I was going to write a post about low-risk strategies in DeFi right now, but this is too timely to put off.
If you're reading this, you're probably missing out on the free 1%+ daily interest on stables right now.
Let's jump right in:
- iron.finance offers a partially collateralized "stablecoin", IRON, which is backed by USDC and their native token, TITAN
- you can farm your USDC-IRON LP tokens (from sushiswap or quickswap) for 544% and 547% APR, respectively. Or,
- you can use an aggregator (like beefy.finance) to auto-compound your yields for 1.45%+ daily interest.
Beefy has a particularly convenient (though kind of hidden) feature that lets you "zap" one of the LP pairs straight into LP tokens and deposit into the beefy vault:
If you're using, say, polycat.finance, you'll have to manually convert your IRON (or USDC) into LPs. Personally, I've been using beefy for months, and I highly recommend them. Their token $BIFI earns you a cut of their protocol's revenues -- 80k were minted and the minter was burned -- and a cut of the vault performance revenue is used to buy-back and redistribute $BIFI to $BIFI stakers...
Now, why is this basically free money? Because IRON is demonstrably stable, and thus the IL on your IRON-USDC liquidity is nearly zero. Moreover, the mint and redeem functions offered from within the iron.finance protocol have created a ridiculously consistent price-action pattern with TITAN (the volatile asset backing IRON):
- when TITAN dumps, arbitrageurs quickly buy the dip and sell the TITAN back to iron.finance (in the form of IRON minting)
- they then sell the IRON for USDC, temporarily flooding the market, where
- cheap IRON is then purchased and sold back to iron.finance (in the form of IRON redeeming)
You could have witnessed this virtuous cycle happen over and over again across the last few weeks. What's more: this arbitrage strategy is creating a ratcheting price-floor for TITAN.
IRON-USDC price fluctuations
TITAN-USDC price action
So now the only question you might have is: how do I get my stables over to polygon? There are lots of ways, but I'll just outline a few that avoid the Ethereum mainnet:
- you can withdraw USDC and MATIC from AscendEX straight to the polygon network. Here's my referral code (we split the commission).
- you can bridge from the BSC to polygon using the EVO Bridge (they take a 0.5% cut).
- you can bridge from BSC, Fantom, and Ethereum mainnets using Anyswap (here's their BSC <> Polygon tutorial) -- full disclosure: I've never used this bridge.
- if you're lucky, xpollinate.io has exit liquidity on polygon (and they bridge from xDai, Fantom, and BSC).
I've used both xpollinate and Ascendex. While I prefer xpollinate, as it has an incredibly tiny fee, the liquidity just isn't there. So if you need a speedier way to get your stables to polygon, look to the other options above. With regards to AscendEX: their USDT/USDC orderbook isn't always super liquid, so you should expect slippage on the exchange.
If you need any help, feel free to post in the comments and I'll do my best.
