As you undoubtedly know Statera recently opened a writing contest here on Publish0x where the topic given was "anything you want to write about Statera". Which got my juices a'flowing, what better way to write about Statera than to give it the Full Publish0x Experience™? What's the full Publish0x Experience™ you may ask? And why are you using a (™) each time? All that and more will be answered below..
The Full Publish0x Experience™
Something you tend to notice after being on Publish0x for a while is that there are three main types of articles whenever a writing contest comes about. Now these categories don't necessarily encompass all the articles written but these categories do catch a fair portion of them. Instead of staying within those categories I chose to write a meta post because I guess I'm a stinker and it seemed like it would be fun. That's what the Full Publish0x Experience™ is. It's running the gauntlet and trying to write all three categories in one. I hope you enjoy, I've listed the article types below:
Also there's no reason for the (™), I just have been trying to use it in an article for a while.
1. Everything You Need to Know About Statera - The General Info Post
2. Will Statera Moon? - The good stuff about Statera, and a fair warning.
3. The Personal Experience aka How to Statera - Where I buy some and hopefully use it in it's intended way and report back results
1. Everything You Need to Know About Statera
What is Statera Token?
Now sometimes I can be about as sharp as a marble but I did my research here. According to the Statera (STA) website it is -
...a smart contract powered Indexed Deflationary Token (IDT), which synergizes with a trustless and community driven portfolio of class-leading cryptocurrencies. Every trade for Statera creates an arbitrage opportunity. Trading attracts liquidity, which in-turn attracts trading. Liquidity ripples and the supply of Statera decreases.
Which put into simpler terms means Statera is a deflationary ERC-20 Token whose price is tied to Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Wrapped Ethereum (WETH), Chainlink (LINK), Synthetix (SNX), and Statera (STA). As trades occur for STA the total supply decreases thus avoiding inflationary price decrease. Why should knowing that matter to you? For one reason, all four of those are currently some of the hottest and most talked about coins out there. Imagine you have a stock market fund tied to Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook when they were all just starting to hit their moon, that is what STA is currently creating. On top of that due to the deflationary nature it avoids one of the most dreaded enemies of currency out there, inflation.
What's an Indexed Deflationary Token?
Before we fully define that I think we need to define what the non-crypto version of this would be, the Index Fund, which according to Wikipedia is -
...a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund designed to follow certain preset rules so that the fund can track a specified basket of underlying investments
What I want to focus on there is "a fund designed to follow certain preset rules so that it can track a specified basket of investments". STA is designed to follow some preset rules (aka balancing and rewarding liquidity provision) following the price of the tokens I listed above. They do so through two separate portfolios, the Phoenix Fund and the Delta Token. I'll go into those below. Now the deflationary nature, a small portion of the token is burned continuously - which the goal of this is to create stability in an ever decreasing supply.
What is Delta Token?
This is a simple fund to hold your ETH/STA and earn rewards for providing liquidity. This fund is hosted on Uniswap, which this is the fund I utilize in my below section on my personal experience with STA. According to the Statera FAQ doc, located here, the daily returns on the Delta Token are 0.13%-0.50% daily which I can affirm. Per year it's annualized out to 38%-600% APY.
What is Phoenix Fund?
Phoenix Fund allows you to hold four top Cryptos in Delta, ETH, BTC, LINK and SNX. The fund is split in the ratio of 40/30/10/10/10. The nice thing about Phoenix Fund is that you don't only get returns on Phoenix but also Delta Token as well as monthly airdrops of BAL. Phoenix Fund is managed on the Balancer Pool exchange.
Wasn't STA Hacked?
When I first read we were doing an article on Statera, the name sounded familiar but I couldn't quite put my finger on where I'd heard of it before. But then it hit me, I remembered they were involved in some sort of hack on Balancer. And to answer the question simply, no. The incident I'm referencing was the fault of Balancer not accounting for the 1% burn of STA that happens in every transaction. This has since been fixed on the Balancer exchange.
2. Is Statera Going to Moon?
I'm going to be fully honest with you, I have no idea how to tell when if/how/when a certain crypto will moon. I'm by no means an expert. I've invested in hundreds of different coins over the years and have hit on some and also lost out BIG TIME on some others (rip HoboNickels). However one thing I can tell is if something is a good idea (in the past I would base this on the amount of words I understood in their whitepaper). Today it's based on current market conditions, what people are talking about most (currently DeFi, Staking, Oracles, etc.) and how Bitcoin is doing.
Now I don't think I'll go so far as to say Statera is a money printer, as my friend in r/CryptoMoonShots said above but I do believe Statera has some great potential to rocket up in price. One of the most talked about topics today is Passive Income The current trend today is to get in on anything that makes money while you do nothing and based on how STA is setup (Tied to the price of four of the biggest coins out there, deflationary and trading = more money) I can easily see it reaching some new heights this year. In fact from the time that I started writing this to the time that I'm finishing writing it STA we t from $0.06 -> $0.10. Not quite a moon shot but definitely a rapid increase in price in a fairly short period of time.
Do I think Statera will be the next DeFi Coin to moon? I'm not 100% sure, it definitely has some great potential but just like any new coin project I would exercise caution and do your own research.
3. The Personal Experience
aka, How to Statera
I chose to complete this part using Uniswap and then some of the LRC I've earned from Publish0x. The swap itself was pretty simple to do, if you've never used Uniswap before it's pretty straightforward - I've added some pictures of the swap below. It's easiest in my opinion to use a wallet like MetaMask or Portis to perform the swap.
Once I had it all swapped over my next course of action was to put my STA to work. I chose to provide liquidity in Uniswap (pictures below), while reviewing information in preparation for this article it looked like the liquidity was pretty decent already with over $500,000 of total liquidity and $300,000 worth of swaps in the last 24 hours.
When broken down it looks like $0.0029 per $2 of liquidity provided was being earned per day. So if I were to keep my provided liquidity at $30 worth of STA/ETH I could make $0.045/day. Which is nothing to write home about but is about $1.34/month and a 50%+ return on investment at $16/year - not including any increase in price for STA or ETH during that time frame (which since doing the test to finishing this article STA has already increased from $0.06->$0.10 so just go ahead and disregard my figures).
I did check out the Balancer Exchange, I've not used it before. I already have some experience with Uniswap and chose to go this route, however I may re-visit Balancer in the future to try and access the Phoenix Fund.
Conclusion
While the title of this article was a little tongue in cheek and the thumbnail is the strangest thing I've ever made, the intent was not to turn this article into a joke. I believe Statera has quite a bit of value and an interesting way to approach index funds. Just like with any new project out there, no matter who's endorsing it, it's always best to exercise caution. For just as many red flags as there are about STA (anonymous founder, previous hack - although the exchange was mostly to blame and hack funds were repaid by the STA team, etc.) there are just as many positive signs to this project.
One thing I appreciate is how the Phoenix Fund is managed, hard programmed into the smart project and done via balancing. I tried long and hard to think of a way that could be exploited or the flaws in that design and I couldn't think of any outside of a total market crash. Once again though I would recommend doing your own research, I've included links to the websites I used while doing the research for this project and I'd recommend you check those out as well. This piece was not meant to be a full guide to Statera - Just simply an introduction and opinion piece. I hope you enjoyed reading.
