Impossible Finance Research Report #5 – Ariadne
As of Q4 2021, we’ve seen a number of different layer 1s (L1s) come into the picture taking its piece of the pie away from Ethereum…
As of Q4 2021, we’ve seen a number of different layer 1s (L1s) come into the picture taking its piece of the pie away from Ethereum mainnet. The main catalyst for the general increase in the movement of liquidity and mindshare away from Ethereum is the significant improvement of infrastructure, mainly in the form of bridges, which is essentially what enables the transfer of tokens from one chain to another.
Gas fees are one of the biggest barriers preventing users from accessing dapps on expensive networks. Now, with the likes of Solana, Avalanche, Fantom, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, etc. more chains offer cheaper fees, better overall user experience, and attractive liquidity mining incentives (as seen on Avalanche and Fantom), we are seeing monthly DEX volumes north of $80bn, but the liquidity on each of these chains is still somewhat siloed in each chain.
Now with more advanced bridges like Synapse, Connext, Anyswap, and Allbridge deploying on both EVM and non-EVM chains, it has enabled liquidity to seamlessly move around. For example, Allbridge has currently enabled more than $1.5bn in funds to be bridged across seven different chains, all this within the span of 2 weeks after launching. As for Synapse, a total value locked (TVL) of $545mn is distributed across 5 different chains, where the abundance of liquidity has enabled funds to be moved in an incredibly fast manner, with minimal transport frictions.
With the rapid expansion of different L1s and L2s, as a result of greater infrastructure built therein lies a significant problem within DeFi – the fragmentation of liquidity. Liquidity fragmentation moves us further away from crypto’s endgame of creating systems and protocols that are interoperable with one another due to the siloed nature of chains, restricting protocols from accessing liquidity outside of its native chain. However, we envision a future where assets and positions can act as collaterals across chains and liquidity can be unlocked across all chains and ecosystems – that way, you’d be able to have funds on an L1 like Binance Smart Chain and farm on Avalanche without having to go through the tedious process of dealing with bridges, swaps, slippage, and transaction costs on receiving blockchains.
Project Overview
Even the most ardent daily DeFi users find it difficult to constantly switch to different chains – why? Because of the opportunity cost resulting in high friction and expensive gas fees. Introducing Ariadne, a cross-chain DeFi marketplace focused on lowering the fees and frictions to enter / exit DeFi opportunities across multiple blockchains and lowers swapping and bridging costs for both EVM and non-EVM chains.
Currently, Ariadne is available on multiple testnets but would soon be deployed on Polygon, BSC, ETH, and Aurora(NEAR). Together with projects such as Ariadne, Impossible is able to continue to scale beyond the BSC chain and onto other EVM chains but most importantly, lower access barriers into high-quality projects for users on any chain.
Ariadne believes not only in lowering entry frictions to DeFi, but that the current experience of switching chains and paying gas in native currency can be much more efficient at scale. The project enables users of any supported chain to enter / exit yield farms on a multitude of blockchains, without needing to expose users to clunky bridges, swaps, slippage, and transaction costs during their daily multi-chain operations. Ariadne will have a strong pulse on any integrated chain on its platform and has the ability to fully understand the entire flow of money on decentralized ecosystems.
Project Highlights
Flexible infrastructure for frictionless multi-chain experience
Aggregate multichain money movements for future integrations and composability
Previous investors include Supernova, ExNetwork, Black Unicorn, Spark Network, Tritium Ventures, Parsiq, Legion Ventures
Strategic partners of Aurora, NEAR, APYSwap foundation and Hapi
Quick Metrics
Public Sale Price: 0.50 BUSD
Total Supply: 25,000,000 ARDN
Launchpad Sale (Unlimited Pool & Standard Pool): 150,000 USD
Investment Thesis
The Ariadne IDO is Impossible’s next step in our journey to redefine the future of interoperability and composability among different chains, continuing to set the bar for future infrastructure projects.
Cross-chain Farming
Most of the time, it’s an extremely tedious process to be an optimal “honest yield farmer” – you have to move chains to yield farm, pull liquidity from the protocol you’re farming, unstake your liquidity provider (LP) tokens, and then swap assets to accommodate for the tokens that can be transferred by the bridge and then repeat the same processes again on the next chain. And “crop rotation” frictions definitely add up over time.
With Ariadne, yield farming and DeFi participation across multiple chains become as simple as checking if the yield farm on a supported chain is live and having the necessary funds to zap across to begin earning rewards instantly. This can aid in connecting all chains that currently still operate in isolation to power new ideas and higher capital efficiency in the DeFi world.
Opportunities for Both Users and LPs
Initial farming liquidity is provided by Ariadne and its partners before making way to feature a DAO governed process. If not enough initial liquidity is present on the farm, the users will access a “universal roll-up” that will bundle transactions to reduce gas costs, removing bottlenecks for the average DeFi user – think of it like waiting for a public transportation bus rather than taking a private car to move across chains.
Onchain, Ariadne’s smart contract enters the farm(s), and mints aFarm (AriadneFarm) tokens that can be purchased/swapped on the same blockchain. At the same time, wrapped versions of aFarm tokens are deployed on all participating blockchains. This tokenized position feature can be utilised for other DeFi opportunities as well and makes positions much more fungible.
