Introducing Polaris DeFi: Competitive Yield Farming on BSC

polarisdefi
7 min readMar 11, 2021

Polaris is a fairly distributed competitive farming protocol and launchpad platform on Binance Smart Chain.

Polaris Mission Statement

Issues In Yield Farming

Although BSC is the ideal chain for yield farming because of cheap tx fees, current yield farming solutions (including Goose and its numerous forks) are not optimal.

For example, these platforms will invariably insist on users depositing liquidity tokens to their platform, when there is no need for it given they are simply routing via PancakeSwap.

The majority of these tokens also have zero utility, rendering the entire farming process valueless from the outset.

BSC: A Booming Ecosystem

In recent months, a plethora of projects have chosen to broaden their horizons to BSC. Naturally, an equal number of “launchpads” have sprung up to accommodate their liquidity bootstrapping.

However, these current launchpads offer no meaningful incentives for other teams to make use of their platform. Invariably, these platforms make the team fund reward tokens without giving anything in return, which simply serves to dilute the circulating supply and prejudices both the team and the community.

Enter Polaris

Polaris aims to take the competitive farming model pioneered by GYSR, enhance the model using the best elements of popular DeFi protocols, and apply the whole package to the gas-optimized ecosystem of BSC.

In short — Polaris will allow users to farm a fairly distributed token — POLAR. In time, users will be able to spend POLAR in Polaris’s competitive farming geysers or “Supernovas” to increase harvested rewards.

As a result, the POLAR token will provide an ongoing incentive for:

  • Projects to launch yield farms on Polaris — POLAR spent in the partner pools is transferred to the launchpad partner. Teams can use the POLAR to buy/burn their tokens, or keep the revenue to develop their project (e.g. implementing POLAR into their own farming strategies).
  • Users to farm POLAR — Users can spend POLAR to earn multiplier rewards and earn more rewards in partner token yield farms.

In addition, all non-native POLAR pools utilize single-asset staking, protecting users from exposure to impermanent loss.

How do I use Polaris?

POLAR can be farmed via a selection of pools.

A 4% deposit fee is charged on all non-native pools, which is used to fund BNB rewards and ongoing development costs.

Single Asset Staking

A downside of many yield farming protocols is their reliance on LP pairings during the initial liquidity bootstrapping phase. This brings with it associated risks of impermanent loss.

However, given that Polaris is an experimental protocol, we feel that users should be able to participate in the platform without exposing themselves to the risks associated with liquidity provision.

As such, POLAR will predominantly be farmed via single asset staking. For a detailed breakdown of all pools, please see the graphic below (note the pool reward allocations allocations may change in order to balance yields).

Polaris Development Roadmap

  1. Launch major and minor pools (available on TGE)
  • Earn POLAR rewards by staking POLAR-BNB, POLAR-BUSD, and POLAR with no fees.
  • Earn POLAR rewards by staking single assets with no risk of impermanent loss and a 4% deposit fee.

2. Launch BNB Supernova Geyser (1–2 weeks)

  • 50% of the deposit fees from pools will be converted to BNB.
  • The BNB can be earned by staking POLAR-BNB LP.

3. Integrate Launchpad Partner tokens into Partner Supernova Geysers (1–2 weeks)

  • Earn launchpad partner tokens by staking TOKEN-BNB LP.
  • Spend POLAR during harvests to earn bonus multipliers on rewards.

4. Upgrade Supernova and Partner Supernovas to Integrate Competitive Farming (1–2 weeks)

  • Earn BNB rewards by staking POLAR-BNB LP.
  • Spend POLAR during harvests to earn bonus multipliers on BNB rewards

These objectives are broken down in more detail below.

Polaris Supernova Geyser — Earn BNB by Staking POLAR/BNB

Unlike other farming protocols, Polaris will allow users to earn BNB for providing POLAR and POLAR/BNB liquidity into a geyser contract referred to as the Polaris Supernova (this is not to be confused with the basic BNB-POLAR farm).

In a similar manner to the AMPL Geyser on Ethereum, the Polaris Supernova Geyser will calculate users’ farming rate based on a multiplier that starts at 1x and increases over time for as long as the user remains staked in the pool.

Instead of rewards per block, users will own a % of the pool based on (i) time staked and (ii) total staked amount.

Users can top up their stake without impacting their multiplier, but to claim rewards the user needs to unstake. This resets their multiplier for the portion of tokens that were unstaked.

The Polaris Supernova offer various advantages when compared to traditional yield farming strategies:

  • User benefits from bonus multipliers for longer, uninterrupted farming;
  • If other people drop out of the pool — you get more pool share; and
  • Incentivizing long term staking is more beneficial for partner pools and therefore encourages other BSC projects to utilize the Polaris platform.

