-19)

## 8\. Burn

DAO needs to own the NFT to be able to burn it.

*   Method name:

nft\_batch\_burn

*   JSON:

{  
  “token\_ids”: \[“79”\]  
}

*   Smart contract: the store the NFT was minted on. In this case it was reginamintbase.mintbase1.near
*   Deposit: EXACTLY one yoctonear. 0,000000000000000000000001
*   Gas 200

**Last vote 300**

[Link to successful CFC](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-27)

## 9\. Create store

The funds will go from the DAO, so the DAO needs to have 12N to create a store. 6.5 for the store and there always need to be 5N in the treasury.

Store name & Symbol needs to be small letters.

Change the owner\_id to your DAOs address (example: mintbase.sputnik-dao.near) if you want your DAO to own the store.

If you keep the personal wallet in there you will be the owner of the store but the daos treasury will have been used for it.

*   Method name:

create\_store

*   JSON:

{“owner\_id”: “**YOUR DAO.near**”,“metadata”: {“spec”: “nft-1.0.0”,“name”: “**nameofyourstore**”,“symbol”: “**up to four letters/numbers**”,“icon”: “data:image/x-icon;base64,AAABAAEAEBAQAAEABAAoAQAAFgAAACgAAAAQAAAAIAAAAAEABAAAAAAAgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJCT/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEQAAEQAAAAEAEAEAEAAAAQAQAQAQAAAAEREREQAAAAAAEAAAAAAAAAAQAAAAAAAAABEQAAEQAAAAEAEAEAEAAAAQAQAQAQAAAAEREREQAAAAAAAAEAAAAAAAAAAQAAAAAAAAERAAAAAAAAEAEAAAAAAAAQAQAAAAAAAAEQAADnnwAA228AANtvAADgHwAA+/8AAPv/AAD48wAA+20AAPttAAD8AwAA/+8AAP/vAAD/jwAA/28AAP9vAAD/nwAA”,“base\_uri”: “https://arweave.net",“reference”: null,“reference\_hash”: null}}

*   Smart contract: mintbase1.near
*   Tgas 200
*   Deposit 6.5

[Link to successful deployment](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-29)

## 10\. Add minter

To add minters to the store, the DAO needs to be the owner of the store/smart contract.

*   Method name

grant\_minter

*   JSON

{“account\_id”: “mintbase2.near”}

*   Smart contract: the store. Example: mintbasestrodao.mintbase1.near
*   Tgas 30
*   Deposit 1 yoctoNEAR, but store might run out of storage stake. 0,000000000000000000000001

[Link to successful addition of a minter](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-33)

## 11\. Remove minter

To remove minters from the store, the DAO needs to be the owner of the store/smart contract.

*   Method name

revoke\_minter

*   JSON

{“account\_id”: “mintbasecommunity.near”}

Smart contract: the store. Example: mintbasestrodao.mintbase1.near

*   Tgas 30
*   Deposit 1 yoctoNEAR, 0,000000000000000000000001 but the call actually frees up previously used storage stake

[Link to successful removal of minter](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-32)

## 12\. Transfer store ownership

The DAO needs to own the store to be able to transfer it to another wallet or DAO.

We recommend the store to be owned by an individiual wallet at least at one moment, because there are things you can only do via the UI. For example: adding a store header image, a name to the store, a description of the store, setting up default royalties & revenues, adding links… These are all actions that happen exclusively on the UI, not on the Blockchain. So that’s why CFCs can’t to that.

*   Method name

transfer\_store\_ownership

*   JSON

{“new\_owner”: “mintbase2.near”,“keep\_old\_minters”: true}

*   Smart contract: the store. Example: mintbaseastrodao.mintbase1.near
*   Tgas 30
*   Deposit 1 yoctoNEAR. 0,000000000000000000000001

[Link to a successful store ownership transferral](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/cfcsmintbase.sputnik-dao.near-34)

**NOTE**: The yoctoNEAR deposit on some method is an enhanced method of authentication. When you see 1 yoctoNEAR being required, that means we really want you to verify that it’s you calling the method.

Everything you do on Mintbase, you can do via code. That’s what Mintbase is all about. Still, if you are not a coder, like me who is writing to you, this does not make us jump right in, does it?

How can DAOs leverage Mintbase’s toolkit?

March not only marked the first anniversary of Ref Finance [1], but also, the seventh month to have passed since the release of the second version of its core smart contract [2].

During these past seven months, Ref’s TVL has grown from 0 to $100M+, and Ref’s cumulative trading volume has reached $1.6B+.
March was also the month when we saw the NEAR token’s price lead the L1 recovery by growing by ~50% [3]. In addition to this price increase, the total number of NEAR addresses hit 5.2M, a ~140% increase in the first quarter [4].

The infrastructure we are building on is gaining momentum. We are ready to support a new stream of DeFi transactions and our vision is coming to life; make Ref Finance the one-stop DeFi shop on NEAR.

The first quarter of 2022 has been intense and vibrant. Let us dive into what have been achieved and what is next.

## Mind refresher

Do you remember our six pillars for the 2022 roadmap? Here is a fresh wrapup:

- The Future is Decentralised: Promote further decentralisation
- The Double B: Deliver Better prices and Better liquidity utilisation
- Money, Money, Money: Provide LPs with the tooling to maximise profits while mitigating risks (i.e. auto-compounding)
- Better Experience: Improve user experience
- Knowledge is power: Encourage transparency and data-driven decisions
- Bridge Them All: Reduce the gap with other chain communities

Security should be used as a foundation to support and strengthen the pillars.

## What we have committed to vs. delivered

![Ref Quarterly Update: Q1 2022](https://awesome-near.s3.amazonaws.com/ref-quarterly-update-q1-2022-0.jpg)

The last version of the Auto Router (Smart Routing) was deployed on the 18th of March. Not only was it a major achievement [5], but also a unique value proposition delivered to the hands of our users. Most of the 300 active pools [6] can now be used as a bridge/hop, creating a win-win situation for market participants:

- Traders: better prices
- Liquidity Providers: fairer model (vs. winner-takes-all approach) as a trade can be processed across multiple pools at once, spreading the LPs’ revenue accordingly

Single-sided staking went live on the 17th of January. The amount staked has been increasing steadily since its release, and is now above the 2M mark.

![Ref Quarterly Update: Q1 2022](https://awesome-near.s3.amazonaws.com/ref-quarterly-update-q1-2022-1.jpg)

Ref Finance integrated the Sender Wallet. Since March 11th, users have been able to interact with the NEAR blockchain via a browser extension, giving them a metamask-like experience.

There is a one-month delay relating to the release of a liquidity aggregation feature between Aurora, the EVM-compatible blockchain built on top of NEAR, and NEAR. There are two main reasons for this delay, the first being the complexity of such a feature, and the second, being network performance issues, requiring the team to prioritise the maintenance and high-availability of Ref’s servers, to the detriment of the Build/Evol workstream.

The team is now working with a dedicated company, and associated DevOps, to ensure the continued performance and high-availability of the app.

## Other key updates

In terms of Security, the Ref Staking and Exchange contracts [7] were locked on the 12th and 28th of February, respectively. Moreover, the first Audit was completed — the details of which, along with the audit report itself, are publicly available in our documentation.

Following feedback from the community, and in line with our mission to be inclusive, we released the Support Ledger feature on the 23rd of March. Ledger users were facing problems when trading on Ref because the Ledger cannot handle large transactions due to its memory limitation. When activated, the Support Ledger option will limit transactions to their simplest form (to the detriment of more complex transactions, e.g. Auto Router), so transactions of a reasonable size can be signed.

In our goal to ‘bridge them all’, Allbridge was integrated successfully on the 10th of February, opening new liquidity flows and business opportunities (see next section).

