DeFi has a big problem — here’s how we aim to fix it

6 min readOct 21, 2020

The current platforms are all way too complicated. They have poor branding, use industry jargon to explain what they offer and their UX is like using a computer from 1983… and let’s not even mention the fees. The whole thing is just overwhelming and it frankly scares people away. These platforms are created by developers for developers (and tech savvy people). It’s time for a new perspective.

The solution

Good branding, good marketing, easy to understand and easy to use. That’s what we need to make DeFi mainstream, not the latest hyped-up tech that requires the user to basically fly a space shuttle. A decentralized platform will only ever achieve mainstream adoption when the user can’t tell it’s decentralized. Everything that’s complicated must happen in the background. The tech should work for the user… not the other way around.

Introducing… Earnbase

Earnbase is a user-friendly, all-in-one decentralized platform to earn, save and swap tokens. Made by regular people for regular people.

The best tech doesn’t win… the best user experience and marketing wins.

The Earnbase team is lead by marketing and UX experts who understands how to create an inviting experience. At Earnbase, we love our developers but we let them take the back seat. We’re building for this platform for the mainstream… for people that aren’t tech savvy.

By getting this right we can bring millions of people into DeFi. We believe our savings account (stablecoin lending) is the best way to introduce new users. After they have dipped their toes into stablecoin lending, they will be well on their way into understanding and trusting crypto as a whole just like (or hopefully more than…) traditional finance.

The Earnbase product suite

Earn

Deposit crypto to our platform (smart contracts). The platform will then continuously move your crypto across different protocols to achieve the highest yield. This is called automatic yield farming.

Save

Deposit a stablecoin to our platform (smart contracts). The platform will then automatically lend out your funds to the highest lending rate on supported platforms (like Compound & Aave). This is called a yield aggregator.

Vault

Deposit ENB to receive ENB rewards and take part in governance.

Swap

Swap between your favorite tokens directly from the dashboard.

The smart contracts will allow us to automate strategies and pool our funds together

What our Earn and Save products do could be done manually… but it would require a lot of time, knowledge and money (to pay for hundreds of transactions yourself). Instead of 500 people making 500 transactions separately, the smart contract will make one transaction. Each user will only pay a fraction of the transaction fee and enjoy an automated process.

Our governance token ENB and its benefits

With the launch of Earnbase we are also launching a governance token named ENB. It will be rewarded to all users in the ecosystem. ENB holders will be able to take part in protocol decisions to decide such things as how users should earn rewards and which new products and features we implement on the platform. Plus, holders will enjoy fee discounts once Project Atlas is launched in 2021. While we currently can’t disclose more details about Atlas we can say that it will play a vital role in the future of Earnbase.

Ecosystem revenue

Earnbase will earn revenue through withdrawal fees, performance fees and swap fees. The treasury will buy and burn ENB equal to 50% of all revenue generated. The remaining 50% will cover the operating cost and fund further development.

A long-term distribution for a long-term vision

We believe that a truly fair and long-lasting ecosystem should allow users to earn rewards regardless if they join early or late. Earnbase users will be able to earn ENB for over 15 years since only 4% of remaining rewards are released per 30 days, with a slightly smaller amount being released every 30 days as the remaining supply is depleted.

This distribution schedule will ensure that our ecosystem will have competitive incentives for the foreseeable future. In order to protect the long-term vision of the project; the emission will remain at 4% and not be controlled by governance or anyone else (the tokens have been placed in a time-lock).

Token distribution

Max supply: 1,000,000

Community airdrop in October 2020

Instead of doing a pre-sale, we’re giving away a huge amount of tokens for free. Community members will share 130,000 tokens in the airdrop. The goal is to ensure a fair launch and to build a strong community.

Only 500–1000 people will receive the airdrop and share 74% of the circulating supply, so it’s not your typical airdrop where you’d only get a tiny amount. Join our Discord for a chance of taking part. You probably don’t want to miss this one…

You can join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/bRRBbN4

Team, investors and treasury tokens

Team: All 100,000 ENB have been placed in a time-lock with 1/8 quarterly releases over 24 months (the first release is in January, 2021).

Investors: 25,000 ENB will be released upon launch and the remaining 25,000 have been placed in time-lock with 1/8 quarterly releases over 24 months (the first release is in January, 2021).

Treasury: All 20,000 ENB will be released upon launch.

Ecosystem rewards

700,000 ENB is allocated to ecosystem rewards. 672,000 ENB have been placed in a time-lock with 4% of the remaining supply being released every 30 days. A multisig currently controlled by the team is the beneficiary (we hope to have community members in the multisig later this year). The 28,000 ENB that are not locked will be allocated to the reward pools for the first 30 days.

Rewards will be distributed in the following pools starting in October, 2020:

Governance — Stake ENB in the governance vault and earn ENB. Claimable rewards will never expire and voting will be optional in order to prevent uninformed voters from participating simply to collect rewards.
Uniswap pool— Provide liquidity to ENB/ETH on Uniswap. Take the resulting UNI-V2 tokens and stake them in our Uniswap reward pool. Earn trading fees and ENB.
Balancer pool — Provide liquidity to DAI/ENB 98/2 on Balancer. Take the resulting BPT tokens and stake them in our Balancer reward pool. Earn trading fees, BAL and ENB.

The following products will also be a part of the ecosystem reward pools once they are launched:

Earnbase Save— Automatically lend out stablecoins to earn the highest possible interest (yield aggregator). Launching in Q4, 2020.
Earnbase Earn — Automatically invest your crypto wherever it provides the highest yield (automated yield farming). Launching in Q4, 2020.
Earnbase Swap — Swap between your favorite tokens. Launching in Q1, 2021.

Roadmap

Q2 2020

– Idea generation
– Market research
– Team formation

Q3 2020

– Smart contracts
– Partnerships
– Website

Q4 2020

Early Q4
– Basic UX
– Community airdrop
– Governance
– Liquidity mining
Late Q4
– 3rd party security audit
– Earnbase UX launch
– Earnings account
– Savings account

Q1 2021

– Mobile app
– Insurance
– Swaps

A soft launch in October

Our new UX and product suite is in development and will be released later this year. We’re doing a soft launch now with a basic UX to do some testing, get momentum and build our community before we launch the new UX with the full product suite.