As a continuation of my series on Maximizing Your Publish0x Earnings, I'd like to focus in on the second token Publish0x has integrated for tipping, Ampleforth (AMPL). AMPL is an algorithmic stablecoin that uses rebases to hold it's peg, meaning supply expands or contracts every 24h in response to it's value deviating from a 1 USD target.
This differs greatly from a traditional USD stablecoin in that there is no fiat backing AMPL, just an algorithm that expands token supply when over peg or contracts token supply when under peg. The logic behind this is when over peg, the expanded token supply incentivizes holders to sell their AMPL at a premium while conversely incentivizing holders to buy at a discount when under peg.
When I first learned of AMPL and it's rebasing mechanic I was a little confused and scared of what effect that would have on my earnings here. However the more I've learned about it and some of the ways I could utilize it to gain even more profit, that fear turned to excitement. In an effort to once again share some of my findings, I'd like to go through three different strategies to maximize your AMPL earnings from Publish0x ranging from beginner difficulty to advanced. Without further ado, let's get into them.
Beginner
This strategy is purely for beginners or those with a low risk profile. If you consider yourself a bit more advanced you can continue to the next sections below, but before anything else you will need to decide how you'll be storing your AMPL.
There are a few options to choose from but I personally like MetaMask, Trust Wallet and Atomic Wallet. If you have the money you could choose to get a Ledger hardware wallet for added security, however this should not be necessary unless you're holding a large amount of funds. Lastly you could also choose to withdraw it to your KuCoin account.
For a beginner the number one thing about AMPL that needs to be understood is no matter the rebase, you will always hold the same percentage of the total AMPL supply. So if you hold 1% of the total token supply and AMPL rebases negatively, you will still hold 1% of the total token supply. If AMPL rebases positively then you will still hold 1% of the total supply, you'll just be holding more AMPL. This is particularly attractive for long term investors.
So the strategy here is to hold and accumulate when price is below peg and sell when it's far above peg. This has happened quite a few times in AMPL's existence, each time the rewards for holding during down times have been well worth it. If you're adverse to timing the market like this there are alerts you can setup through CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko or a bevy of other applications that will let you know when AMPL's price goes above or below a certain threshold.
Intermediate
For those a bit more experienced in crypto and DeFi in general, you can put your AMPL to work. Currently the best way to do so on Ethereum is to provide liquidity on Uniswap, Balancer or Sushiswap then stake those LP tokens in Ampleforth's "Geysers".
These Geysers reward AMPL for staking your LP tokens, to the tune of 2-21.2% additional APY. It's currently unknown how long these Geyser programs will run. However they've already been running for some time now so I expect this to continue for at least the next few months.
If you'd rather support the BSC ecosystem you can bridge your AMPL to BSC (guide here), provide liquidity on PancakeSwap to the AMPL-BUSD pair and earn roughly 90% APY paid in cake. I personally like this farming method a bit better, not only because the APY is higher but it's essentially a stable pair.
As a small warning, you will experience impermanent loss (IL) no matter which pair you choose due to AMPL's rebasing mechanics. IL is best offset in the Balancer LP or on BSC due to the stablecoin pairing but you will experience it nonetheless.
Advanced
This is only for the advanced Crypto/DeFi user so I do not recommend you try these unless you have quite a bit of experience in this space and that would be using your AMPL as collateral to take out a loan. You can supply or take out a loan in AMPL on Yield.Credit and a partnership with Aave is currently in the voting phase but I do expect it to pass with how the vote is going.
If you're in this category I don't need to explain exactly how this works but I can share with you that Rari Capital has taken notice of how the proposal is going down with Aave and recently reached out to the AMPL team for partnership. So pretty soon there will be quite a few more options for utilizing your AMPL holdings.
Bonus Information
This doesn't really fall into any of the info above, but I think could potentially be included in the future. The Amplesense DAO is working on elastic vaults that would help protect users from negative rebases and allow them to earn yield on their AMPL. There's also been talk of a protocol similar to Maker developed by Ampleforth as well as an elastic wallet and AMM. I have no idea when those would launch but they all seem pretty bullish for AMPL's future.
Final Thoughts
Ampleforth seems to be in the process of building an entire ecosystem around it's elastic supply and rebase mechanics. When I first looked into AMPL it did not have nearly this amount of development and future projects on it's radar while today it seems the crypto community at large has come a lot more to terms with rebasing tokens like AMPL. I look forward to being a part of several of these projects and what's to come.
Let me know if there's anything I missed in Ampleforth's ecosystem, thanks for reading!
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