We had two major backlog reviews, which took place on the 18th of January and 11th of March. This led to key improvements to the product, which were deployed, along with the Auto Router, on the 18th of March. These improvements include, but are not limited to:

- Showing the USD value Worth of user’s shares in Your Liquidity
- Redirect users to the pool details page after creating a new pool
- Stableswap liquidity added to Your Liquidity view
- TVL and number precision when hovering
- Price impact pop up window for StableSwap

Ref Analytics was upgraded on the 14th of March. Users can now check the APR for every pool in the Top Pools section. Overall performance was improved and new API endpoints were added in this release!

Moreover, our official documentation was completely updated and revamped in March!

Finally, the Vietnamese translation was rolled out on the 28th of February. Special kudos to our Sir Harry to enable Ref to be one step closer to the Vietnamese community!

## The team is growing

Following our successful fundraising in January [8], the team is very glad to have Amy and Gordon, who joined us on the 14th of March and 1st of April, respectively. Amy is an experienced QA Engineer and will assist Willa, the Lead QA Engineer. Gordon is a Senior Backend Dev and will work closely with Marco, the Lead Backend Dev.

The team is now composed of eleven fulltime members!

- Marco: Lead Backend Dev
- Joe: Lead Frontend Dev
- Gordon: Senior Backend Dev
- Max: Fullstack Dev
- Nature: Backend Dev
- Willa: Lead QA Engineer
- Amy: QA Engineer
- Mency: Designer & UX
- Didier: Product Lead
- Harry: Project Assistant Manager
- Fauve: Marketing Lead

## Market updates

Our famous ve$RUST has closed probably one of the hottest DeFi deals in Q1 2022. The partnership with the Celo foundation has opened roughly a $10M liquidity experiment on the following pairs: CELO-NEAR, CELO-REF, and cUSD-USDC, providing more liquidity options to both communities [9].

To leverage the Allbridge integration, Ref has also opened the first SOL-NEAR pair in the NEAR ecosystem (including Aurora), along with the ABR-USDC pool, courtesy of the Allbridge team [10].

The Secret Skellies Society, one of the most successful NFT projects on NEAR, has successfully launched their tokens, which we whitelisted on the 16th of March [11]. They have also joined the Brrr land and have opened the first farm without REF token rewards [12], paving the way for similar proposals in the future!

Note also that we had a wave of new whitelisted tokens in January, starting on the 21st with META [13], the token of the famous NEAR liquid staking solution, followed by other NEAR-native projects in the same month;

## Looking ahead: Q2 and H2 2022

![Ref Quarterly Update: Q1 2022](https://awesome-near.s3.amazonaws.com/ref-quarterly-update-q1-2022-2.jpg)

Three new evolutions have been added to our second quarter roadmap.

The team is working to upgrade the current farming contract [18]. The upgrade is planned for the end of May. The new farming contract will include a feature similar to a Certificate of Deposit (CD) Account.

> A certificate of deposit (CD) is a product offered by banks and credit unions that provides an interest rate premium in exchange for the customer agreeing to leave a lump-sum deposit untouched for a predetermined period of time. [19]

In a nutshell, farmers will be able to lock their LP tokens for a specific time period, in return for a boost to the farming rewards. The longer the locking period, the larger the boost, and vice versa.

In April, the StableSwap will welcome a new pool, empowering DeFi users with more crypto-to-stable and stable-to-stable paths. The total stablecoin supply has increased by 11% year to date, and the share of USDT in the total supply dropped from 66% to 45% in one year [20]. There is no doubt that we need to adapt our ‘stable mix’ offering!

Ref made ‘Recurring Swap’ one of the challenges in the NEAR Hackathon run by Encode [21]. A recurring swap automates buying or selling crypto. Ref’s users will have the option to choose which token they want to buy or sell, how much and how often they want that to happen. Croncat will be the backbone of such an innovative feature!

Auto-compounding and/or DeFi yield aggregators are building on top of Ref Finance. The team is working closely with Pembrock, Fluxus and Xpanse, winner of our Auto-compounding challenge [22] for the NEAR MetaBUILD Hackathon. We are confident that one of the mentioned solutions will reach mainnet in the second quarter. Our role is to support those creators, by providing help and guidance with integrating our smart contracts.

In our goal to facilitate the life of our LPs, we will keep improving the ‘Your Liquidity’ view (cf. Liquidity Management Dashboard) within the app. LPs want more than the execution piece, they want the tools that help them to take data-driven decisions.

With 118 proposals in the first quarter of 2022 alone [23], almost four times the number of proposals in all of 2021, the Ref DAO is one of the most active DAOs in the NEAR ecosystem. xREF holders will very soon be able to participate in the governance of the protocol. The team is currently assessing the Curve vs. Polkadot voting model.

For the second half of 2022, we have added the Ref Software Development Kit (Ref SDK) to the list. As we scale, the team wants the right tools to help creators build on top of Ref! A protocol with high TVL and Volume is good, but having an ecosystem around it, is even better.

![Ref Quarterly Update: Q1 2022](https://awesome-near.s3.amazonaws.com/ref-quarterly-update-q1-2022-3.jpg)

## Conclusion

Annualised liquidity utilisation, or capital efficiency, is the ratio Volume to TVL. Ref’s is approx. 27, compared to 23 for the top twenty-one DEXes and 21 for the top three DEXes [24]. In other words, Ref’s LPs earn on average an estimated 6% APR (not incl. liquidity incentives), which is 17% more than the top twenty-one DEXes’ LPs, and 28% more than the top three DEXes’ LPs.

My goal is not to compare us to the top DEXes, which would be foolish and pretentious (at this stage), but rather to look at the balance between the amount of capital supporting the ecosystem (TVL) and actual, real demand or usage (Volume).

So far, the balance seems acceptable and healthy. As we scale, the REF token circulating supply is increasing (see both graphs below), creating an opportunity to accelerate its own utility within the ecosystem.

Along with its strong focus on the product, the team is also working on a more innovative tokenomics, which aims to strengthen our positioning in the market. Keep your eyes open 👀!

![Ref Quarterly Update: Q1 2022](https://awesome-near.s3.amazonaws.com/ref-quarterly-update-q1-2022-4.jpg)

## Acknowledgments

I would like to give a big thanks to Ben (who contributed significantly to the review of the 2022 roadmap too!), and all the community and DAO members who have helped!

## References
[1] https://github.com/ref-finance/ref-contracts
[2] v2.ref-finance.near
[3] https://twitter.com/Delphi_Digital/status/1508553307907891201
[4] https://twitter.com/NEARWEEK/status/1510973145821417479
[5] https://guide.ref.finance/products/auto-router
[6] https://stats.ref.finance/stats/dex
[7] xtoken.ref-finance.near and v2.ref-finance.near
[8] https://gov.ref.finance/t/a-strategic-ref-otc-wip/448
[9] https://gov.ref.finance/t/connecting-to-celo-using-allbridge/516
[10] https://gov.ref.finance/t/farm-sol-abr/552/3
[11] https://app.astrodao.com/dao/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near-129
[12] https://app.astrodao.com/dao/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near-135
[13] https://app.astrodao.com/dao/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near-50
[14] https://app.astrodao.com/dao/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near-51
[15] https://twitter.com/ekuzyakov/status/1468319473836994568https://app.astrodao.com/dao/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near-51
[16] https://app.astrodao.com/dao/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near-54
[17] https://app.astrodao.com/dao/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near-58
[18] v2.ref-farming.near
[19] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/certificateofdeposit.asp
[20] https://www.theblockcrypto.com/data/decentralized-finance/stablecoins
[21] https://encodeclub.notion.site/4fadedcd86a3414087730fa1065b3a02?v=36d1fd87ad7b4985898c78ed8d5fdedc
[22] https://metabuild.devpost.com/details/sponsor-challenges#h_1735654753441639496589320
[23] https://app.astrodao.com/dao/ref-finance.sputnik-dao.near/proposals
[24] https://www.theblockcrypto.com/data/decentralized-finance/dex-non-custodial

The first quarter of 2022 has been intense and vibrant. Let us dive into what have been achieved and what is next.

