Staking & Farming

iYield
7 min readDec 2, 2020

While we have been silent with the updates for the past three weeks, our developers have been working extremely hard to bring Yield Bank’s features to life. In this update the iYield team is excited to present to you our staking structure and long-term plans.

Phases

Our Staking & Farming model is broken down into phases. Each phase is broken down into cycles (which is then further broken down into epochs). Phases are multi-year time periods which will dictate the long-term structure of the respective products we offer.

We will be entering Phase 1 with the launch of our platform.

Cycles

For Phase 1, we have developed an 8 cycle plan where each cycle is 90 days, i.e. 3 months.

The distribution of the total amount of rewards into each cycle within the initial phase is as follows:

● Cycle 1 [30%] ~ Q1 2021
● Cycle 2 [25%] ~ Q2 2021
● Cycle 3 [10%] ~ Q3 2021
● Cycle 4 [5%] ~ Q4 2021
● Cycle 5 [10%] ~ Q1 2022
● Cycle 6 [10%] ~ Q2 2022
● Cycle 7 [5%] ~ Q3 2022
● Cycle 8 [5%] ~ Q4 2022

The schedule is not directly tied to quarters but due to the expected launch date of our platform it will roughly align with each cycle being a fiscal quarter.

Epochs

Each cycle being 3 months is then broken down into 6 epochs. Each epoch is 14 days with the last epoch within each cycle being 20 days. The structure is then as follows

● 14 days — Epoch 1
● 28 days — Epoch 2
● 42 days — Epoch 3
● 56 days — Epoch 4
● 70 days– Epoch 5
● 90 days — Epoch 6

From day zero of Epoch 1 until the final day of Epoch 6, 90 days (2160 hours) will have passed. All 8 of our initial cycles are structured in this manner.

Distribution of rewards within cycles

For the first two cycles, the distribution of rewards we have dedicated to the epochs within that respective cycle is as follows

Cycle 1 and Cycle 2

● Epoch 1 [37.5%]
● Epoch 2 [27.5%]
● Epoch 3 [10%]
● Epoch 4 [10%]
● Epoch 5 [10%]
● Epoch 6 [5%]

For the next 6 cycles after that, it is as follows

Cycles 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8

● Epoch 1 [35%]
● Epoch 2 [25%]
● Epoch 3 [15%]
● Epoch 4 [10%]
● Epoch 5 [10%]
● Epoch 6 [5%]

Tiers

We have developed a thematically named tier structure to reward users who come into our platform and keep staking for prolonged periods of time with additional rewards to users who maintain bigger amounts of capital.

Intern tier

All users initially coming into our platform will start here. Users who have been staking for 2 weeks or less fall into the “Intern” tier.

The power ratio of the Intern tier is 0.1 and 0.12 with Backer’s bonus

Associate tier

Users who have been staking more than 2 weeks less than 3 weeks are given the “Associate” tier.

The power ratio of the Associate tier is 0.15 and 0.25 with Backer’s bonus

Manager tier

Users who have been staking more than 3 weeks and less than 4 weeks are assigned the “Manager” tier.

The power ratio of the Manager tier is 0.2 and 0.3 with Backer’s bonus

Executive tier

Users who have been staking for 4 weeks and more belong to the highest tier which is our “Executive” tier.

The power ratio of the Executive tier is 0.4 and 0.55 with Backer’s bonus

Backer’s bonus

This is an additional feature that gives boosted power ratio for users who choose to stake and maintain a capital investment worth $50,000 USD or more in our platform. With backer’s bonus, you get an additional power booster compared to normal users based on the tier they are in.

You can think of power ratios as multipliers to whatever amounts of rewards you are already getting — this is all incorporated into the math that is being done to calculate rewards.

Structure & Functionality

Cycles will run after completion of 6 epochs meaning there is no downtime between cycles or epochs — the farming never stops and you never stop earning once you are in our ecosystem.

