❓FAQ
You can find FAQs for each type of products here:
General Questions
What is Alpaca Finance?
Alpaca Finance is the largest lending protocol allowing leveraged yield farming on Binance Smart Chain. It helps lenders earn safe and stable yields, and offers borrowers undercollateralized loans for leveraged yield farming positions, vastly multiplying their farming principals and resulting profits.
As an enabler for the entire DeFi ecosystem, Alpaca amplifies the liquidity layer of integrated exchanges, improving their capital efficiency by connecting LP borrowers and lenders. It's through this empowering function that Alpaca has become a fundamental building block within DeFi, helping bring the power of finance to each and every person's fingertips, and every alpaca's paw...
Furthermore, alpacas are a virtuous breed. That’s why, we are a fair-launch project with no pre-sale, no investor, and no pre-mine. So from the beginning, this has always been a product built by the people, for the people. Or as we like to say: by the alpacas, for the alpacas.
What is yield farming?
Yield farming is an innovative DeFi concept where users stake or lend their crypto assets, providing liquidity in order to receive returns.
Where does my yield come from?
That’s a great question! In fact, you should always try to understand where the yield comes from in each DeFi project.
In Alpaca Finance, the source of your yield will depend on how you participate in the protocol:
As a lender, your yield comes from:
Interest paid by borrowers to open leveraged yield farming positions (Interest rate is based on lending pool utilization).
Incentive rewards paid in tokens of platform partners (in featured pools).
As a yield farmer, your yield comes from:
Yield farming incentive rewards from the AMM, if applicable - i.e. CAKE tokens from PCS.
Underlying trading fees of the pool - i.e. trading fees from the PancakeSwap pools.
How do I use Alpaca Finance?
You can participate in Alpaca Finance in three ways:
💵 Lender: You can earn safe and stable returns on your tokens by depositing them into our lending vaults. These assets are then offered to yield farmers for leveraging up their positions.
👨🌾 Yield farmer: You can borrow tokens from our lending vaults, allowing you to open a leveraged farming position, multiplying your farming APR by up to 6x(minus borrowing interest). Of course, these higher yields come with larger risks than lending: liquidation, impermanent loss, etc.
🚨 Liquidator: Monitors the pool for leveraged farming positions with Safety Buffers at 0(when equity collateral becomes too low, thus approaching risk of default) and liquidates them. (Bots only)
Is it safe to use Alpaca Finance?
In short, yes. Within the BNB Chain community, Alpaca Finance is widely regarded as one of the most secure platforms because of our spotless track record of never having had a security issue, and our multi-layered security processes, which you can read below:
We’ve had an industry-leading 23 security audits, from top firms such as PeckShield, Certik, Inspex, and SlowMist.
In June 2021, Alpaca received the highest security rating on BNB Chain from Defi Safety which was advertised by BNB Chain itself, and the 3rd highest Security Score from Certik.
Regarding the ALPACA token, we've made it as dump-proof as possible. Our ALPACA token is fair launch, with 87% of total supply going to platform participants. The team is only getting less than 9% of tokens, and that’s vested over 2 years. We also had no presale, no pre-mine, and no investors, so there’s no one to dump on token holders.
Our code is open-source, with every line having been combed through by hundreds of independent developers. We even have a professional Bug Bounty Program with Immunefi to offer high rewards if anyone spots as little as a minor issue. We invite you to have a look through our code yourself here.
Then, besides extensive code reviews having been conducted both internally and externally, there are also built-in safeguards in place. For example, all the contracts we deploy are owned by a Timelock contract. Thus, any changes made by our developers will have a 24-hour lag before becoming effective. That means users will have ample time to withdraw their funds and exit safely in the case of any questionable update to the code. Moreover, any changes to be queued into our Timelock contract need to be approved by a multi-sig address, adding another layer of security. With tens of thousands of users, you can believe that every small change is under constant scrutiny from many participants. At times, it's a tough job dealing with all their questions, but it's honest work. 👨🌾
Regarding flash loans, Alpaca does not allow them so you will be safe from all such attacks.
Then for price manipulation and flash liquidation, Alpaca integrates Chainlink price feeds and also has an in-house Alpaca Guard which prevents those.
Finally, we make efforts not only to secure our own protocol, but also the entire ecosystem. That's why we only work with projects that meet our high standards for safety. Every project we work with has to pass our Security Scorecard, a type of qualitative audit that complements code audits.