Ref Quarterly Update: Q1 2022

We started ChainScore with the aim of addressing one of the most important limitations in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) right now, which is Financial Risk Evaluation. This is mainly due to the unavailability of multi-chain [or cross-platform] credit information which makes DeFi protocols unable to make informed decisions on risk management and treat all participants with the same level of risk.

This is where ChainScore comes in as a middleware — to broker the credit information, form risk analytics, and submit the data back to the smart contract/blockchain. We gather credit data from financial transactions on multiple chains and submit the analysed data in the form of Credit Scores for users, Ratings and Credit Reports for assets/investments, or different risk parameters which would be used by applications to manage risks.

DeFi is limited right now, and ChainScore is bringing value that we’ve been missing to build more structured or secondary markets in DeFi which are not currently possible due to unknown risk and no risk management protocols. We are bringing a similar risk infrastructure from Traditional finance to DeFi, with verifiable and secure data that could be trusted in a decentralized and transparent way.

## Credit Scores

Let’s take a look at one of our offerings “credit scores” which is based on the users’ past transactions, credit history, and cross-platform reputation, examples of standard risk management metrics.

Credit scores have been used for decades in global banking systems for risk evaluation. This is what helps the banks and institutions make informed decisions to be more profitable and offer better loan terms. More importantly, they are a metric of trust and verify the eligibility of their customers.

We see Lending/Borrowing as the main use case to enable markets and DeFi products for a more normalised set of users, which hasn't yet caught up due to over-collateralization and regulation.

Moreover, credit scores are not used just for banking transactions, we see them used at several other places such as—

1. Landlord checking tenant’s credit score before renting you a house to make sure whether they can pay the rent on time or not
2. Employers also check your credit score before hiring employees
3. Insurance companies also check the consumer’s credit score to decide whether they should insure them and at what rate they should give them the insurance

We believe the use of credit scores would also enable access to reputation to build trustful secondary marketplaces in the metaverse.

## Risk Assessment

Identifying and analysing potential risks that may negatively impact accounts, assets, and/or the application, probability of occurrence

- **Market risk**: Relates to incurring a loss due to things like market volatility, hikes in interest rates or costs, fluctuation in values, etc. These risk factors lead to under collateralization of loans, and impermanent losses due to market volatility of the crypto assets used as collateral.
We further divide Market risk into — Interest rate risk, Token risk, Equity risk, Valuation risk, Volatility risk, Systemic risk and Model risk.
- **Credit risk**: Evaluating the probability of the borrower failing to pay back to the creditor. Lending Protocols incur credit risk by extending credit to customers, due to the possibility of them defaulting on payment.
- **Centralisation Risk**: Verification if the token/pool is really decentralised, by checking the number of investment/asset holders and their association. Can any individual or group impact a user’s investment by manipulating oracles, administrative controls, or emergency measures? Centralisation risk tried to cover scams leading to rug pull or dumping from majority holders and Ponzi schemes. ‘Centralization issues’ are the biggest culprits of DeFi attacks: Certik
- **Technological risk**: We analyse several technological parameters. What portion of the code has been audited by reputable firms? Has formal verification been performed? Is the code open source? Is a bug bounty offered? Ensuring all the above measures builds up trust and assurity, that the protocol would be safe from Code Exploits or Thefts

With the above parameters and their probability, we calculate the severity of the value of their consequences. With that we provide, Risk Ratings — which would be used to analyse a more complex range of assets such as Liquidity Pools, Funds, Tokenised Assets, or just applications in general.

Using this Risk Analytics would open up a wide range of DeFi markets, that are not currently possible due to Unknown Risks. The following could be a few use cases:

- Lending/Borrowing using credit scores to verify users. Based on this, the platform could keep the lending pools safer and provide better interest rates for users with good credit history
- Trading Debts/Bonds on Secondary Markets
- Risk Rated DeFi Markets, Marketplaces, Hedge Funds, and much more
- Tranching Assets based on Risk
- Diversifying lender/investor’s portfolio based on Risk
- Building crypto-native indices

## Market

DeFi has seen massive growth in 2020–21 when it was almost 10x to 100B. We believe that this high growth is going to be resulting in new and innovative markets and assets which were not earlier possible due to the unavailability of credit risk management.

We have also seen 2021 to be the peak for losses in DeFi totalling up to 12 Billion USD. We thrive to minimize these losses by providing credit ratings and tools for risk management, making DeFi safer.

Introducing the first Credit Risk Rating Protocol for the next generation DeFi landscape.

What is ChainScore

NEAR Foundation is excited to announce that Orange DAO, a crypto collective created by Y Combinator alumni for backing Web3 startups, has selected NEAR as its preferred layer 1 blockchain. 

In turn, NEAR Foundation will invest $15 million into Orange DAO to help support the founders who are building Web3 companies on the NEAR blockchain.

“We are thrilled to have been selected by some of the brightest minds in the world as the preferred layer1 chain on which Orange DAO members will want to build,” said Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation. “We know that community-driven innovation benefits everyone, and this partnership is simply another example of our mission in practice.”

## Bringing startup accelerator expertise to NEAR

Although Y Combinator is not formally involved in the project, Orange DAO is currently made up entirely of YC alumni, including NEAR co-founder Alexander Skidanov. After starting with just a few dozen YC alums, Orange DAO has expanded in recent months to include over a thousand YC founders. 

One of the world’s leading startup accelerators, YC has been integral in developing some of the fastest-growing and most valuable tech brands. Based in Mountain View, California, YC has backed over 3,300 companies for a combined valuation of $600B, including Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Coinbase, Opensea, Twitch, and Reddit. 

YC alums created Orange DAO as a venture structure to both identify and support young crypto startups currently building the future of the Web3 ecosystem. 

Orange DAO is not the first foray into Web3 by YC founders. Back in 2017, hundreds of alumni created the Pioneer Fund, a more traditional venture vehicle, to back Web3 projects. By contrast, Orange DAO operates as a decentralized autonomous organization, using blockchain tech to help multiple users make collective decisions. 

## Why Orange DAO chose NEAR

Unlike other blockchain networks, NEAR offers Web3 software developers an extremely fast, secure, and low-cost protocol—by way of its unique Nightshade sharding approach—for building decentralized applications (dapps). NEAR’s protocol technology, as well as its bridges to other blockchains, and developer ecosystem proved highly attractive to Orange DAO’s founders. 

The Orange DAO team will leverage NEAR’s strengths to back past, present, and aspiring Y Combinator founders. The DAO will do this by helping founders apply and get accepted into YC; providing pre- and post-YC funding; as well as mentoring founders and helping where possible with recruitment and customer acquisition. 

NEAR Foundation’s funding will vest over four years, and the Foundation will also provide time and resources to support YC founders. 

NEAR Foundation is excited to announce that Orange DAO, a crypto collective created by Y Combinator alumni for backing Web3 startups, has selected NEAR as its preferred layer 1 blockchain. 

Orange DAO Selects NEAR Foundation as Web3 Startup Partner

## What is Burrow?

Burrow is a decentralized, non-custodial, autonomous money market similar in nature to Aave and Compound.

Burrow aims to unlock liquidity for interest-bearing assets, particularly layer 1 staking derivatives such as stNEAR and stETH. Users of Burrow will be able to deposit stNEAR as collateral, then borrow more NEAR to create a leveraged staking position, or borrow a stablecoin to make a self-repaying position.

