No Word Of A Lie (Drop The beS)
Okay. Heads up. Rant incoming…
Man… we are sick to death of lies in this industry. We’re sick of all these “revolutionary” rollup refinements that pledge to save Mainnet before feasting on what little activity it has left. We’re sick of all the cookie-cutter exchange “innovation” whose whole economic model is just an insider pump-and-dump of some useless farming token. And we’re sick of prickly liquid-staking products that promise to help “scale security”, before quietly robbing you of your yield at the contract level.
Some days, the state of DeFi leaves us wanting for reasons to come back. And more and more, we find ourselves reminiscing about the good ol’ days of the Fantom renaissance. Really, we just want to believe in something again. We need a guiding light to help us wade through all the bullshit.
Recently though, some light has started to appear at the end of the tunnel. Once again, a new chain led by Michael Kong is pumping, Cronje is busy building some revolutionary exchange technology, and farmers new and old are rejoicing about thousand-percentage yields as real builders deliver innovation on Sonic.
Perhaps there finally is a path back to meaningful innovation in DeFi.
Perhaps we’re finally ready to drop the beS…
Sonic
So, what’s so special about Sonic?
Well, unlike pretty much every other new chain in the last two years, Sonic is neither an Ethereum rollup chain nor relying solely on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (“EVM”) for its operations. The chain operates on its own Sonic Virtual Machine, which is heavily optimized to enhance smart contract execution while maintaining EVM compatibility.
Sonic has then pushed the boundaries of possibility by re-architecting its consensus mechanism to allow for concurrent transaction processing. Its “asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance” (“aBFT”) consensus uses “directed acyclic graph” (“DAG”) architecture to achieve rapid finality. What does that all mean? Who knows 🤷 But the chain is lightning fast, with over 10,000 transactions per second of throughput and sub-second finality.
What’s more, the team at Sonic Labs knows a thing or two about ecosystem building. As with their rollout of Fantom in 2020/2021, Sonic will be accompanied by an onslaught of grant funding and incentives to inspire builders to put all this technology to use. But unlike Fantom, Sonic will also reinvest in performant applications through its Fee Monetization (“FeeM”) model. This program redistributes up to 90% of transaction fees back to projects depending on the value of transaction fees paid by their applications.
Beefy launched on Sonic at the end of December 2024, building together with partners old and new to optimise yields and minimise effort for users of the chain. Since that time, TVL on the chain has catapulted to over $1 billion, with monthly DEX volume topping $3 billion in February and March. And with over 100 projects deployed on the chain, the ecosystem has rapidly taken shape.
Beefy-escrowed Sonic
Even with all that progress, things on Sonic are only just heating up. Significant and effective staking from a diversified range of participants remains crucial to Sonic’s security model, and right now the range of ways to stake is too limited. Five months after launch, we’re still only faced with three viable liquid-staking tokens. So… we built our own. 👀
Beefy-escrowed Sonic will follow a similar format to the earlier Beefy-escrowed Fantom (“beFTM”), in that users provide unstaked S tokens, Beefy automates the staking of these tokens to approved validators, and then manages the claiming and redistribution of rewards among the users. Unlike previous designs, beS will have a 14-day withdrawal queue shown in our UI, though users can initiate withdrawal at any time, in whole or in part.
Beefy has been operating our own Sonic validator since December and will be staking the received S tokens to our validator first and foremost. Where our validator reaches capacity, the design allows for additional validators to be added through a timelock by the Developer Council multi-signature account. However, all users receive the same experience even where staking is split across multiple validators, meaning rewards and any risk of slashing are socialised across all users.
Another major change is the introduction of a new liquidity fee. The product will charge our usual 9.5% fee from earned rewards for administration and operation. The liquidity fee will take a further 10% of the earned rewards and direct them to a bespoke liquidity multi-sig, for sole use in supporting beS liquidity with bribes, incentives and protocol-liquidity. Ultimately, these funds will make their way back to beS users through indirect means (e.g., yield), but this mechanism will help to keep a healthy and active ecosystem for beS, improving user experience. And even with this fee, beS boasts the best deal in town.
beS has been in stealth development for several months now, with a recent audit from Electisec. With the design and functionality all approved, beS officially launches on the Beefy frontend this week. Then, the real work begins…
beS Ecosystem
As beS gears up for lift-off, our incentive gurus have been hard at work summoning a bumper crop of liquidity mining incentives, aimed at accelerating adoption over the first few months!
First, we’re pleased to be partnering exclusively with SwapX to deliver initial liquidity pools from April 9th onwards. SwapX will be delivering gauges from the get-go, boosting yields with additional GEMSx rewards. Beefy’s treasury will seed the pools with a small amount of liquidity, with weekly bribes to incentivize additional providers. The core operational pool will be USDC.e/beS, charging a 0.01% fee for swaps. What’s more, we will buddy up with Origin Protocol’s oS LST for a 0.01% beS/oS pair that’s stacked with co-bribes and additional incentives. 👀
Then, from April 16th onwards, beS enters the next phase of its rollout, arriving on Shadow Exchange, DeFive, and Beets. For all three, we’ll be delivering standard beS/S liquidity pools with gauges, supported by initial bribe commitments as needed. For Shadow and DeFive, we’ll also be launching beS/USDC.e pools in much the same way. But on Beets, we’ll be pairing beS with our popular Silo USDC.e vault for the wS lending market, which averages ~5% in stable yield on USDC.e deposits.
Altogether, it’s going to be an onslaught of incentives and rewards for those looking to deploy their beS early. And with the new liquidity fee design, we aim to deliver a self-sustaining liquidity flywheel that will continue to support yields long into the future.
No Word Of A Lie
Okay, so maybe we got a little carried away before. 😅 It can be easy to slip into a malaise when the market is tanking… no amount of ve(3,3) tokenomics seems to bring my portfolio back into the green. But maybe there is still hope for innovation in DeFi…
With beS, there’s no more bullshit. No frills. No lies. Just straightforward staking yield. A simple product. And a strong liquidity flywheel that delivers value back to you, the holders.
So now it’s time for your call to action. It’s time to believe in something again! Let us reinvigorate the renaissance in your rate of returns. Let’s secure and scale our smart contract security structures, with a sophisticated and sustainable staking solution.
No bullshit. Only beS.