For a while now, yield farming has been a popular way for projects to bootstrap their liquidity and gain new users. However, lately, the cost of the process has been on a steady rise to a point that it’s becoming increasingly prohibitive for a majority of individuals. In fact, thanks to the Ethereum gas prices being extremely high, the whole process has become a whale game. As a result, a lot of people have started shifting their focus to a more affordable solution, the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
BSC is the second-largest blockchain platform after Ethereum in terms of TVL (Total Value Locked). At the moment, in the BSC ecosystem, Alpaca Finance has a TVL of $1.7 billion USD. It lies only behind Venus and PancakeSwap. Wondering what Alpaca Finance is and how it works? This article attempts to answer all these questions. Stick around to the end of the article to learn how you can exchange your current token holdings to ALPACA. Let’s dive in!
Alpaca Finance is the biggest lending protocol on BSC (Binance Smart Chain) that features farming with leverage. The platform offers borrowers undercollateralized loans for leveraged farming positions while helping lenders earn safe and stable returns. Therefore, it is seen as an important project within the DeFi community. Alpaca itself is a fair launch project, which means that it had no pre-sale, no pre-mine, and no investor. Thus, right from the start, it was always a product that was built by the people for the people.
The way Alpaca Finance works is pretty simple. There are two ways in which you can participate in the platform. Each way provides you with some benefits. They include:
You can participate in the platform as a lender where you can deposit your tokens into lending vaults where you can earn safe and stable returns. Once you deposit them into the vault, farmers can borrow them to leverage the positions.
As a yield farmer, you have the option to borrow tokens from the lending vaults and use them to open a leveraged position. Thus, multiplying your APR by up to 6 times. This mode comes with potential risks such as impermanent loss or liquidation.
There’s another participant in the system – the liquidator. These ones are responsible for monitoring leveraged farming positions and liquidating them in case their prices drop and approach the risk of default. All liquidators are bots.
Graze is an awesome concept for those who wish to invest their Alpaca into other projects. You just need to choose an ideal pool and stake ibALPACA tokens to exchange them for other tokens from other projects. The pools vary from time to time and have a timer to show how much time is remaining to stake ibALPACA to acquire tokens of the platform. You will also be able to choose which token reward you want to graze on. If you stake ibALPACA in a pool from the beginning to the end, there is a chance that you might receive a special reward, such as an Alpaca NFT.
The ALPACA token is the platform’s native and central token responsible for governing and also capturing the platform’s value. Some of the benefits of the Alpaca token include:
Alpaca is working on launching a governance vault that will allow any users to stake their ALPACA tokens in order to acquire voting rights. 1 ALPACA will equal 1 vote. Anyone who stakes their token holdings will be able to vote and decide on key Alpaca governance decisions.
There are plans to integrate Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) with utility into Alpaca. To gain access to these NFTs and enjoy other benefits such as exclusive Alpaca merch, users will have to hold ALPACA tokens first.
There are several mechanisms put in place to ensure that economic incentives are captured on Alpaca. Some of these mechanisms include: a tenth of the 19% performance charge is distributed as “Protocol APR” to ALPACA platform depositors. 4% of the 5% of every liquidation bounty goes towards buybacks and ALPACA token burns. 10% of the 19% of the lending interest that lenders earn will go towards buybacks and ALPACA token burns.
ALPACA tokens are long-term deflationary. This means that as the platform continues to grow, more ALPACA tokens get burned. As more tokens get burned, the value of each token will continue rising steadily and permanently.
Wondering where to buy ALPACA? Don’t worry, Swapzone is the best Alpaca coin exchange platform in the crypto market today. To conduct an Alpaca exchange on Swapzone:
An exchange rate is the rate at which one cryptocurrency can be exchanged for another through a certain crypto exchange provider. Cryptocurrency exchange rates on Swapzone reflect current prices of crypto assets and are updated every 30 seconds for you to keep track of any market changes and fluctuations to profit when buying the dip or going with the best exchange rate and the lowest exchange fees. All cryptocurrency exchange providers have their own rates, which depends on supply and demand, mining rewards, costs and so on. See what else might affect the rate in our article on prices.