## Getting Started

### New to NEAR?

If you don’t have a NEAR account, just follow [this guide](https://wiki.near.org/creating-a-near-wallet) to set up your NEAR wallet first!

### Connect Your NEAR Wallet


Launch [the Burrow app](https://app.burrow.cash/) and connect your NEAR wallet at the top right corner.

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*64arvkgK1jBbHnSi)

## How to Supply

Users can supply assets to the protocol and begin earning interest.

The interest rates are variable and will fluctuate based on the utilization rate for the given asset. (More info on the interest rate model [here](https://docs.burrow.cash/product-docs/interest-rate-model).)

Supported assets at launch:

*   NEAR
*   stNEAR (staked NEAR)
*   ETH
*   wBTC
*   USDT
*   USDC
*   DAI
*   BRRR (Burrow’s native token)

1\. Go to “Deposit” and choose the asset to supply
--------------------------------------------------

Browse to the “Deposit” section and click on the asset you want to deposit.

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*JNPE1ClmzRJeR_hZ)

2\. Select the amount you’d like to deposit and submit your transaction.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

3\. Once you have deposited your assets, you now have two options:
------------------------------------------------------------------

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*NxlqajPO080WeCrE)

(1) **Enable** “Use as collateral.”  
This means that you will now be able to borrow assets against the amount you deposited into the supply pool.

This also means that your funds can potentially be liquidated. See “Health Factor” and “Liquidation” sections below for more info.

(2) Simply supply assets, **don’t** “use as collateral.”  
This means that you will simply earn interest on the amount you supplied to the pool, without further borrowing any assets. In this case, your assets are not subject to liquidation.

You can always turn on “use as collateral” later in your “Portfolio” page.

**4\. Approve the transaction in the NEAR wallet prompt.**
----------------------------------------------------------

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*tH5MrXkUA1Jsl-Op)

Your deposit is now successfully registered, and you can begin earning interest. The “APY” (annual percentage yield) number tells you how much you can expect in $BRRR rewards for supplying assets.

## How to Borrow

Now that you have supplied your assets to Burrow’s liquidity pool, you can also _borrow_ funds against it.

1\. Designate your assets as collateral
---------------------------------------

In order to borrow assets, you must first enable “Use as Collateral.” If you haven’t turned on the “Use as collateral” button while depositing, you can adjust your position in the “Portfolio” → “Adjust Collateral” section.

On Burrow, you can pick and choose which deposited assets you want to use as collateral, as well as customize the rate of colleteralization.

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*SR-ww6eedRRNkQFN)

2\. On the “Borrow” page, select the asset you want to borrow
-------------------------------------------------------------

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*qnhPkuGcAdVyNedK)

3\. Enter the amount you want to borrow, keeping in mind the resulting Health Factor
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*LqENh-9oVNlwT2TD)

What is the “Health Factor?”
----------------------------

The risk of a position can be understood through the Health Factor, which represents the combined collateral ratios of the borrowed assets.

*   If the health factor is **higher than 100%**, it means the account is in a good state and can’t be liquidated.
*   If the health factor is **less than 100%**, it means the account can be partially liquidated and can’t borrow more without repaying some amount of the existing assets or providing more collateral assets.

To learn more about how the health factor is calculated, see [here](https://docs.burrow.cash/product-docs/health-factor).

**What is “Liquidation?**
-------------------------

Liquidation is when your position is forcefully closed by the protocol (i.e. your collateral is sold off) because, due to changes in market conditions, the value of your collateral is no longer enough to secure your debt based on the Health Factor, meaning that you are at risk of not being able to pay off your debt. This kind of insolvency threatens the protocol, and therefore a liquidation event is triggered through bots to prevent it in advance.

This might happen when:

*   The collateral decreases in value (e.g. wNEAR price decreases from 20$ to 10$)
*   The borrowed debt increases in value

You can read more about liquidation [here](https://docs.burrow.cash/product-docs/liquidations).

**TL;DR**
---------

When your Health Factor is…

*   **Green**: Your funds are (generally) safu
*   **Yellow**: Risk is moderate
*   **Red**: Your funds are at a high risk of being liquidated

Warning
-------

*   We recommend users DO NOT set the collateral utilization rate at 100%. You are asking to be liquidated!
*   The Health Factor can change if the price of the underlying assets change to a great degree. We recommend users monitor their Health Factor from time to time, especially if there are rapid changes in market conditions.

4\. Submit and approve the transaction
--------------------------------------

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*r7tLdZBetam7t0fe)

## How to Manage Your Assets

Access “Portfolio” in the menu to view and manage your Deposited and Borrowed assets.

Net APY
-------

Your “Net APY” is your total APY (annual percentage yield) which calculates how much you are earning from depositing assets (deposit APY) minus how much you owe the protocol from borrowing (borrow APY).

Withdraw
--------

Choose the asset you want to withdraw and click “Withdraw.”

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*vL_RuWr_9vBS-I_2)

If you want to withdraw _all_ your assets, make sure to repay your debt first. If withdrawing at 100% doesn’t work, lower to 99% or so and try again.

If you are withdrawing only a portion of your assets and maintaining your debt position, beware of how this will change the Health Factor and manage your liquidation risk.

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*kZQSog6DsRmQzPE8)

Adjust Collateral
-----------------

On Burrow, you can customize the rate at which your assets are collateralized, and set it differently for each asset you supply. This is different from previous lending protocols whose collateral rates were set at a default rate.

You can set the desired collateralization rate when you first deposit your assets, or go to “Portfolio” and click “Adjust Collateral.”

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*CcSD76OS-5bSimub)

Repay
-----

To pay off your outstanding debt, go to the “Portfolio” section and click the “Repay” button.

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*4DL9r-R6Hv0I6Dvp)

Deposit NEAR, Repay with wNEAR?
-------------------------------

Due to the difference in token standards, Burrow (and most other DeFi dapps on NEAR) use wNEAR (“wrapped” NEAR), not NEAR.

When you deposit, your NEAR will be automatically wrapped, so there is nothing you need to do. However, if you borrowed $wNEAR and are looking to repay, you have to do it as wNEAR. Use the [Ref Finance Wrapping Page](https://app.ref.finance/) to wrap your NEAR into wNEAR first.

In the future, Burrow will support direct wrap/unwrap on the app itself. Furthermore, the wrap/unwrap function will be integrated to the NEAR wallet so that this issue is more easily resolved.

![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*UjIGxtaAVv0hL6Bl)

To read on the difference between **wNEAR** and **NEAR**, see our FAQ.

Shortly, staking will go live on Burrow. Users can stake their BRRR and receive xBRRR, with which they can access boosted rewards and participate in protocol governance. Stay tuned!

Become a Burrow Hog


This user guide was created in collaboration with NEAR Mates and NEAR Insights.

How to Burrow: A Step-by-Step User Guide

With PembRock Finance’s early token sale now underway, we thought it would be a good time to give you some more info in anticipation of our upcoming release!
 
PembRock Finance is proud to be part of the NEAR blockchain ecosystem, as we not only see its current potential, but also opportunities for further growth as more products get introduced. As the first leveraged yield farming project on NEAR, we hope to play our part in bringing greater liquidity to the blockchain, while rewarding the expanding NEAR community with great rewards!

## What does this mean for farmers?

With PembRock and Ref Finance, farmers can borrow any available coin and create a leveraged position, meaning larger rewards. Lenders can also provide liquidity to these farmers, getting great interest with minimal risk on cryptocurrencies such as stablecoins. Then there is auto reinvesting —PembRock users can get compounded rewards by using auto reinvesting in their positions!
 
As set out in the second milestone on our roadmap, we are integrating with Ref Finance, linking its liquidity and farming pools to our protocol.