For users who desire insurance, we've also integrated Nexus Mutual Coverage and InsurAce to provide users the option of buying Cover, which can reimburse their funds in the event of a loss.
In addition to Nexus Mutual and InsurAce coverage, we implemented our own Insurance Plan. In the case of a shortfall event, up to 50% of future Protocol Revenue going to the Governance Vault would be available to pay back users who lost funds, for up to a period of 1 year, meaning there would be at least 7 figures of potential coverage.
As a final word, even with everything we do, users should still educate themselves. It's important to be aware of the potential risks of participating in any DeFi project, which you can read more about here.
Is Alpaca at risk of a flash loan attack?
No, Alpaca is only EOA which means it does not allow flash loans to interact with the protocol. This makes flash loan attacks impossible.
Who is the team behind Alpaca?
Binance did a write-up on us. You can read it here.
How can I contact the team?
contact@alpacafinance.org or ping an admin on the Telegram or Discord Discord: https://discord.com/invite/jkC2j9ZVDf
Telegram: https://t.me/alpacafinance
Have your contracts been audited?
Yes, we've had 23 audits as of 1 Oct 2023 which should be the highest number on BNB Chain and more than the majority of ETH & Fantom protocols.
What is ALPACA token and why should I hold it?
ALPACA token is the central token for governing and capturing the value of the Alpaca Finance platform. The benefits of holding the token are listed below:
Capture Economic Benefits of the Platform
We will let the community decide how they want the economic incentives to be captured by the ALPACA token ; For example, it could be similar to Sushiswap where x% of fees generated go to perform token buyback and burn. At the moment though, there are already several mechanisms in place for both performance fee sharing and for making ALPACA deflationary in nature.
10% of the 19% performance fees for yield farming positions on the single-asset CAKE vault is distributed as Protocol APR to ALPACA governance vault depositors.
4% of the 5% of every liquidation bounty that any liquidation bot receives as a fee, goes towards buybacks and burns of the ALPACA token.
6% of 19% of the AF1.0's lending interest that lenders earn is used for ALPACA buyback and distributed as revenue sharing to Governance Vault stakers (as Protocol APR)
4% of 19% of the AF1.0's lending interest that lenders earn goes towards buybacks and burns of the ALPACA token.
Proceeds from occasional revenue generation events go to ALPACA buyback & burn, such as 20% of the revenue from the Alpies sales which summed to $1.25Mn.
2.5% of 5% royalty fees on Alpie NFTs sold in the secondary market go to ALPACA buyback & burn.
5% of 9% of Auto-Farming Performance Fee, which is from rewards earned from farming the collateralized assets in AUSD positions in Alpaca Staking (and potentially external protocols in the future) will be used for buyback & burn.
1% of 2% of Stability Fee charged on each AUSD debt position will be used for buyback & burn.
5% of 9% of Farming Performance Fee, which is from yield farming rewards, will be used for ALPACA buyback and distributed as performance fee sharing to Governance Vault stakers (as Protocol APR).
8% of 15% of AV Farming Performance Fee, which is from yield farming rewards in Automated Vaults, is used for ALPACA buyback and distributed as performance fee sharing to Governance Vault stakers (as Protocol APR).
1% of 2% of AV Management Fee, which is the management fee on Automated Vaults, goes towards weekly buybacks and burns of the ALPACA token.
.1% of .2% of AV Withdrawal Fee, which is the fee when withdrawing from an Automated Vault, goes towards weekly buybacks and burns of the ALPACA token.
10% of 30% of Perpetual Futures Exchange Fee is used for ALPACA buyback and distributed as revenue sharing to Governance Vault stakers (as Protocol APR)
6% of 30% of Perpetual Futures Exchange Fee goes towards weekly buybacks and burns of the ALPACA token.
6% of 19% of the AF2.0's Lending Performance Fee that lenders is used for ALPACA buyback and distributed as revenue sharing to Governance Vault stakers (as Protocol APR).
4% of 19% of the AF2.0's Lending Performance Fee goes towards weekly buybacks and burns of the ALPACA token.
Through adding mechanisms like these, most of the rewards from the ALPACA platform will soon be directly or indirectly shared with ALPACA token holders. You can also check Alpaca Finance's Revenue Distribution here.
