Tulip Protocol TULIP

Solfarm is the first decentralized yield aggregator on the Solana blockchain with auto-compounding vault strategies. It is designed to take advantage of Solana’s low-cost, high-efficiency blockchain It allows vault strategies to compound frequently and provides stakers with higher APY while requiring less active management. Although the platform is still in beta and all code is experimental, the farm aims for a streamlined user experience with optimal APYs and “set and forget” strategies. It follows the example of Uniswap on Ethereum and PancakeSwap on BSC by providing liquidity to Solana-native DEXes like Raydium and SABER. Users provide liquidity on Solfarm and earn interest on their investment and Solfarm’s native governance token TULIP, while the exchanges benefit from better liquidity.

Solfarm has already undergone a number of iterations. For instance, the team added double-asset reward pools after launch and enabled leveraged farming. In the future, Solfarm plans to optimize its front end to improve the user experience and work on a V2 version of the farm.

Solfarm was founded by a group of anonymous people with experience in the DeFi space. “Momo” and “senx” are listed as co-founders, the former having four years of crypto experience managing blockchain projects “with a keen interest and eye for DeFi products,” the latter having multiple years of operational experience in tier 1 crypto exchanges and an experienced on-chain farmer. Solfarm’s Lead Developer is “therealssj,” who’s been working in the space since 2017. “Post” is the senior developer, a blockchain developer with a background in systems administration and involved in the ecosystem since 2011. “Littlepoggers,” a mining and node-running enthusiast, is the System Admin & Junior Developer. Finally, “barney” is the UI/UX Developer with work experience for two unicorn startups.

Solfarm is the first yield farm set up on the Solana blockchain. Solana is well-known for its fast transaction times and minuscule transaction fees, making it one of the most popular blockchains to rival Ethereum.

Solana is a layer one blockchain with a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism with partial Byzantine Fault Tolerance. It has 200 nodes operating worldwide that can, at their peak, process up to 50,000 transactions per second. Solana performs a set of coordinated optimizations to achieve such impressive performance and processes transactions in a multi-threaded way, which sets it apart from slower blockchains.

One of Solfarm’s key value propositions is leveraged yield farming. Like normal yield farming, leveraged yield farming has a borrower and a lender, who deposit their assets into the lending pool to earn a variable deposit rate with automatically compounding interest. That way, yield farmers can increase their positions and earn even higher annualized yield, although they are still subject to smart contract and liquidation risks. Solfarm liquidates at a 85% loan-to-value ratio. At that point, the position will be forcibly closed and the collateral will be returned after the loan has been settled and the liquidation bounty has been paid.

Leveraged yield farming also bears a directional risk. A farmer that supplies USDC and borrows RAY to farm in the RAY-USDC liquidity pool is effectively short on RAY. A raising price of the asset will result in RAY being sold from the pool and the borrower is subject to impermanent loss. If the position remains unmanaged, this can lead to liquidation.

Solfarm offers low vault fees, with the following structures provided to farmers:

Raydium Vault Fees

• Controller fee: 0.1%
• Platform Fee: 1.4%
• Vault Fees: 0.0%
• No deposit/withdrawal fees

SABER Vault Fees

• Controller fee: 0.1%
• Platform Fee: 1.4%
• Vault Fees: 0.0%
• No deposit/withdrawal fees

TULIP has a total supply of 10 million. Token supply is split in the following ratios:

Team - 20%

Advisors - 2%

Treasury - 12%

Liquidity Provision - 5%

Strategic & Growth 12%

Liquidity Mining/Ecosystem 48%

All team tokens are vested on-chain with a cliff of six months and three-year linear vesting, with advisor tokens subject to similar vesting periods. The treasury bootstrap will be used for future protocol upkeep and possible protocol incentives, such as buy back and burns. Liquidity provision will be reserved for AMM liquidity if necessary and possible Fusion pool rewards.

Solfarm launched at the end of April 2021, but TULIP was introduced after the public beta finished two weeks later. Farmers were retroactively rewarded based on their participation in the public beta period.

TULIP is available on Serum, Gate.io and Raydium.