## What is Ref Finance?

Ref Finance is a community-driven, expanding set of DeFi products built around a core AMM. It is at once a decentralized exchange, lending platform, synthetic asset issuer, and much more.
 
Ref Finance benefits from the one to two second finality and cheap transactions inherent to the NEAR blockchain (just $0.005 per swap). This puts Ref Finance pretty much on par with centralized exchanges, helping bring greater legitimacy and trust to decentralized finance. 
 
Best of all, NEAR’s Rainbow Bridge to Ethereum means that traders can currently utilize ERC-20 assets from Ethereum on NEAR, with other bridges in development for BSC, Polygon, and Cosmos.

## PembRock and Ref Finance

In the next month, the first token pair from our project will be introduced on Ref Finance, giving greater value for holders of the versatile PEM token. With this integration, we hope to give a boost to Ref Finance and every farmer, while also establishing our credentials as the go-to leveraged yield farming project, even for those who have never transacted on NEAR protocol before.
 
Plenty of more news to come which we will share with you when the time is right, so stay tuned by following our social media:
[@PembrockFi](https://twitter.com/PembrockFi)

With PembRock Finance’s early token sale now underway, we thought it would be a good time to give you some more info in anticipation of our upcoming release!

Farm with PembRock and Ref Finance

NEAR is excited to announce a new partnership with SailGP, one of the world’s fastest-growing sailing events. As part of this ground-breaking multi-year partnership, SailGP will explore the sale of a new team to a DAO launched on the NEAR Protocol – a first-of-its-kind community engagement and activation platform in professional sports.

SailGP’s DAO will fuse professional sports with community-focused engagement, giving fans and crypto natives alike a new way to engage and gain access to their favorite teams, athletes, and related events. 

Under the current SailGP Teams’ Participation Agreement, this new DAO team could join the SailGP starting line-up for Season 4 in 2023.

“We welcome NEAR to the SailGP family and we are looking forward to them participating in the most exciting racing on-water, featuring the world’s best sailors,” SailGP Founder Larry Ellison said.

## How SailGP’s NEAR DAO will work

Like any other DAO, the SailGP team DAO will be a community project. Through proposals, the SailGP team DAO’s community members  will help determine athlete selection, team management, commercialization options, operations, and overall team strategy.

The SailGP DAO will be a big departure from traditional sports team ownership structures. It will help reimagine sports communities, where fans have a say in how teams form and evolve.  

## Other NEAR and SailGP partnership initiatives

SailGP and NEAR will partner for a number of other new and exciting projects to help inspire a new generation of Web3 developers to build on NEAR.

Beyond DAOs, NEAR and SailGP will collaborate on integrated technology and research and development projects in events ticketing, NFT and gaming offerings, and mobile app integration. NEAR will also use SailGP’s global technology platform to develop real-world intellectual property and Web3 applications for fan engagement, data delivery and management, league management, and more. 

NEAR will also create on-site experiences and activations at global SailGP events to help traditional industries transition to Web3 through NEAR’s simple, secure, and scalable blockchain platform. These events will be open to both new and existing NEAR community members. 

“Our mission is to enable community-driven innovation to benefit people around the world, and this partnership is a fantastic example of exactly that,” said Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, the non-for profit entity that oversees development on the NEAR blockchain. 

“We are ushering in a brand-new era of entertainment by combining sports and technology to elevate the fan experience to a level that has never been seen before, and we’re proud to be leading the way alongside a like-minded organization that shares our core values and vision.”

IMG, SailGP’s global agency for sponsorship, media rights and host venue rights, helped facilitate NEAR’s partnership with SailGP. (IMG is part of Endeavor, a strategic investor in SailGP.) 

“This deal presents an exciting opportunity to change how fans can directly influence and participate in the sports they love,” said Mark Shapiro, President of Endeavor. “We are proud to have brokered this ground-breaking partnership which is the culmination of what happens when sport, technology and entertainment collide.”



NEAR is excited to announce a new partnership with SailGP, one of the world’s fastest-growing sailing events.

NEAR and SailGP Partner on Ground-Breaking New Sports DAO

[Sender](https://awesomenear.com/senderwallet), the browser plug-in wallet for NEAR ecosystem, has officially announced a partnership with [Ref Finance](https://awesomenear.com/ref-finance).

Sender has already started the integration with ref.finance and expects to complete it by mid-March. At that time, NEAR users can experience a seamless integration and smooth experience with the browser Wallet and DEX.

Kenny, the founder of Sender Labs, said he is happy to be working with Ref and that the combination of the plug-in Wallet and DEX will allow users to have a better trading experience while keeping their assets safe.

Joe, the Frontend Lead developer of Ref Finance, said that Ref is the largest DEX in the NEAR ecosystem and the first DEX to integrate a browser-based plug-in wallet, with more features in development.

Sender, the browser plug-in wallet for NEAR ecosystem, has officially announced a partnership with Ref Finance.

Sender Announces Partnership With Ref Finance

## Lending is NEAR

After months of building, testing, and auditing since the initial announcement, we are excited to share that Burrow, the first lending protocol on NEAR, is finally ready to launch on mainnet.

To celebrate mainnet coming very soon™, Burrow is partnering up with the coveted Mr. Brown project to issue 140 Mr. BRRR NFTs for a very special NFT voucher program.

## Meet Mr. BRRR

A money hungry groundhog at heart, Mr. BRRR knows how borrowing and lending works better than anyone. That is why he brought Burrow to NEAR — to show his fellow hogs how money markets are done.

For this special NFT voucher program, we present to you the Mr. Brown-ified version of Mr. BRRR.

## Terms and Conditions

- There will be a total of 140 Mr. BRRR NFTs issued
- **1 Mr. BRRR NFT = 100 $BRRR** (native token of Burrow)
- Minting goes live every Wednesday for three weeks, starting on March 23rd, 2022. The NFTs will be minted on Paras.
- After minting, the NFTs can be traded on [Paras](https://paras.id/collection/mr-brrr-nft-vouchers-by-burrownftnear)
- After a 1 month trading period, each Mr. BRRR NFT can be redeemed for 100 $BRRR by sending the NFTs to the [Burrow DAO](https://app.astrodao.com/dao/burrow.sputnik-dao.near) — no matter the floor price
- Burrow has a pre-mining period of $BRRR for 1 month from mainnet launch. NFT redeeming will be available soon after $BRRR becomes transferable. (Dates TBA)
- All verfied NFT holders will be deemed an OG in the [Burrow community](https://discord.gg/E6p8mDKp).
- The NFTs redeem period lasts until December 31st, 2022.

## Mint Details

- Mint Price: **5 $NEAR**
- Platform: [Paras (burrownft.near)](https://paras.id/collection/mr-brrr-nft-vouchers-by-burrownftnear)

## Mint Dates

- March 23, 2022 : 1st batch mint (40 editions) + secondary market on Paras
- March 30, 2022: 2nd batch mint (40 editions)
- April 6, 2022: final batch mint (25 editions)
- After $BRRR unlock (TBA)~ December 31, 2022: NFT redeem period

## Distribution

- Non-whitelist Minting: 90
- Burrow Discord Whitelist: 15
- Ref Finance: 20
- Paras: 5
- Mr. Brown: 5
- NEARweek: 5

Join the [Burrow Discord](https://discord.gg/E6p8mDKp) for a chance to win weekly whitelist opportunities. And follow our partners’ Twitter accounts to participate in the Mr. BRRR NFT giveaways!

After months of building, testing, and auditing, we are excited to share that Burrow, the first lending protocol on NEAR, is finally ready to launch on mainnet.