Deflationary Price Increase
ALPACA tokens are long-term deflationary. Emissions have a hardcap and are continuing to decrease, while burn is permanent and continuing to increase, and we burn quite a bit of tokens; A significant portion of protocol fees go towards token burn: 80% of all liquidation fees and 10% of all protocol lending interest earned by lenders. So as Alpaca Finance continues growing, more ALPACA will be burnt, leading to the value of each remaining ALPACA token rising continuously and permanently.
Governance
Once we implement governance (slated for Q4 on the roadmap), holding ALPACA will give you the power to decide the future direction of the protocol itself. To appreciate the significance of that, it's important to realize one thing--Alpaca Finance is unlike the majority of current BNB Chain projects.
We are not a copy-paste yield farm or low-volume AMM that only provides inflationary farming tokens, adding no real value to the BNB Chain DeFi ecosystem. Instead, Alpaca is quickly becoming a foundational layer of BNB Chain, because it offers genuine value as a lending platform posessing the unique strategic advantage of providing leverage. In this way, we can offer more stable APYs to lenders, higher APYs to yield farmers, and additional liquidity to AMMs and partnered projects we create pools for. This is a multiplying enabler for the DeFi ecosystem as a whole.
In addition, only a handful of other platforms can offer leverage at all because of its technical complexity. Meanwhile, we are the leading platform providing this service on BNB Chain across all metrics(TVL, user base, volume, etc), with the most flexibility in customization, while also having the most intuitive UI. In other words, we're ahead on all fronts, and the market is still in its nascent stage.
So why is understanding this crucial in order to comprehend the significance of governance? Well, the value of a right to governance is directly proportional to the value of the thing you're governing. So if you believe in the long-term potential of Alpaca Finance, you should also understand that the value of the governance power of your ALPACA tokens--shares that same potential.
ALPACA tokens are the voting slips to control this protocol we've built, and their governance value is permanent because our tokens have a hardcap. That means 1 token will always be worth 1 vote. That's as true now as it will be 1 year or 10 years from now, and as the protocol continues to grow, that voting power will also accrue in value.
What's more, governance is only one benefit of holding ALPACA tokens.
Exclusive Earning Opportunities
Through partnerships, we regularly provide token rewards from our Grazing Range program available only for ALPACA holders who lock their ALPACA in the governance vault.
Exclusive NFT Access
We are planning to integrate NFTs with actual utility into the platform. Users will have to hold ALPACA in order to benefit from this utility, as well as to gain access to these NFTs in the first place, along with other exclusive items such as real-world Alpaca merch.
Yet, these are only some of the things we're working on for the ALPACA token. We'll announce many more initiatives in the future. For now though, you can read more about the ALPACA token here.
How do I earn ALPACA tokens?
We are a fair launch project. There was no investor, presale, or pre-mine. Thus, the only way to earn ALPACA is to participate on our platform. To learn more about ways to earn ALPACA, please visit our tokenomics page: https://docs.alpacafinance.org/tokenomics/alpaca-tokens
Where can I buy ALPACA tokens?
ALPACA can be purchased on the following centralized exchanges (CEXes) and decentralized exchanges (DEXes):
CEXes
Binance.com (different than Binance.us)
DEXes
DEX Aggregators:
ALPACA token address (BNB Chain): 0x8F0528cE5eF7B51152A59745bEfDD91D97091d2F
ALPACA token address (Fantom): 0xaD996A45fd2373ed0B10Efa4A8eCB9de445A4302
Due to the Multichain platform being discontinued, it's not possible anymore to bridge ALPACA token between BNB Chain and Fantom. As a consequence, we had to discontinue the support for ALPACA token on Fantom. You can still swap your ALPACA token on Fantom for another token and bridge that token back to BNB Chain.
However, if you still have ALPACA locked in the governance on Fantom, follow the instruction here to get your token back on BNB chain.
We're also working on listing ALPACA on more CEX and DEX exchanges
How do I learn more about DeFi?
Visit our Alpaca Academy!
How can I calculate the worth of my LP tokens?
What's the difference between ALPACA vs. ibALPACA?
These are two different tokens. ALPACA is the central token of Alpaca Finance.
