Cronos

Cronos is a sidechain that runs in parallel with the Crypto.com Chain. Essentially, it is the same concept as Binance's Binance Smart Chain (BSC). It is an ERC-20 compatible, smart contract capable, functional blockchain. It is also a very easy blockchain to get involved with if you are already using Crypto.com. It is also easy to get involved with it if you many other exchanges like Coinbase that carry CRO, Cronos' token.

Like most functioning blockchain options there are many defi options available on Cronos. The defi field is not as robust as Ethereum, but Cronos is much newer than Ethereum. Lending protocols are one of the cornerstones of defi on any chain. Cronos currently offers three main lending protocols 

Cronos Lending Protocols

Techtonic

Techtonic is the largest lending protocol on Cronos. It allows you to lend and borrow stablecoins, CRO, WETH, and WBTC. Techtonic's native token is TONIC and TONIC is given as rewards for borrowing and lending. You also earn interest in the currency that you are lending. Techtonic's combined interest rates for lending range from 3% to 16%. Techtonic has many positive interest rates for borrowing, meaning that the interest given offsets the borrowing cost. The borrowing rates range from -1% to 19%.  

TONIC is a the governence token for Techtonic. There is a giant supply of 500,000,000,000,000, with over 50% being given as rewards. There is currently not a use for the token outside of governance. This can create a large selling pressure on the token with such a large inflationary schedule since they are all earned unlocked.

Mimas Finance

Mimas Finance is the second largest lending protocol on Cronos. Mimas Finance is operated by the same team that operates Tranquil Finance, the largest native lending protocol on Harmony ONE. They decided to rebrand the platform and have it operate independently instead of operating a cross platform protocol. This adds simplicity and allows them to implement changes that would make the protocol operate smoother than Tranquil Finance.

Mimas Finance offers massive interest rates for borrowing and lending. The interest rates are made up of three tokens, token being lent/borrowed, MIMAS, and rMIMAS. MIMAS is the native token of the platform and rMIMAS is a locked version. The lending rates range from 17% to 30% and the net borrowing rates range from 30% to 55%. These are huge interest rates from a borrowing protocol and Mimas Finance has a great plan to add utility to MIMAS that is much more than just a governance token. 

The team at Mimas Finance has implemented several mechanisms to decrease sell pressure on MIMAS after it is earned, a common issue with lending protocols. You can lock MIMAS for 6 months and during that time you earn your share of 75% of the profits of Mimas Finance. This takes the tokens out of circulation. The locked version of MIMAS, rMIMAS, can be redeemed to MIMAS in six months or it can be staked. The interest rate the rMIMAS is higher than just staking MIMAS, this creates an incentive to keep the locked version of rMIMAS and not redeem it for MIMAS.

That is not all that Mimas Finance has done to decrease the sell pressure of MIMAS. The team behind Mimas Finance and Tranquil Finance are creating a game, Defira, that will add utility to MIMAS and Tranquil Finance's TRANQ. This will be one of the first gamified lending protocols and add a great utility to the MIMAS token. The game is due out in Q1 of 2022 and they have a large team working on it. Even if you are not interested in the game itself, having MIMAS be involved in a game will add a unique utility to a lending protocol's governance token and add another mechanism to reduce sell pressure, which usually correlates to an increase in value.

Annex Finance

Annex Finance is a borrowing protocol on BSC and Cronos. It is the smallest of the three protocols on this list and offers rewards in the lent/borrowed token and ANN, the native token of the platform. The interest rates fall in between those of Techtonic and Mimas Finance. Annex Finance makes it easy to vote in governance with your ANN, but the token does not have a unique use case. The Annex Finance interface is very sleek and user friendly. They offer other defi options other than just lending.

Lending Protocol Overview

It is great to have choices in your lending protocol on a new chain like Cronos. One very important thing to look at in your lending protocol is the utility of the token that you are get your rewards in. The team at Mimas Finance has done the best of all three of the protocols to add utility to their token, instead of the inflationary aspect of most lending protocol tokens. Another aspect to take a look at is interest rates. The interest rates on lending protocols are variable and the ones in this article will change over time. The experience and size of the protocol does matter and Techtonic is the largest protocol, but if you look at Mimas Finance and Tranquil Finance together as one protocol it has a substantial total value locked.