The advantage of staying in the epoch period gives the user the cumulative gains for the staked amount. Users will be free to withdraw the stakes whenever they wish to — there is no lock-up period.

If the user does not withdraw complete stakes he/she maintains the stake in the next set of epoch period or cycle.

Users are upgraded and downgraded from tiers seamlessly, based on their actions within our ecosystem and how long they have been staking. Your tier and staking/farming power ratio will always be displayed on our platform’s UI.

In terms of tiers, everyone coming into our platform will be subject to the same rules. Users staking $100 USD worth of assets will be progressing through tiers and be upgraded or downgraded between tiers based on how long they are maintaining their stake — exactly the same as users staking $100,000 USD worth of assets. There is no way to speed up the upgrade to the next tier. We want to promote a fair system — Everyone starts and works their way up the same regardless of the size of their stake.

Withdrawal of rewards will result in a downgrade by one tier — this downgrade is applied to manual withdrawals of rewards.

Adding additional tokens to the ones you are already staking will result in being downgraded by a single tier (for example from Manager to Associate tier). This is done to prevent users abusing our tier system by using a very small amount of money to stake till reaching Executive tier, and only once Executive tier is reached, they would put in a larger amount of their capital.

The monetary value of the stakes is checked upon depositing the stake using an oracle.

If the user adds more tokens to his stake and the amount he/she is adding is within the limits, he/she only gets demoted one tier as per the rules above.

Labeling of LP tokens & Auto-compounding

As mentioned before, LP tokens that are staked on our Yield Bank platform, are labeled differently as per liquidity pool for better visibility, understanding and ease-of-use for the user.

Our auto-compounding feature is exempt from some of the rules above, namely the rule where if a user adds money to their stake, they are downgraded by one tier. This would by default mean that users who chose to turn auto-compounding on would be stuck in the default Intern tier forever.

We have made an exception in our ecosystem so that users are not downgraded in tiers every time an auto-compounding function executes.

Rewards rejuvenation

Portion of the taxes we will charge on every sell and transfer of yB and yCASH will be looped back into the rewards pool. It is then directly distributed, or rather, able to be farmed by stakers and farmers the same as regular rewards would be. This will result not only in more rewards for all users Staking & Farming on our platform, but it will also promote the platform’s longevity.

If there happen to be rewards left in an epoch but the epoch has already concluded, the leftover rewards will be rolled-over into the next epoch and the extra rewards can be farmed the exact same way as regular rewards from the same pools.

The economic plan

The Staking & Farming plan we have in place has been developed with the help of highly qualified CPAs alongside experienced blockchain developers familiar with DeFi ecosystems.

Our plan takes into account the expected growth and mass adoption of our platform. We have also prepared for various market conditions in order to reward long-term oriented investors.

The distribution structure of our rewards is such that it rewards early adopters of our platform and tokens, but keeps the rewards high at later stages. While the % of rewards will decrease over time, the value of the tokens we are giving out as rewards will increase, therefore the monetary value of rewards given out in each cycle and epoch should steadily rise in monetary terms while declining in nominal terms of how many tokens we are giving out, further driving scarcity after the initial distribution of tokens to the masses in the early adoption phase (approximately Cycle 1 and first half of Cycle 2) has concluded.

Follow us on any of our social media accounts listed below to stay updated. Liquidity Episode date will be announced in the coming weeks.

The article and any other associated content of Yield Bank does not constitute as financial advice. Cryptocurrencies are a high risk investment and may not be suitable for all members of the public and all types of investors. This is an experiment in DeFi yield aggregating to bring longer and steadier yields to its users.

Next article coming up: Liquid Lend

Website: yieldbank.finance

Medium: medium.com/@YieldBank

Twitter: twitter.com/YieldBank

Telegram Room: t.me/YieldBank

Telegram Announcement Channel: t.me/YieldBankAnnouncements

Discord: discord.gg/4DrKFzJ

Email: social@yieldbank.finance

Liquidity Episode date: TBA

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