When you deposit ALPACA in our lending vaults on the Lend page, you receive ibALPACA, which is an interest-bearing token that represents your share of ALPACA in the lending vault you deposited into. You can redeem ibALPACA back into ALPACA when you withdraw from the lending vault. ibALPACA accrues the interest you earn from lending and will be worth more ALPACA when you withdraw than when you deposited. ibALPACA is currently not available for buying/selling on any market and can only be gained by depositing ALPACA for lending.
How does token burning work? Since ALPACA has a capped supply, doesn't perpetual burning mean the ALPACA supply will eventually run out? And why burn tokens instead of distributing them to ALPACA holders?
The ALPACA token burning is continuous. It works by sending the tokens to a burn address where they can never be retrieved from. You can view our past burns here. However, even though the ALPACA supply is capped at 188 million (minus prior burns), it is not possible to burn the supply to zero. There will always be ALPACA tokens on the market. That's because of how token burning works, specifically its effects on supply and demand.
What burning does is permanently destroy some tokens, hence removing them from the circulating token supply. With fewer tokens available to be sold on the market, that increases the price of the remaining tokens. For example, if there were 100 tokens with a price of 1 dollar, resulting in a market cap (aka project evaluation) of 1*100 = $100, if you then burned 50 of those tokens, the new price of each token could be solved as X in the following: X * 50 = $100.
The price of each token would double to $2. In other words, regardless of the token supply, the market cap does not change. By burning tokens and reducing the token supply, ALPACA is classified as a deflationary token, guaranteeing the price of ALPACA will rise over the long term, benefitting ALPACA holders.
Despite burning ALPACA on an ongoing basis, the price of ALPACA will never reach 0 because what we do isn't just burn, but buyback & burn. That means we need to buy the ALPACA tokens with protocol revenues before burning them. Since the price of ALPACA rises with continuous burns, it means we will be forced to buy back fewer ALPACA over time, even though the USD value of the buybacks will grow as the protocol grows.
As for why we burn instead of doing performance fee sharing, first of all, we do both. ALPACA holders earn Protocol APR from performance fees by depositing ALPACA into the lending pool. Then, the majority of performance fees from lending go to buyback & burn of ALPACA. The reason we do buyback & burn for a portion of the shared performance fees is that it's a more efficient method of value distribution to ALPACA holders.
Users can sell the ALPACA rewards from Protocol APR, though many of them don't, but they can never sell the burned ALPACA. The value of the burned ALPACA is thus redistributed to all ALPACA holders through increasing the price and this happens efficiently in one transaction. This way, we can guarantee ALPACA has a deflationary nature which we could not do if we distributed all the shared performance fees as sellable rewards.
Why is the app not loading? Why is loading taking so long?
If it takes over 30 seconds to load, instead of refreshing which will restart the process, just leave it and let it load. The page will load eventually.
There are sometimes issues with BNB Chain or third-party data providers. If you look around our app, you'll also notice we provide a lot of data and it is generally very accurate real-time data. Providing you all this accurate data to educate your decisions is important when dealing with leverage, but that also means loading may not be as quick as some other sites that reveal relatively little, because pulling on-chain data is currently not as fast as using the internet. However, we believe it's more important to be the most accurate than to be the quickest. We also do our best to regularly optimize performance.
Why is the gas fee higher than some other BNB Chain DApps?
The protocol usually doesn't use all that gas. There is extra gas requested as an allowance so the tx doesn't fail. However, it only spends the gas the tx needs. You can check your specific tx on bscscan after it completes to see what was used.
Second, the protocol performs a lot of tasks for you in the background, especially in farming positions; These tasks include borrowing/paying back loans, swapping for you on the DEX to get a 50:50 ratio, adding/removing liquidity, etc. All these steps cost gas, and you normally have to do them manually in other DApps.
If you'd like to reduce gas fee, you can opt to use a cheaper 3rd-party RPC. You can find some here.
At what rate do you buyback&burn ALPACA? Why are there funds in the liquidation treasury that have not yet been used for buyback&burn? Why not do buyback as soon as the funds come in?
