Stratum Exchange is a native liquidity hub built as a public good to drive TVL and user acquisition to the Mantle ecosystem. Taking inspiration from Solidly and Velodrome, Stratum utilizes the ‘vote escrow’ NFT (veNFT) model, to deliver a protocol on which the projects building on Mantle to derive sustainable liquidity for their tokens and enable users to transact in a cost effective and frictionless manner.
Mantle is one of the best capitalised Layer 2 chains being incubated by ByBit enabling a robust ecosystem of diverse projects for users to experience and a rich set of partners for Stratum's liquidity layer to support.
Stratum takes inspiration from Solidly, Velodrome and many other similar protocols that have launched since and iterated on the original Solidly model. It is our strong belief that every chain should have a base layer like Stratum, to be used as a public good and deliver liquidity as a service to projects on the network, offsetting harmful ‘costs of doing business’ such as emitting native tokens in order to incentive liquidity.
Stratum has adopted some of the changes implemented by newer Solidly forks in an effort to make the DEX as fair to all users and protocols that wish to use it. These changes include:
- Introduction of 3pool for deep stablecoin liquidity and a focus on stablecoin growth on Mantle
- A sustainable emissions schedule (see emissions)
- #Meta Bribes as a way to incentivize better bribes for veSTRAT holders
- Paritally locked liquidity rewards to turn every user into a governance stakeholder
- Removal of negative voting to avoid malicious farmers acquiring access to governance.
- Whitelisted token requirement to avoid selfish LPs and promote blue chip token participation.
- Trading fees for volatile pairs = 0.3% and trading on stable pairs = 0.04%, and a fee structure designed in a way to bring the most value to $veSTRAT holders.
I always liked the voting system with tokens locked into an NFT, and this is why I've got my veNFT! Minted the 100th NFT, with 2,184.00 locked $STRAT for 12 months, and started voting.
Stratum uses two tokens to manage its utility and governance: $STRAT (ERC-20 utility token) and $veSTRAT (ERC-721 governance token in the form of an NFT). You can lock your STRAT to earn rewards and governance rights. Each locked position is created and represented as an NFT, meaning you can hold multiple locked positions.
The veSTRAT holders decide which liquidity pools receive emissions in a given epoch by voting on their preferred liquidity pool gauges. The $STRAT emissions are distributed proportionally to the total number of votes a liquidity pool receives, while voters receive 100% of the trading fees and bribes collected through the liquidity pool they voted for.
You can vote on whatever gouge you prefer, depending on what tokens you want to earn. Checking the bribes for each pool could bring additional rewards, and spreading the votes is a good idea. I earned $STRAT and $USDC for voting in the first epoch, and veSTRAT distribution on top of the other rewards.
Voting epochs last a week, ending on Wednesday, and are influencing the token emissions. The initial supply of $STRAT was 25,000,000 tokens and the weekly emissions started at 500,000 $STRAT, 2% of the initial supply. I've claimed my first rewards at the end of the epoch and decided to add them into a small $MNT - $USDC LP.
Layer2s are the only place you can create a $0.78 LP, and not worry about the gas fees. My long term plan is to slowly add more $MNT and $USDC for liquidity, and chase the best voting APR for each epoch!
The Stratum LP APR for stablecoins are somethimes above 100 %, so this could be a top options for my mUSD, USDC and USDT. The amazing return on stablecoin farming and trading is the result of the best execution for mUSD than any other DEX on Mantle.
Sometimes they go beyond that 100% APR and reach insane percentages like the LEND - wMNT pool, with 235% voting APR! Can't complain about the 204% for the 3mUSD pool, where the trio of stablecoins brings a top return for voters. I was inspired and shared my votes for all top three APRs!
PVM always bring alpha so let's talk about "Correlated" pools and how the Curve's stableswap dynamics are making the swaps more efficient for users. The initial idea was written on Vyper so it had to be re-written in Solidity for the first time, but the results are mind-blowing! The test pool experiment aggregat6ed liquidity across the entire Mantle network, coming from Moe, Cleo and others.
The new correlated pools made possible this exchange using 1Delta's aggregator, and 0.5 mETH was swapped to 0.51 wETH! Whaaaaat!?! Amazing news for crypto traders!
Residual Income:
Play2Earn: Upland / Splinterlands / Doctor Who
Cashback Cards: Plutus Card / Crypto.com
Fountains: PipeFlare / GlobalHive ZCash