Launchpad Pools and Partner Supernovas

A unique feature of Polaris is the ability of any BSC project to leverage our competitive farming model to bootstrap their own protocol’s liquidity. This is an entirely novel feature in the BSC ecosystem.

As mentioned above, POLAR tokens are spendable during the reward claiming process in order to increase your reward multiplier.

What other BSC projects can then do is launch their own Supernovas and configure their own bonus multipliers and staking duration.

This is similar to when PancakeSwap launched and allowed its users to stake CAKE to earn TWT and ALPHA. The difference here is that, on Polaris, users can also spend POLAR to increase their rewards.

Crucially, project teams will then receive any POLAR spent by users when claiming their rewards from Partner Supernovas. This functions as an ongoing incentive for partners to utilize Polaris Launchpad.

Competitive Farming Upgrade

The final goal of Polaris will be to upgrade the Supernovas to enable users to spend POLAR to enhance their farming multipliers at the point of claiming rewards.

This will function in a similar manner to GYSR on Ethereum, and encourages active management of deposits in order to earn a competitive edge over other stakers.

For example:

  • User A deposits into a Supernova for 30 days without unstaking.
  • After a period of time, taking into account users A’s time in the pool, Polaris allocates User A a default 2x bonus multiplier on their pending rewards.
  • When claiming these rewards, User A chooses to spend POLAR to increase this default multiplier.
  • In this example (taking into account the price of POLAR), User A is able to spend 100 POLAR to triple their pending rewards.
  • In return for paying the 100 POLAR, User A would then receive a 3x multiplier when they unstake and harvest rewards.

The number of POLAR tokens required to get a specific bonus multiplier is calculated algorithmically, based on the average amount of POLAR used.

Further details on this will follow, but the basic model is outlined below:

Please see the Supernova FAQ for a more detailed technical explanation of how POLAR multipliers work.

POLAR Tokenomics

Due to a contract error post launch, we (successfully) migrated everything to POLARv2 which is now the default token. Token address have been updated everywhere on our socials. See this post for a deeper explanation about the migration.

Initial supply: 75,000 POLAR

  • Airdropped to POLARv1 members: 40,212 POLAR
  • Community Reserve: 34,788 POLAR locked in this contract for farming rewards, community bounties, etc

Maximum Supply: 500,000 POLAR

Deflationary Mechanisms: 50% POLAR burn on Supernova harvest

POLAR Emission rate:

  • 0.1 POLAR/block with a 50% reduction to 0.05 POLAR/block after the first 100 days. This is to reward early adopters and control inflation.
  • 5% of each mint will be automatically sent to the developer’s address to be used to fund ongoing developments.

Pool Fees:

There is a 4% deposit fee on all non-POLAR staking pools

  • 2% will be converted to BNB and will fund the first wBNB Supernova Geyser on a rolling basis
  • 2% will be sent to the developer wallets as compensation to the team

There is no deposit fee for using Supernova Geysers.

Polaris Socials

Polaris Resources

🌌 Website: https://polarisdefi.io

👨‍🌾 Farm & Supernovas: https://app.polarisdefi.io/

💻 Github: https://github.com/polarisdefi/

📖 Gitbook Docs: https://polarisproject.gitbook.io/polaris-defi/

🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/polarisdefi

💬 Telegram: https://t.me/polarisdefi

🎮 Discord: https://discord.gg/v3w9wZgcG6

📢 Telegram Announcement: t.me/polarisdefiANN

🥞 PancakeSwap: https://exchange.pancakeswap.finance/#/swap?outputCurrency=0x3a5325f0e5ee4da06a285e988f052d4e45aa64b4

Disclaimer

Polaris a DeFi experiment. The $POLAR token carries no intrinsic financial value and does not pretend otherwise.

Polaris contracts have not been audited yet, however our team contributors and developers have made reasonable efforts to ensure the protocol’s integrity through testing and collaboration, as well as by developing Polaris using battle-tested code. Any person or entity who chooses to engage with the POLAR and associated contracts are doing so completely at their own risk.

The Polaris developmental roadmap is aspirational and delivery (or non-delivery) of these objectives is entirely at the team’s sole discretion.

To facilitate faster development and improvements, the Polaris team will remain anonymous in line with common DeFi industry practice.

The Polaris team and community will not be liable in any way for financial losses incurred due to your use of the Polaris platform (including technical issues or liquidity providing activities) or $POLAR token.

Please perform your own due diligence and thorough research on Polaris DeFi and the other protocols before taking any action.

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