Liquidation Treasury: BNB: https://bscscan.com/address/0x0FfA891ab6f410bbd7403b709e7d38D7a812125B Fantom: https://ftmscan.com/address/0x0FfA891ab6f410bbd7403b709e7d38D7a812125B Buyback Timing When funds come into the liquidation treasury, we randomize the timing and quantity of the purchases, usually doing the buybacks over time. This is in order to avoid being predictable. Otherwise, if we did the buybacks all at once, shortly after large liquidations, we would suffer sandwich attacks. The Sandwich Attack Concept At its core, a sandwich attack is a form of front-running that primarily targets decentralized finance protocols and services. In a sandwich attack, a nefarious trader looks for a pending transaction on the network of their choice, e.g., Ethereum. The sandwiching occurs by placing one order right before the trade and one right after it. In essence, the attacker will front-run and back-run simultaneously, with the original pending transaction sandwiched in between. The purpose of placing these two orders and surrounding pending transactions is to manipulate asset prices. First, the culprit will buy the asset the user is swapping to — e.g., using LINK to exchange to ETH — with their knowledge of ETH's price increasing. Then, the culprit will buy ETH for a lower price in order to let the victim buy at a higher value. The attacker will then sell ETH at a higher price afterward.
The transaction sandwiching affects the amount of ETH the initial user will receive. As the culprit succeeded in filling the order at their desired price, the next trade will be higher in cost. That sequence causes the ETH price to increase, allowing the culprit to pocket a profit by front- and back-running a trader and creating an artificial price increase. (from https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-are-sandwich-attacks-in-defi-and-how-can-you-avoid-them) Burn Timing/Rate Our burn strategy is to distribute the burns on a weekly basis so as to maximize the number of deflationary weeks. Short-term market sentiment is highly correlated with overall market conditions, and in our experience, doing large burns over a week does not have nearly as much of an impact as guaranteeing steady deflation of the ALPACA week after week. Every week, 100% of burn funds coming in from all regular revenue streams are burned. Meanwhile, irregular streams such as liquidation treasury and early governance withdrawal are burned gradually, if in surplus to emissions. The method by which we burn from irregular streams is the following. If burn from revenue is lower than the mint amount(which has been the case so far through Alpaca's existence), we withdraw from the irregular streams of ALPACA to be burned, such as liquidation treasury, so that the total amount of ALPACA burned that week(including the amount coming in from revenue) is up to slightly higher than the amount of tokens minted that week--to remain deflationary.
In the future, when burn from regular revenue will become higher than minted ALPACA, if there are remaining funds in the liquidation treasury, we will burn up to a certain amount per week from there, such as 100k-250k.
How do I change the slippage setting?
Lending
Can I be liquidated as a lender?
No, only borrowers that use leverage can be liquidated if price moves too far against them.
Can I take losses due to bad debt as a lender?
It's extremely unlikely. Alpaca uses conservative liquidation thresholds which protects lenders. The protocol also has numerous additional security layers including Chainlink price feeds, our Alpaca Guard to prevent price manipulation, and the total prevention of flash loans through only EOA.
Why can't I withdraw my funds from the lending pool?
The lending pool is there for people to borrow funds. That's why you're earning yields from it. So when people are borrowing your funds in active positions, how could you withdraw them? If you're unable to withdraw, then the utilization of the lending pool is too high, which means a high percentage of the funds are being borrowed at the moment. You can try to lower the amount you attempt to withdraw and it may succeed. However, the inability to withdraw is also a temporary issue.
The interest rate model exists to stabilize utilization levels. At above 90% utilization, the interest rate rises at a steep rate, making borrowing more expensive and lending more lucrative. This inevitably leads to borrowers closing their positions and more lenders coming in. When that happens, the utilization will drop to an optima where everyone can still profit, but lenders can withdraw without issue. This should not take longer than hours in most cases, and if something isn't working and the utilization rate remains high for a few days in a row, the team will step in to change the interest rate model to lower utilization.
We're also optimizing one step at a time to always have the most efficient interest rate model, allowing everyone to profit while lenders can also withdraw with ease. You can read more about the interest rate model here.
Leveraged Yield Farming
What is leveraged yield farming?
Leverage results from using borrowed capital to expand your asset base and the potential returns on that asset base. In other words, you borrow funds so you can invest more, and as a result--earn more.
In the context of yield farming, leverage involves borrowing assets to multiply your yield farming position, resulting in you accruing larger yields. This is a general profit maximization strategy. More on leveraged yield farming: https://thedefiant.io/leveraged-yield-farming/
Why does my transaction to open a leveraged farming position keep failing?