As a result, the user can instantly purchase and sell (limited by any necessary cooldown features), the tokens exiting/entering farms that would otherwise be too costly to enter or too much of a hassle to move to.
Using Ariadne, the additional yield farming opportunities opened up with lower frictions, combined with added incentives in native ARDN token, will make cross-chain defi experiences not only the easier but also more compelling.
Future Plans
The wrapped version of the farm tokens that represent your share in a given farm opens a whole host of interoperable and composable sets of strategies, such as in the lending market. Imagine instantly borrowing stables on Avalanche against your farming tokens on ETH mainnet – this is what Ariadne v2 is aiming to do as early as this quarter.
At the time of writing (October 15th, 2021), Aave features nearly $27.6bn in deposits, but only $8.0bn is being borrowed across chains, of which over $7.1bn coming from stablecoin borrowings. The level of capital efficiency for other assets across multiple chains can be further augmented with protocols like Ariadne that make it easier for users to tap into their collaterals for liquidity in layer-2 chains and thus increase the capital efficiency lending pools. Higher borrowing usage will lead to better equilibrium rates for lenders, thus attracting even more folks to join into DeFi to supply assets to counter this increased demand.
Additional future products include:
Autonomous Investment Vehicle: forget self-driving cars, how about self-driving investments? Funds deposited into Ariadne-automated strategies can just follow crowdsourced intelligence and track aggregated movements of funds that move across all multichain yield opportunities.
Risk Ratings: Because Ariadne helps facilitate the mass movement and transfer of funds across chains and dApps, it is also in a position to provide real time information about the flows of funds between products and assess the risk ratings of all multichain ecosystems.
In both use cases, because Ariadne has the potential of being the lowest-friction center for multi-chain money movements, Ariadne becomes the primary source of on-chain information flows, much as Google has become the homepage of the internet’s information flows. Much of the data today on user behavior across multiple chains is hampered by the inefficiency of gas fees and learning costs, and a lower friction economy will elevate the relevant preferences of users and help us advance the development of DeFi.
Team
As with all of Impossible’s launchpad projects, there is a great emphasis on teams – great teams; and Ariadne is no different. Eugene Shimalsky, CEO of Ariadne, is the founder of Noisy Miner, a software development studio, and was the ex-product director for Deep Dive Research and Paytomat. With him and his team’s significant experience in all things crypto and software development, we have no doubt that the team will be able to continue to innovate and push the boundaries of what is currently seen, creating a DeFi experience worthy for the masses.
Risk Evaluation
In terms of potential risks, because Ariadne requires many integrations and collaborations between blockchains and smart contracts, it increases the surface area for security exploits. As well as the typical risks involved when yield farming, such as managing liquidations when putting up collateral and impermanent loss.
$ARDN Token Metrics
Total supply: 25,000,000 ARDN
Tokens Allocated to Impossible Launchpad: 300,000 ARDN (1.2% of Total Token Supply)
Public Sale Tokens Released on Day 1: 33% unlock of claimed tokens
Public Sale Tokens Released after a 6 month cliff: 67% unlock of remaining claimed tokens*
Public Sale Token Price: 1 ARDN = 0.5 BUSD
*Tokens will be automatically airdropped into the same wallet address
Read more about Ariadne’s Philosophy and Tokenomics on their Medium
About Ariadne
A multi-chain aggregator and para-token powered dashboard to move assets cheaper and faster across one or more blockchains.
Ariadne is a cross-chain DeFi marketplace that is lowering the fees to enter/exit farms on multiple blockchains and saves swaps and bridges costs for both EVM and non-EVM chains.
Ariadne enables users of any supported chain to enter/exit yield farms on a multitude of blockchains, with virtually no lower limit of investment, and without having to deal with bridges, swaps and slippage, transaction costs on receiving blockchains etc.
Ariadne enables users of any supported chain to enter/exit yield farms on a multitude of blockchains, with virtually no lower limit of investment, and without having to deal with bridges, swaps and slippage, transaction costs on receiving blockchains etc.
Website | Medium | Twitter | Telegram
About Impossible Finance
Impossible Finance is a multi-chain incubator, launchpad, and swap platform led by Ex-Binance & DeFi veterans. It offers a robust product-first ecosystem that supports top-tier blockchain projects to targeted user audiences. With extensive support from key leaders in the crypto industry, Impossible Finance simplifies DeFi for users to enjoy fairer investing, cheaper trading and better yields.
Website | Whitepaper | Medium | Twitter | Telegram |
Impossible Tokens
$IDIA token is the core governance and access token for allocation into our launchpad IDO sales.
$IF token is the core governance and fee accrual for the swap and other non-launchpad products within the Impossible family.
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Terms & Conditions:
Risk Warning: Trading and/or generally investing in any cryptocurrency involve significant risks and can result in the complete loss of your capital. You should not invest more than you can afford to lose and you should ensure that you fully understand the risks involved. Before investing, please consider your level of experience, objectives, and risk tolerance, and seek independent financial and legal advice if necessary. It is your responsibility to ascertain whether you are permitted to use the services of Impossible Finance based on the legal and regulatory requirements of your country of residence and/or applicable jurisdiction(s)