Get a Mr. BRRR NFT Voucher, 100% Buyback Guarantee

We are excited to announce that WePiggy is coming to Aurora, an EVM layer 2 running on NEAR. WePiggy will join the growing ecosystem of DeFi projects building on Aurora, offering a secure, powerful, and user-friendly cross-chain lending protocol to the Aurora and NEAR community.

Aurora is a solution that allows to execute Ethereum contracts in a more performant environment — NEAR blockchain, a modern layer-1 blockchain which is fast (2–3 second transaction finalization), scalable, and carbon neutral.

WePiggy focuses on building an open-source, non-custodial crypto-asset lending market protocol that helps users realize asset appreciation and maximize utilization across many blockchain networks. On the premise of giving priority to funding security, WePiggy actively creates a more diverse lending market, optimizes the execution efficiency of smart contracts, and expands more dimensions of the business logic. Under the WePiggy multi-chain deployment plan, WePiggy is covering Ethereum, OEC, BNB Chain, Polygon, HECO, Arbitrum, Optimism, Moonriver, Harmony, Oasis and innovative public and Layer-2 networks.

## WePiggy + Aurora

WePiggy core development team will propose a specific plan for WePiggy to be deployed on Aurora.
If the governance proposal has been passed, WePiggy will be officially deployed on Aurora and the liquidity mining program will be launched accordingly.

Aurora will contribute to the building of DeFi infrastructures, including trading liquidity, lending liquidity building and price-feed integration, etc. To eliminate the systemic risk of WePiggy protocol as much as possible.

Aurora will also provide its marketing resource to WePiggy, to bring more new users to the WePiggy protocol.
Besides, more marketing events between WePiggy and Aurora are on the way.

> “Participating in the ecosystem of NEAR is an important part of our multi-chain deployment plan. The launch on the Aurora can undoubtedly get traffic support from the Aurora & NEAR community, gain greater influence, user base and capital scale, and increase WePiggy’s industry reputation and brand value. ”

> – Ron, Zheng, Founder and CEO of WePiggy

We are excited to announce that WePiggy is coming to Aurora, an EVM layer 2 running on NEAR.

WePiggy Is Coming to Aurora, Bring Multi-Chain Lending Protocol to NEAR

Do you want more?

More is $NEAR. $NEAR is now.

Aurigami is proud to announce that we have received a $2M DeFi rewards grant in $NEAR from Proximity Labs!🥳

If Christopher McCandless from Into the Wild has taught us anything, it’s that “happiness is only real when shared”, and who better to share this joy than you. As a token (hehe) of appreciation for our lovely community, we will be sharing the love of $NEAR in the form of *EXTRA YIELDS* for all of you!

## More is $NEAR 🔥🔥🔥

$NEAR incentives will be distributed to the Deposit + Borrow slots of USDC.

Users who deposit/borrow USDC on Aurigami will be entitled to receiving TRIPLE YIELDS (Deposit APY + $PLY + $NEAR)!

Our goal has always been to grow the much-needed liquidity on Aurora and boost the ecosystem’s growth. As one of the most liquid crypto assets, we believe USDC has the highest potential to help grow Aurora.

From a user’s perspective, more of you can benefit more from this targeted incentive! From a protocol’s perspective, it’s more strategic to target the asset with the highest growth potential, which is incidentally the asset with (potentially) the most idle funds in Aurora.

## So how much is more $NEAR?

In celebration of this joyous occasion, APYs will be BOOSTED with extra $NEAR reward from Mar. 16, 10:00PM UTC+8 to Mar. 23, 10:00PM UTC+8.

During this period, $200,000 worth of $NEAR (valued at the time of writing) will be distributed to the depositors and borrowers of USDC.

## Juicy Yields 🧃

With the injection of $NEAR incentives into the USDC pool, you might encounter some odd but GOOD scenarios with the Deposit and Borrow APY:

⚠️ Note: The following scenarios DO NOT take into account $PLY incentives, which when taken into consideration will LOWER the borrow APY and INCREASE the deposit APY.

⭐⭐⭐

### Scenario 1 — Deposit APY > Borrow APY for USDC

THIS IS GOOD.

Having a higher deposit APY than borrow APY means that the yield you earn from depositing is more than the interest you have to pay back on your loans.

This scenario is fantastic for recursive depositing and borrowing, since you can basically “borrow for free” to farm more incentives.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

### Scenario 2 — Negative Borrow APY for USDC

THIS IS GOOD. THIS IS VERY GOOD.

A negative borrow APY means that we’re essentially PAYING YOU to borrow, so borrow on fellow Aurigamists.

Why is this possible? The $NEAR rewards you will earn exceeds the interest you have to pay on your loans. And this is without taking into account $PLY incentives, which will push it even lower!

So what are you waiting for? Deposit and borrow now when APYs are the juuuuuiciest and incentives at the highest! 😋
Thanks to all of you, both Aurigami and Aurora are on the cusp of greatness, and this is all without the primary sale of $PLY yet!
So anon, who wants to get paid for borrowing?

Aurigami is proud to announce that we have received a $2M DeFi rewards grant in $NEAR from Proximity Labs!

Aurigami's USDC pool APY boosted with NEAR incentive!

Hello, Community (world),

Our team is excited to announce that we are cleared to launch, [GalacticWay](https://awesomenear.com/galacticway) will be live today — a next-generation NFT marketplace on the $NEAR blockchain — GalacticWay was born out of necessity, to bring the first NFT marketplace to the NEAR ecosystem that addresses a specific customer pain, access to curated collections of NFTs, on a network that is positioned for large-scale adoption, scale, and mainstream activation. Our team firmly believes that this will be the year that NFTs, and more specifically NEAR becomes mainstream.

**More about the platform itself**

The GalacticWay marketplace shares many of the core features of the predominant marketplaces on Solana and Ethereum, such as MagicEden or Opensea. From the Home page, users have access to trending, upcoming, and new drops, highlighting the top mover as our banner image on the home page. Community members will also have access to growing Stats features, that provide an overview of the top collections that can be filtered by highest list price, to lowest. Community members also can see the corresponding floor price, % of volume, volume, avg price, and more, which can be filtered by date-range.

Our goal is to be product-oriented and listen to our community. The long-term vision for the marketplace will ultimately be determined by the feedback we receive and solicit. Our goal is to further strengthen our focus on community by providing industry-leading support resolution, with a strong approach to content that will help keep engagement high and address specific trending topics across all channels, Discord, Twitter, etc.

Our system is being developed by our cross-functional team of founders, engineers, designers, marketers, and product managers, all working towards a shared goal and vision for this product, and developing a community around our work and the marketplace itself. Our team is located primarily in Switzerland and The United States.

**Why $NEAR?**

Near was first conceptualized as a high-performance network built for enterprise-grade scale — In 2018, their original mandate was to deploy the MainNet, achieved in Oct 2020. Since the focus has been on the continued growth of the ecosystem and innovative changes to the network. The most noteworthy feature is the Rainbow-Bridge, allowing for cross-chain communication between assets, ETH, 🔁 NEAR — $NEAR solves for many use cases that make competing layer-1 solutions less scalable, and therefore less appealing to enterprise institutions and organizations, and the mass-market.

Some recent highlights and innovations in the web3 space — Cross-chain portability through Aurora’s EVM and Aurora Bridge, allows for cross-chain value transfer of ETH and ERC-20 tokens — To Rubic, that recently shipped their multi-chain swap protocol allowing users to swap, or exchange Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Fantom, Polygon, and many more. The innovations are occurring rapidly, just keeping up can be dizzying. Like with anything, the best results come from a continued focus on a singular goal, and in our case, that goal is to introduce an NFT marketplace on a scalable user-friendly blockchain, $NEAR.