You need to set the gas limit to at least 2 million since our code does a lot of back-end work for you (setting up your position's LP tokens by optimally converting the individual assets). If that doesn't work, try raising the gas as well. If that still doesn't work after several tries, contact us at contact@alpacafinance.org or DM an admin on Telegram or Discord.
I tried to open/close a farming position. My transaction failed, but I can't find my funds now. What do I do?
Relax, young Alpaca. Your funds are safu. They are not lost. Our code has to convert funds into wBNB in the background to interact with AMMs. Since your transaction failed part-way, they must still be in wBNB. In other words, your tokens are in your wallet where they've always been.
So add wBNB to your wallet: 0xbb4cdb9cbd36b01bd1cbaebf2de08d9173bc095c You can unwrap your wBNB into BNB without fees on PancakeSwap. Then, try opening a position using the instructions in the FAQ question above this one.
My farming position was successfully created according to the transaction, but why can't I see it on the Portfolio page?
First, please try toggling off the PnL feature on the Portfolio page.
If after that, you still can't see it then please be patient and wait ~24 hours. This happens on rare occasions. It's due to lag with BNB Chain nodes and there isn't anything we can do about it. You can relax though because it's only a UI issue. If the transaction went through, your position exists and is accruing yields. You can also try closing the browser window and reopening it.
Why is the borrowing interest so high? Why is the lending pool utilization so high? Why is my APY negative?
This is due to a utilization spike from supply and demand for the lending asset. Too many people want to borrow from the lending pool and there aren't enough lenders, leading to high demand and low supply. However, it shouldn't last long.
As explained in the previous question which you can reference, high utilization will soon lead to a systemic correction as lenders enter to chase the high lending rate and borrowers exit due to the borrowing interest being too high. Just wait and you can watch this happen.
There's also not much to worry about. Even if the APY became negative, it would have to stay that way for a long time to make you lose any substantial funds, and not only is the system designed to prevent this, pushing corrections to happen in minutes, but the team would step in to change the interest rate model if there was any nagging inefficiency.
We're also optimizing one step at a time to always have the most efficient interest rate model, allowing everyone to profit while lenders can also withdraw with ease. You can read more about the interest rate model here.
I just opened a leveraged farming position, but why did my equity value drop?
Equity value when you open a position is the value of your principal equity when you first added it to the position. However, remember that because this is leveraged farming and not normal farming, you borrowed funds. Depending on which asset/s you added and the leverage level, the protocol may have had to do AMM conversions in order to get your added funds + borrowed funds into the correct 50:50 ratio to create your LP position. That means you would've paid price impact(slippage) + trading fees. Those fees reduced your starting equity value and act as entry costs for opening a leveraged yield farming position. When you exit, you will also have similar fees.
That is why when you want to farm at high leverage, you should keep in mind that you'd be best off intending to hold that position for a while. That way, you will give enough time for the APR to cover your entry and exit costs, and allow your yields to grow.
If you do not wish to pay entry or exit costs, you can also farm at 1x(standard farming without borrowing), or up to 2x while adding funds so that when combined with the borrowed funds, your assets are already in a 50:50 ratio and the protocol will not have to make any swaps.
For example, if you want to farm ETH-BNB at 2x leverage and you plan to borrow 2 BNB, if you add an amount of ETH that is worth 2 BNB then the assets will already be in a 50:50 split and you will pay no fees.
Why did my equity value drop below its value when I opened the position, even though I am leveraged farming a stablecoin-stablecoin pair?
First, please read the prior question's answer if you are unaware why your initial equity might be less than the funds you added.
Second, you should note that with leverage, price moves will have a larger effect on your equity value. Please take a look at a price chart of your pair. Even if it is a stablecoin-stablecoin pair, the prices swing 1-2% very regularly. With leverage, that price movement is multiplied. So at 4x, a 1% movement, can cause a 2% price drop to your equity value on that token's portion(% move * leverage / token's portion of equity = 1% * 4 / 2). Of course, since these are stablecoins, you can believe they will soon swing back to peg with high confidence.
You may have another doubt: since this is an LP pool, shouldn't it not matter if one stablecoin drops in value because that means the other goes up in value? if I am farming USDT-BUSD and USDT drops in value, BUSD will go up to cover that, and IL is insignificant with these small price movements.
Well, that is the case for normal farming. However, when you leverage above 2x, you are borrowing an asset, and that also means that you are not long, but short on that asset. (We'll be releasing more articles to explain shorting in the future.)
