Neil Armstrong, my uncle, of course, once called the final frontier of the moon.
Today, Ben Armstrong is going to set the record straight.
The final frontier is DeFi.
And with today's project, we're going to the moon.
By the way, we aren't actually related in case you thought he was my long lost grandpappy.
And I'm not related to that other bald guy at Coinbase either.
But today, we're going to show you the benchmark for a new good project.
Let's get it!
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Welcome to BitBoy Crypto! The largest crypto channel in all the Interwebs.
My name is Ben.
Everyday on this channel, I show you how to make money in cryptocurrency.
If you like money and crypto,
make sure to hit that subscribe button for your chance to win a full Bitcoin.
We are now over 25% of the way through the contest, so make sure to check the description below.
Today though, I'm going to be talking about a new project that we partnered with.
Now, in the last few months, decentralized finance has seen an absolute mega explosion
with various new types of financial products on the blockchain
seeking to challenge traditional finance.
There's also been a trend of new elastic supply tokens also known as rebasing or rebalancing tokens.
These new crypto assets are gaining traction and popularity in the crypto space
leaving many people confused.
Here's a comparison of existing elastic projects.
There are various supply elastic projects that have gained traction over the past few months
such as Ampleforth, Base Protocol and others.
There have also been a ton of scams that have seemed to pop up
claiming to utilize random rebasing
which my researchers say is near impossible due to technical limitations currently.
However, there are gems in the rebase token space.
And it shouldn't be ignored.
Today, we have potentially, the biggest one of them all called Benchmark Protocol.
It's not an anonymous team.
The leadership here is from the traditional finance space
which includes firms such as Citibank, Duff and Phelps.
While I hate the banks, of course,
this is a project where traditional finance is seeing the potential in DeFi shifting
to the new way of looking at finance.
The project was invented by David Mass
and is led by Harrison Woytko as founder,
Kurt Uhler as COO,
Meir Bank is CTO and Dan Fisher is the CMO.
There's way more people on the team, but I'd be here all day listing everyone,
so check out the team page yourself by going to benchmarkprotocol.finance.
Benchmark Protocol also includes advisors from projects such as Solana,
Ren,
DataDash himself, Mr. Nicolas Merton,
Binance,
CoinShares,
Ocean Protocol,
BZX and more.
With DataDash's stamp of approval and now mine, you guys know this one's going to be huge.
Partnering with DeFi.org and their affiliation with Binance and Orbs
will propel Benchmark's long-term outlook.
This will enable them to open doors to future CEX and DEX opportunities.
You may not even have to pay for it.
There are rumors of new exchange listings coming soon,
so this one is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
So what is Benchmark Protocol and how does it work?
Well, Benchmark Protocol is meant to withstand liquidation events
during periods of high volatility in the market,
which is basically all the time.
This is done by removing or adding tokens to the total supply
by conforming to capital markets, volatility-driven trading activity, etc.
The main utility behind Benchmark uses a two-pronged approach,
hedge and collateral.
The MARK token is the native asset in the Benchmark Network
and provides only the utility value.
The supply of MARK tokens adjust by tracking the movement of the CBOE Volatility Index,
also known as the fear and greed index.
Generally, if there is more fear in capital markets,
the VIX index will increase,
making it more expensive to hedge your portfolio.
The CBOE VIX futures contract is the most frequently traded,
exchange-listed volatility futures contract in the whole world.
The derivatives market, which is heavily relied upon by the VIX,
is said to be valued at over $1 quadrillion.
VIX futures provide market participants with opportunities to trade their view
of the future direction of the expected volatility of the S&P 500 Index.
Supply elastic tokens are built to adjust for inflation, for instance.
Ampleforth targets the price of one US dollar by adjusting for US dollar inflation.
However, Benchmark Protocol's target price is the SDR or Special Drawing Rights
adjusted for global inflation through a basket of five major currencies that back the IMF's SDR.
This makes Benchmark Protocol a viable alternative for inflation adjustments
which are more stable and global instead of just US-based.
Ampleforth also has set a rebase time
allowing for arbitrage situations
which may be very unfavorable to certain types of traders.
Benchmark Protocol rebalances supply within a 5-hour window
after closure of course of the New York Stock Exchange or NYSC
to reduce arbitrage activity.
It's amazing that thing still closes.
It's also important to mention that since crypto is 24/7,
supply adjustments do occur on weekends without incorporating the VIX.
On weekdays, MARK utilizes the VIX to inform the rebase mechanism,
creating a more predictive and accurate process for rebasing.
Benchmark Protocol supports innovative partnerships with the likes of Ren,
Solana, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Ocean Protocol, PancakeSwap,
Golem, QuickSwap, xDai, DODO DEX, Wanchain and many more.
Benchmark has rolled out a comprehensive LP rewards program called The Press.
The Press features core MARK pairs,
starting with MARK-ETH and MARK-USDC on Uniswap and other DEXs like UNI.
The Press will run over a course of 3-7 years
depending on distribution velocity and programs.
In order to facilitate this, the MARK per block on The Press will be routinely adjusted
based on the supply changes of the MARK token.
A unique feature of The Press is that unclaimed rewards
that have not been claimed by a wallet or smart contract
are not subject to supply adjustments.
This further promotes long-term price stability around the peg.
You can currently farm MARK tokens with Uniswap liquidity pools,
earning upwards of 300% APY on your xMARK tokens on PancakeSwap.
On QuickSwap, you could get up to 800% APY.
Balancer pools for ETH and USDC will also help you limit impermanent losses.
You can also just stake xMARK in a single asset staking model called the Standard,
and the rewards have recently been increased by 150%.
This is a very unique feature here because the project is using non-rebasing tokens
in exchange for staking MARK.
The xMARK tokens aren't affected by impermanent loss and compound interest every day.
xMARK tokens represent a fractional ownership in the overall MARK staking pool.
Users are able to swap back xMARK for their staked MARK at any point in time.
xMARK tokens are not affected by rebases.
However, the underlying MARK token representation
will be affected by rebases and still represent a fixed percentage share of the network.
The Standard xMARK token will further be used to help Benchmark Protocol forge a path
to decentralized on-chain governance.
The first step towards this goal is utilizing Snapshot.page for token weighted voting,
according to the team.
Since xMARK itself is unaffected by rebasements,
this allows Benchmark Protocol to expose MARK to conventional platforms
that are not currently compatible with elastic supply currencies.
This is great for integrations with CEXs and other projects as well.
More news of course to come soon regarding this,
according to the team.
The rumor is Benchmark Protocol is also currently building a lending platform
to be launched in Quarter 2 of this year,
featuring projects such as Golem and Ocean Protocol.
MARK is like AMPL in that they both rebase.
However, the evaluation of a $20-25 million market cap is tiny with everything the team is building
versus Ampleforth, which holds a $250 million market cap.
The addition of their Benchmark Marketplace will allow peer-to-peer lending
with some of the bigger names in crypto.
I'm not the only one that thinks Benchmark Protocol is underrated.
Token Metrics has also released a video discussing the topic.
You can pick up your own bag of Benchmark Protocol on Uniswap, ParaSwap and PancakeSwap.
As I said, we are now a partner with Benchmark Protocol,
so you can be looking for more content on Benchmark in the future.
And, of course, thank you to Benchmark Protocol for supporting the channel.
Alright, guys, drop your comments down below.
Let me know, do you like elastic supply tokens and rebases?
And if so, is this one that you're going to check out?
Drop those comments down below.
That's all I got.
Be blessed.
BitBoy out.