The world of blockchain is still somewhat ethereal to the general public with less than 20% of the US population having any true understanding of NFTs as an asset. Most of the general public and more specifically the US investment community, can see the intrinsic value of a store of digital value, which logically makes sense, a digital currency, but a jpg? It’s much harder for older demographics to see the utility and intrinsic value of an NFT. Our team sees this as an opportunity. Selling the general public on the overall utility of NFTs is something the entire industry needs to take on to ensure further growth and scale for generations to come. All of these customer problems can be viewed as opportunities, and GalacticWay will be positioned to capture some of its market shares.

Thank you letter from the team

We appreciate you, fam, for taking the time to learn about GalacticWay and $NEAR.

Our team is actively hiring, so please reach out to us if this is a project that you would like to work on — we need people with a shared vision to help our team control outcomes and continue building a great product and community–jobs@galacticway.io
If you want to follow along and be the first to know when we go live go follow us on [discord.gg/galacticway](http://discord.gg/galacticway) or [twitter.com/galacticwaynft](http://twitter.com/galacticwaynft) or come visit us at [galacticway.io](https://galacticway.io)

Our team is excited to announce that we are cleared to launch, GalacticWay will be live today — a next-generation NFT marketplace on the $NEAR blockchain.

Launching Galaticway on the NEAR Protocol

Web3 users looking for an easy bridge between fiat (currencies like the US Dollar and the Euro) and crypto needn’t wait any longer. [NearPay](https://awesomenear.com/nearpay), the first debit card and payments widget in the NEAR ecosystem, now bridges fiat and the crypto world in one seamless user experience. 

Launched in late 2021 by Switzerland-based Kikimora Labs, NearPay announced its debit card wait list in early March. NearPay initially hoped to attract 1,000 users to its wait list, but had more than 18,000 in under a week. 

“We hoped that people would welcome our card product, but we definitely didn’t expect that so many people would show interest,” said Ilya Romanov, Chief Marketing Officer at NearPay. “We highly appreciate the support of the community. And now we are working hard to deliver a product that people are waiting for.”

## How the NearPay card works

Set to release later this year, NearPay is a debit card that comes as both a physical card and a mobile-based app. NearPay offers a number of features for consumers, developers, and merchants to make instant transactions and payments using their preferred cryptocurrency, including NEAR. 

“You will see no difference between crypto and fiat payments,” reads the NearPay website. “Simple. Fast. Both directions.”

NearPay also allows users to track their spending through the app, and offers world-class security to keep accounts safe. Though some particulars are still in the works, the NearPay card will support 3DSecure and is already secured through Verified by Visa. There will also be features such as spending limits, with the full feature set becoming available by the end of March or early April. 

## A seamless Web3 gateway 

The NearPay team believes that the crypto debit card will be amongst the easiest ways to dive into crypto, making it a seamless part of daily life. 

Consumers can top up their NearPay card balances, and use it to make purchases immediately. “The cards will be NEAR-oriented but support other cryptocurrencies as well,” says Ivan Ilin, Chief Operating Officer at NearPay. 

NearPay offers several tools to developers interested in using the card for their apps and projects. To get started, NearPay offers a plug-and-play widget, simple documentation, webhooks and APIs, and a developer console. 

“For developers, we provide a simple API with an SDK,” says Ilin. “The integration is possible with a website or a mobile application. We provide a merchant dashboard where one can see all the transaction statistics.”

NearPay also helps onboard traditional businesses into the global Web3 ecosystem. The team built a payment gateway for merchants with no transaction or setup fees, allowing businesses to accept crypto for all of their goods and services, while a handy dashboard allows businesses to see data on payments, invoices, and more. 

“For businesses, we support two scenarios: fiat-to-crypto to a user’s wallet and fiat-to-crypto to a merchant’s wallet for a certain order,” Ilin explains. “We work with NFT marketplaces, DeFi projects, and many others.”

## Countries supporting NearPay 

The NearPay widget is currently covered in 56 countries and supports 27 currencies. The NearPay team is currently working on adding more supported countries and currencies, as well as making the transaction fee lower for the users.

“Our first cards will be made for Europe,” says Ilin. “But we have plans to cover all of the countries, including the United States and Asia.”

To see the full list of countries currently supporting NearPay, visit Kikimora Labs’ Notion website.

Web3 users looking for an easy bridge between fiat and crypto needn’t wait any longer. NearPay, the first debit card and payments widget in the NEAR ecosystem, now bridges fiat and the crypto world in one seamless user experience. 

Introducing NearPay: the First Bridge to Fiat Debit Card on NEAR

Aurigami has unfolded and taken off on the Aurora mainnet!

Users can now multiPLY your wealth with Aurigami, the first money market protocol on Aurora.

To start off, Aurigami will support ETH, WBTC, WNEAR, USDC, and USDT, with more assets to come soon.

In our latest testnet version, users were able to enter a maximum of 4 markets in total. On the [mainnet app](https://app.aurigami.finance/), you can rejoice knowing that there is no limit on the number of markets you can enter!

A huge part of why this was possible is owed to the recent [Aurora Engine 2.4.0 upgrade](https://awesomenear.com/articles/aurora-engine-2-4-0-release), which we are also proud to share that Aurigami had contributed to. Since the very beginning, helping the Aurora ecosystem grow and flourish has always been one of the main goals of Aurigami.

We highly recommend giving the [brilliant piece](https://aurora.dev/blog/aurora-engine-2-4-0-release) by Aurora a read if you haven’t already.

## Auditgami ✅

A quick note on our audit results — previously we had shared that 3 contract reviewers were conducting a simultaneous security audit on Aurigami. Today, we are pleased to update that we have passed all 3 of them!

Your security is our top priority and we wanted to ensure that our users can indeed multiPLY in peace before the actual release.

## Premining $PLY

Paging bridgoooors and farmoooors alike!

As a way to reward our earliest investors and supporters, premining for $PLY will be enabled starting now, and will last for 4 or more weeks.

All 5 available assets (ETH, WBTC, WNEAR, USDC, and USDT) will be eligible for premining, with liquidity incentives being distributed equally to each of the 10 borrow/lend slots.

![](https://awesome-near.s3.amazonaws.com/aurigami-is-live-on-aurora-mainnet-ply.jpg)

40% of the PLY token supply is reserved for liquidity mining, with 0.5% of this portion being emitted as premine rewards each week. This means that 20M PLY will be distributed on a weekly basis.

To view and keep track of the amount of PLY you have accrued, you can simply navigate to the [Rewards page](https://app.aurigami.finance/wallet/rewards).

More details about PLY including its complete tokenomics will be shared by the end of the premine period. For more information about Aurigami, kindly refer to our documentation [here](https://docs.aurigami.finance/).

Soon is really here now.

We are ecstatic to bring the function of money markets to the Aurora DeFi economy, and link arms with the other existing/emerging DeFi protocols to accelerate the ecosystem’s growth.

This is just the first step of many to come, now onwards to bigger and better things.

Aurigami has unfolded and taken off on the Aurora mainnet! Users can now multiPLY your wealth with Aurigami, the first money market protocol on Aurora.

Aurigami is live on Aurora mainnet

We are happy to announce the latest release of Aurora’s EVM Engine, version 2.4.0. Despite its innocuous-seeming version number, this release has had a big impact on several of our partners and thus furthers Aurora’s mission to expand the Ethereum ecosystem. Let’s get to it!

## Summary:
1. Quick reminder
2. Why is this update important for both users and developers ?
3. The Aurigami case
4. Technical details

## 1) Quick (and useful) reminder

Aurora is built on the NEAR blockchain, which differs from Ethereum 1.0 in a number of ways. The important one for this story is that the NEAR protocol places limits on how many things each transaction can do, while the Ethereum protocol only sets limits on each block (though users can set limits for their own individual transactions).

