Damnnn Daniel(e), Back At It Again with the Frog Nation: An Overview
Frog Nation is a group of projects spearheaded by Daniele Sestagalli and his team of masterminds with the ultimate goal to #OccupyDeFi.
What is Frog Nation?
Frog Nation is a group of projects spearheaded by Daniele Sestagalli and his team of masterminds with the ultimate goal to #OccupyDeFi.
“Together, these protocols and teams seek to #OccupyDeFi: They will achieve this by taking the idea of decentralized finance from the Venture Capitalists who want to control it, the traditional finance players who want to centralize it, and the mercenary liquidity providers whose only aim is to profit from it.”
About #OccupyDeFi
#OccupyDeFi is a social movement that seeks to denounce what it perceives as the continued centralization of blockchain projects. On the steering wheel of this movement is Frog Nation, a group of fast-growing decentralized finance projects that includes Abracadabra.Money, Wonderland.Money and Popsicle Finance. Frog Nation is built around the principle that decentralization remains the key to the future of technology.
Based on tweets from Abracadabra.Money’s co-founder Daniele Sestagalli, the movement seeks to “keep DeFi decentralized, open and censorship-resistant.” He goes on to say that “making finance open will definitely make the world a better place.” The same thread goes to state that #OccupyDeFi is for everyone irrespective of whether you are “non-crypto, belong to the Frog Nation, or to the suits.”
Team
Daniele Sestagalli
Daniele has been in the blockchain space for quite some time. Based on his past interviews, he started interacting with blockchain through Bitcoin in 2011. He was the CEO of Zulu Republic, a blockchain project supposed to run on Ethereum in 2018. The project never took off, but the idea was to “make it easier for people to join the crypto revolution and empower them to take charge of their financial lives while focusing on an unparalleled user experience.”
Other key members
Another notable member goes by the alias @squirrelcrypto on Twitter. His recent tweets are all about #OccupyDeFi, and he recently told Defiant that he believes that MakerDAO’s process of minting DAI is a perfect example of decentralized finance becoming centralized.
Protocols
Magical Internet Money ($MIM)
MIM is Abracadabra’s native stablecoin. Abracadabra is a lending protocol where users typically deposit interest-bearing tokens to borrow Magical Internet Money (MIM). As a result, there is deeper liquidation and novel yield possibilities from the interest-earning collateral. Abracadabra leverages Kashi tech from @SushiSwap to provide isolated lending markets, thus allowing every collateral to function independently. Depositors will thus adjust their leverage and their risk level for each collateral.
Leverage is based on these factors: Loops and LTV.
Loan-to-Value is the amount of borrowing vs. collateral.
Loops follow this route:
Number of times collateral received
Magical Internet Money is minted
Magical Internet Money is converted into tokens
The tokens are deposited into a vault that earns interest
Tokens are re-deposited into Abracadabra
However, the LTV+Loops combination is not 1:1 with leverage. The number of loops you run with your chosen LTV will determine your leverage. Depositors can even choose to borrow MIM without leverage and low-risk liquidations.
Abracadabra ($SPELL) — the cross-chain stablecoin
$SPELL is the second token on the Abracadabra ecosystem. Users can stake this token to earn $SPELL tokens, where holders are entitled to voting rights and protocol fees. Users usually stake for 24 hours. The voting rights are non-binding at the moment. Protocol fees are auto-compounded, and they are accumulated from borrowing fees, 10% of liquidation fees for certain markets, and loan interest.
Popsicle.Finance ($ICE) — the cross-chain market maker and yield optimizer
Popsicle.Finance is a next generation platform for yield enhancement that focuses on AMM (Automated Market-Making) Liquidity Providers. Popsicle.Finance proposes a world where the entire blockchain space works together rather than on different chains.
$ICE is the governance token on this protocol. The ICE token has various functions such as voting on proposals for protocol updates, fee management and pool inclusions. Users on Popsicle.Finance can manage and stake liquidity provider (LP) tokens across different platforms. For example, users can stake Uniswap LP tokens or Sushiswap LP tokens built on the Ethereum blockchain. The same users can stake Pancakeswap LP tokens that are built on the Binance Smart Chain.
Users can also stake ICE tokens received from Popsicle Stand in a bid to receive more $ICE.
Wonderland.Money ($TIME) — the cross-chain treasury-backed reserve currency
Wonderland is a protocol that runs on Avalanche blockchain, and $TIME is one of the tokens on this protocol. Transacting on this protocol is easy and cheap and users can buy tokens on TraderJoe, stake them and also unstake them with considerable fees.
Each TIME token is backed by a collection of assets such as TIME-AVAX-LP tokens and $MIM that are found in Avalanche treasury, thereby giving it an intrinsic value.
Users stake TIME tokens on Wonderland website and earn rebase rewards, which come from the sale of bonds. These rebase rewards can vary based on reward rate set by the monetary policy and the number of TIME tokens staked in the protocol.
Those who stake $TIME receive an equal amount of MEMOries. The MEMOries balance automatically rebases at the end of every epoch. The MEMOries are transferable and also composable with other decentralized finance protocols.
Conclusion
Even though the original idea of blockchain and cryptocurrencies was to decentralize finance, we have seen various blockchain protocols that are centralized. #OccupyDeFi is trying to change this narrative where it allows users to mint a liquid asset: MIM after depositing illiquid interest-bearing assets such as xSUSHI and yUSDT as collateral. The approach opens up opportunities in leveraged up yield farming by making what would have been otherwise illiquid assets liquid or unlocking stranded capital.