It is now more apparent than ever that the future of crypto and DeFi is multi-chain. It is now no longer one chain to rule them all… 

We now know that just isn’t going to happen. The rise of other layer 1 blockchains has been well received after the “gold standard”; Ethereum has left the average retail user with no other option.

It was a blessing in disguise and has allowed other chains to step up and build.

Now we are in the golden era of DeFi (take it in, these times won’t last forever), increasingly, myself and the guys at blocmates are often jumping back and forth between chains, yield farms, DEX and other weird and wonderful protocols.

There are a lot of problems when going cross-chain including the dreaded bridge…

Let’s be honest even the most experienced DeFi user gets a little nervous when bridging their coins over from one chain to the next. There are horror stories of hidden fees, stuck transactions and others who have just completely lost their tokens in no man’s land… it isn’t the best at the minute.

For us to be able to achieve this truly decentralised and multi-chain ecosystem in DeFi, there has to be a seamless way to not only bridge assets, but to be able to interact with protocols in a way where you don’t even know you are going cross-chain!

In an ideal world, you would have assets in your wallet and be able to interact with any protocol on any chain instantly without any hassle. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Well, it may be a big task but that’s what the team over at ELK Finance are trying to achieve…

A team of crypto-veterans who have been involved in this space from as early as 2011 are setting out to create the most seamless multi-chain protocol in DeFi.

So, how the hell are they going to do that?

Well, Elk.Finance currently runs on 4 chains: Polygon, Fantom, HECO and Avalanche. On the platform, you can swap, farm, pool and now bridge cross-chain.

To the untrained eye that might seem standard for an emerging DeFi protocol… but, that would be where you are wrong.

It all comes back to the ELK token and the genius farming protocols.

To enable true cross-chain swaps to happen at quick speeds and low fees the Elk team have come up with a great way to execute this in a way that will feel very similar to a regular decentralised exchange swap.

This is how it is done…

This is all facilitated by the ELK-partner token farms on the Elk Finance app.

Users can pair their ELK token with any other partner token DAI, ETH, MATIC for example and provide liquidity…

This is where the magic happens. For a cross-chain DEX to be quick, effective and seamless there needs to be a lot of liquidity on each chain to facilitate the bridging that goes on under the hood.

So how do you ensure deep multi-chain liquidity to enable this to happen? Especially when users are in fear of impermanent loss?

Well… you insure them against it…

Users that provide liquidity on any chain using Elk Finance for the full 42 days (each farming round) they will receive ELK tokens if the IL is affecting their initial deposit.

For example, if you were to only provide liquidity for 21 days you would still receive 50% of the IL cover.

There is a way to reduce the number of days required to stake to receive the full 100% insurance fund… hold this thought for the NFTs section.

The team strongly believe that LPs should not be penalised with IL especially when they are supporting the platform. Quite rightly so if you ask me. It has happened to me way too many times.

It usually goes something like this… I enter a farm early for the rewards one of the tokens spikes or drops dramatically and I am left in the red compared to my initial deposit.

Providing liquidity on Elk Finance if this were to happen and one of my tokens drops in comparison to the other in the pair, I am reimbursed in ELK token…

In the fortunate event of one of the tokens going to the moon in comparison to the other, guess what? You are still rewarded in ELK!

I know what the experienced DeFi user is thinking… “So the ELK tap is constantly on, how is that good for the price of the token?” well… nothing gets past you…

ELK is slowly drip-fed to those who have suffered IL over the course of 42 days. This removes any sudden sell pressure and doesn’t have an immediate impact on the price of the ELK token. Very smart.

Let’s take a closer look at the $ELK token…

ELK is an ERC-20 token so it is naturally very good at being EVM and cross-chain compatible.

$ELK as well as being a utility token of the Elk network (more on this later) it also doubles up as a governance token for the protocol.