Therefore, Aurora must (in theory) fit an entire Ethereum block into a single NEAR transaction. This is quite challenging, but with Engine release 2.4.0 we have pushed some performance optimizations which move us closer to this ambitious goal.

## 2) Why is this update important for both users and developers ?

Many defi projects were meeting the error **Exceeded the maximum amount of gas allowed to burn per contract** and were confused because “gas” and “contract” are terms in Ethereum.

However, this error was actually coming from the NEAR transaction; “gas” was referring to NEAR gas (not EVM gas), and “contract” was specifically referring to Aurora’s Engine smart contract on NEAR. Given this context, the error message is pretty clear; there is some maximum amount of gas a contract is allowed to burn in a single transaction and our Engine is exceeding it trying to run these defi transactions.

Well guess what? With the 2.4.0 engine release, the problem is slowly coming to an end - we reduced the Engine’s gas usage by a factor 2, opening some very important use cases for developers, and making life easier for users by making it twice harder to accidentally hit the limit.

In particular, the amount of EVM computation that can fit in a single transaction now is sufficient to unblock some defi use cases that previously were simply not possible on Aurora.

## 3) The Aurigami case

We would like to shout out [Aurigami](https://awesomenear.com/aurigami), one of our DeFi partners, for devoting development resources to help us identify some of the opportunities for optimization that lead to this new release.

Thanks to the Engine 2.4.0 release, Aurigami was able to launch [on Aurora’s testnet](https://testnet.aurigami.finance/). As they are a borrowing and lending platform, this update was a core requirement to run their platform as smoothly as possible. It is globally even more important as this type of platform is crucial for the decentralized financial infrastructure of the Aurora ecosystem.

We are excited to see our ecosystem continue to grow and look forward to future updates that enable yet more defi use cases you know and love from Ethereum!

## 4) Technical details

If you’re still here, that’s great! You’re in for a real treat. Let’s get technical.

Let’s start with a quick recap of what the [Aurora Engine](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine) is and how it works. The Engine is a smart contract written in Rust on the NEAR blockchain. It contains a full EVM interpreter to be able to execute transactions exactly the same as Ethereum, as well as all the auxiliary logic for validating transactions before execution (checking signature, nonce, account balance vs gas price, etc).

When you send a transaction to an [Aurora RPC endpoint](https://doc.aurora.dev/getting-started/network-endpoints) our infrastructure wraps your signed Ethereum transaction into a NEAR transaction for the Engine. This means each Aurora transaction becomes a NEAR transaction, and therefore must follow the rules of the NEAR protocol. As mentioned in the summary, this is where the NEAR gas issue arises (and not Ethereum, as explained previously).

Naturally this raises the question: “how can the Engine be made more efficient so that it can do more EVM work within the same amount of NEAR gas?”

This is not an easy question to answer (and indeed we continue the optimization effort), but is critical for Aurora’s success. Fortunately for us, core developers at NEAR and developers at Aurigami, one of the affected defi projects, were willing to help us find answers to that question.

There turned out to be a few low-hanging fruits that together had a big impact.

- [Update to a more recent version of Rust](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/427) The rust compiler is good at optimizing the performance of code, and is always getting better. Simply moving to a later version of rust gave about a 1% improvement essentially for free.
- [Use little-endian representation of numbers on the EVM stack](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/sputnikvm/pull/7) The EVM technically is defined to use big endian encoding, however most modern architectures use little endian. Constantly switching the byte order of numbers going on and off the stack for arithmetic operations was quite costly compared to using little endian on the stack and only switching to big endian when necessary (e.g. writing to storage or returning a result).
- [Short-circuit the account empty check](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/439) An Ethereum account is considered “empty” if its nonce and balance are both 0 and no code is deployed there. Of course as soon as any one of those conditions is not met we need not check the others.
- Caching values read from the NEAR state by the Engine contract ([#438](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/438)) ([#446](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/446)) This improvement had the biggest impact on gas usage of the Engine. The full details as to why are given below.

All these changes together made the Engine consume around half the NEAR gas it did previously when executing certain defi transactions. This 2x improvement was enough to unblock Aurigami and allow them to [launch on Aurora’s testnet](https://testnet.aurigami.finance/).

To understand why the caching change was so impactful, we need to know a little about how NEAR represents state and how it determines gas costs. As many blockchains do, NEAR uses a trie to store the state as this allows creating fairly compact proofs of what is stored on chain. Each contract on NEAR has its own key-value storage for its state, and this is embedded within the full NEAR state trie.

NEAR is very careful about setting its gas costs. The goal is to ensure they can maintain the 1-second block time which enables the web2-like UX of nearly instant transaction confirmations. To achieve this goal it must be true that no block can take more than 1 second to process, and in particular all the transactions in the block must also fit in this time. Since gas is the measurement of computational work, the idea is simple: ensure the gas costs are carefully measured so that 1 second of work done by a transaction corresponds to a fixed amount of gas, and then set the limits much lower than that.

To have such a stringent connection between gas cost and wall-clock time, there must be a separate cost for essentially all operations a transaction could cause the node to perform. For example, there is read_base which is the cost for doing any contract state read whatsoever, as well as read_byte which is the cost on top of the base cost per byte read. Getting back to the state details, there is also the touching_trie_node cost which is the cost incurred for each node of the state trie that must be touched to read or write a value from storage.

As it turns out, these IO costs made up a large fraction of the total gas used by the Engine; more than 50% in some cases.Therefore, reducing the number of state reads necessary by introducing caching was a net win. Even though the cache logic itself has a cost (not to mention its memory footprint also has a cost), this was less than the amount saved by doing fewer reads.

To add even more nuance here, it turned out that some types of values required different caching logic than others. One particular value, called the “generation” is an implementation detail of the Engine. Each address has a “generation” associated with it. This value allows us to “delete” an entire address without actually incurring much IO cost; we simply increment the generation and ignore any state that was associated with lower generation values.

This means that reading a value from an EVM contract’s storage (which looks like a single read to devs at the Solidity level) turned out to be multiple reads because the Engine needed to read the generation first. However, the generation does not change over the course of a transaction (if an account is deleted and recreated in the same transaction these changes are actually cached in memory by the EVM interpreter, so the generation value written in the NEAR state never changes during a transaction). Moreover, a single transaction generally doesn’t touch many different addresses (even complex defi transactions rarely call more than 10 different EVM contracts). Therefore we can cache the complete address to generation mapping with each read, and this is exactly what was [implemented](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/438).

On the other hand, EVM contract storage lookup themselves could not be fully cached without significant overhead both because the values could potentially be much larger than the 32-bit number representing the generation, and because the keys could be much more numerous; if a transaction invokes 10 different contracts and each had to read 10 values from storage then that is 100 different keys to cache along with their values.

Moreover, it’s not clear all this caching would be worthwhile since a given value from the contract storage may not be read multiple times, whereas we were essentially guaranteed to need the generation value for an address multiple times. Therefore, the same kind of cache we used for generation values was not suitable for more general caching. However, it did benefit from a different kind of cache. Due to an inefficiency in the EVM interpreter (which we will address properly in the future), it turned out that what looked like reading a value once at the Solidity level, translated into consecutive, repeated reads of that value at the Engine level. There were examples where the same value could be read 3 or 4 times in a row! Fortunately consecutive, repeated reads can be addressed with an extremely simple LRU cache of size 1, and this is what was [implemented](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/pull/446).

Whew, congrats on making it to the end! I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the Aurora Engine. We continue this kind of optimization work as we advance our mission to expand Aurora to include more and more use cases. If this sounded interesting to you and you are proficient in Rust, consider taking a look at our careers page, we’d love to hear from you.

Despite its innocuous-seeming version number, this release has had a big impact on several of our partners and thus furthers Aurora’s mission to expand the Ethereum ecosystem.

AwesomeNEAR

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