There are two types of exchange rates aggregated by Swapzone – fixed rates and floating rates. To receive the exact amount of crypto that is displayed at the beginning of the exchange and shield yourself against the market's volatility, opt for fixed-rate offers. If you're ready to take a risk and receive less or more than the sum displayed, go with floating-rate offers but bear in mind that floating rates may drastically change any second. You can refresh your memory on how to get the best exchange rate here.
Crypto transaction fees may vary depending on the network (Ethereum transaction fees tend to spike during the congestion on the network), your chosen cryptocurrency, an instant exchange provider as well as its transaction processing speed and internal policy. These fees may be relatively low but it’s crucial to know they may be imposed in the first place.
If you want to exchange cryptocurrency with the lowest fees, beware of the offers with a grey-colored “Transaction fees are not included” label displayed under the exchange rate. To avoid having to pay an unexpected amount of fees during the exchange, opt for those that do not have that label. Read our articles to learn more about how to exchange cryptocurrency with the lowest fees and find out which assets have the lowest transaction fees.
Transactions usually take from 5 to 30 minutes to be processed, especially if you choose currencies with speedy networks. However, there are several factors that may affect and slow down the exchange process, i.e. transaction volume, blockchain capacity, network updates, cryptocurrency itself and the capacity or chosen exchange platforms.
The processing may take longer due to the large transaction volume, congestion of the network, blockchain overload and market overload, technical issues or system failures, lack of liquidity or network maintenance.
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To exchange, buy, sell or trade cryptocurrency and store your crypto keys safely and securely, you need a crypto wallet. Choosing the best cryptocurrency wallet is a question of preference and need. To learn more, read our guide on how to choose the best cryptocurrency wallet for your needs.
There are several types of wallets for different crypto assets and tasks. Software wallets, or hot storage wallets, are connected to the Internet and come in many forms: Web, Desktop, Mobile or Browser Extensions. If you want to build a large crypto portfolio, you might want to look at multi currency wallets like Exodus, MetaMask, TrustWallet, Atomic or Guarda. If a coin or a token of your choice isn’t available there, you can always opt for a single-currency wallet that is usually designed by the project that launched the asset.
If you take safety and security matters seriously, go for hardware wallets, or cold storage wallets, like Ledger or Trezor, or even paper wallets. We strongly recommend you to do your research before creating a wallet: read the reviews to see what the community thinks, learn about the fees a particular wallet imposes for performing transactions, check out supported currencies and networks and see its security policy.
There are loads of different crypto exchange services, with new platforms emerging every month. Exchange providers differ by supported currencies, liquidity providers, fees, customer support, user interface, level of privacy and anonymity and customer support, which makes it hard for beginners to understand which one to choose. To learn more about what these exchanges offer and how you can assess them, read our guide on how to choose the best exchange platform.
To navigate them through the field full of services, we conduct research and thorough analysis of the market & list both prominent and promising exchange providers, keeping in touch with their teams 24/7. We give you all the necessary data on the offers they provide as well as their brief history, KYC/AML policies, reliability and advantages, while also indicating their downsides so that you don’t have to do that yourself.
Swapzone is an instant non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange aggregator that helps users make an informed choice when exchanging crypto assets. To make this possible, we gather the information on the exchange providers, select the parameters for comparison, aggregate and sort available deals & give an option to make a swap through providers' APIs in the same interface with a common user flow for every exchange. Still have doubts? Here's 9 reasons why you should use Swapzone to exchange crypto.
Learn how to exchange cryptocurrency with the lowest fees or zero fees as well as how to find the best crypto exchange rates and choose the safest cryptocurrency exchange provider.