Currently deployed on Polygon, Avalanche, HECO and Fantom which initially had a max supply per chain cap of 4,242,424. Now that the Elk Finance team are expanding at an alarming rate they have decided to remove this max supply per chain limit which makes complete sense to me.

So there is a max supply across all chains of 42,424,242 ELK tokens.

The emissions rate per day per chain are 1350 $ELK.

Another aspect of ELK tokenomics that I was impressed with was the team allocation and vesting schedule. This is not common especially at the minute when projects are popping up every single day.

The structure looks something like this:

• 2 million ELK (roughly 5%) – Team allocation to be released over 3 years based on milestones

• 10m ELK for liquidity providers

• 10m ELK for the liquidity providers insurance against impermanent loss

• 20m ELK will be kept in the community fund and their use will be voted for using ELK as the governance token.

Token structures like this are great and very reassuring for retail investors. If anything starts to get towards the 20% team allocation fund red flags start to pop up. The team only keeping 5% for themselves over the course of 3 years is a big thumbs up from me.

So what else is going on over at Elk Finance?

Well, quite a lot actually… Again, the team have thought outside the box. You can see a recurring theme here.

If we take a look at the Moose NFTs (which are capped at 100 per chain), usually NFTs minted by projects are a little gimmicky and don’t really serve any purpose.

Epic Moose – Most Exclusive NFT.

They jump all aboard the hype train for the sake of it. But, the Moose NFTs that Elk Finance has released double up as utility tokens themselves…

Holding a Moose NFT in a wallet gains you the following privileges on the Elk Finance Network.

• Moose holders receive an ELK airdrop on every chain that the team expand upon equal to the value of the NFT.

• Premiums on fees, rewards and farming multipliers

• Double IL protection rewards

• Elk nodes that want to operate on Elk Net require a Moose NFT to do so…

Liquidity score –

This is something I haven’t come across before in this space so it really intrigued me.

In short –

“Every wallet is assigned an ELK Liquidity Score based on how much $ELK, how long the $ELK has been held, and how much liquidity it provides to ELK pairs”

The better your liquidity score the better the rewards are, in particular, airdrops on other chains.

It seems a little complicated but it is quite simple when you use the following tools and resources the team have built to help.

Liquidity score calculator

Leaderboard for Elk Finance wallets

Cross-chain stable coin $CHFT

Again, sticking with their innovative ways, Elk Finance is also developing a truly unique cross-chain stable coin…

What’s unique about it?

Well for one it won’t be pegged to the USD…

Before you lose your mind, the team has decided to go with one of the strongest and most stable currencies in the world in the Swiss Franc.

CHFT will be the ticker for the coin which is roughly around 1.08 CHFT to USD. So it isn’t too far off for ballpark calculations.

On top of that, the team will be using a novel “gyroscopic” design… This one is a little over my head but rest assured, it will be quick, seamless, and will have very low fees.

So, what does the roadmap look like for Elk Finance?

Well, the future of Elk Finance looks incredibly bold and positive.

The next remaining chains they intend on taking over are Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum, xDai, Ethereum, Reef, Flare possibly in that order…

It doesn’t take a genius to work out the amount of capital that is available on the chains that are yet to be explored by Elk Finance. For that reason, we at blocmates are keeping a very close eye on the $ELK token and the developments of the platform… Not financial advice.

This is a great incentive for all ELK holders and especially for those with a high liquidity score as the airdrops will be extremely lucrative.

On top of that, the stronger holders in the pack will gain exclusive access to the CHFT stable coin later in the year as it becomes available.

ElkNet – This is the end-game…

At the moment the team are limiting the ELK cross-chain bridge to 100 $ELK. As ElkNet develops this cap will be increased by an order of magnitude and then be lifted completely allowing unlimited swaps.

The protocol will develop and launch the mainnet which will see seamless swaps of any asset on Any chain, anytime, anywhere…

Elk Finance Resources –

A link to all Elk Finance Resources can be found HERE.

All the above has been strictly for education and entertainment purposes and not financial advice.

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