What this means is that when you borrow BUSD to farm something like USDT-BUSD, you are long USDT and short BUSD. So when the price of USDT drops, you are losing value on your USDT portion, but this also means that you are losing value on your BUSD when the price of it rises. This creates additional volatility, multiplying your temporary losses on your total equity by 2. What's more is that it's not necessarily true that BUSD value rises when USDT price falls, because both USDT and BUSD can drop against the market at the same time and still have a ratio like .99:1.01. Albeit, it's true that's not common with stablecoins, but happens somewhat often with non-pegged tokens.
Finally, you need to realize that unlike other farms, we actually show you when your asset value goes down. Most projects don't show you the USD value of your staked LP tokens on their dashboards, which is why it may surprise you to see equity value go up and down. Would you rather be ignorant of this or aware of it? We prefer displaying such data so our users can make better decisions, and we're working on adding more metrics all the time.
So in summary, most of the time it's because the price of your long asset temporarily dropped against the borrowed asset. To reiterate though, this should be temporary.
Why have my yields not been as high as the APY says? Why is my position/equity value not increasing?
First of all, you should make sure you understand what APY is. APY is how much you'll earn at the end of the year if you take all your yields and regularly add those on top of your principal into the pool, compounding your equity to earn yields on your yields. This is a powerful process that quickly becomes exponential over time.
APR, on the other hand, is simple interest that shows what your direct earnings would be at the end of the year if you earned yields only on your initial principal.
Now, here's the key, when you first open a position or make a deposit, APR=APY. Can you see why? Because you have no yields to redeposit! Over time, as you earn yields, APY starts to soar above APR as you redeposit those yields and begin generating compounded earnings. So, in summary, it takes time for your earnings to reach the standard of APY.
To see more, you can make APR to APY conversions here: https://www.aprtoapy.com/
Another factor you have to keep in mind if you are leveraged yield farming is that a large part of your total APR or APY is in ALPACA rewards. Those are claimable on the STAKE page and are not factored into your equity value shown in the farming dashboard. Of course, you can add them as collateral to your farming position if you want or stake them in another pool to earn yields on them which achieves the same effect as compounding, only in multiple baskets.
As for your position/equity value not increasing, if the APR on your leveraged farming pair is low enough, it's possible that the yield farming and trading fees are only enough to cover the borrowing interest. In that case, your position value would not increase, but the ALPACA rewards are where you'd be earning your yields, which is not calculated in those metrics.
In addition, it's important to remember that in the short and possibly medium-term, the greatest impact on your position/equity value will be the prices of the assets. This is like any other farming. If the prices move unfavorably for you, this can result in your equity and position value dropping. Since it takes time for yields to accrue to substantial amounts relative to your principal, they will not be able to cover this asset exposure in a short time. So it's recommended you choose carefully about which token pair you farm in.
Where are my ALPACA rewards from farming?
On the Portfolio page, on the Your Positions dashboard, at the top right you should see a Claim button. Click that and you will find your rewards.
My position was liquidated. Where are the remaining funds?
If there were funds remaining after liquidation, you received them in your wallet in the form of the borrowed token. You can also check the tx for the position in the Liquidated Positions section of the Farm tab in the Portfolio section. Please note that if the blockchain network is experiencing high volume, there may be a delay in the liquidated position showing up there.
To learn more about liquidation, you can read our liquidation section of the docs.
Why is borrowing interest higher than the Lending APR?
Here is the formula: Borrowing Interest * Lending Pool Utilization * (1 - Protocol fee) = Lending APR
Protocol fee = .19 aka 19%
Lending APR is actually a variable that is set based on our triple-slope interest rate model but showing the formula in the format above makes it easier to understand what's happening.
You can think of it like this. When a farmer borrows funds, they only borrow from a small part of the available lending pool. Yet, the entire lending pool gets equal Lending APR. So the borrowing interest is spread over not only the portion of the pool that is actively loaning out funds(captured by utilization) but also the unutilized portion of the lending pool.
For example, if the utilization was 10%, and the Borrowing Interest was X, the borrowers would be paying X but only to the 10% of lenders. In our model, all the lenders get paid, so those fees to the 10% get stretched across 100% of lenders, lowering them, which is the primary reason why the lending APR is lower than borrowing interest.
I haven't claimed my ALPACA rewards from yield farming, so why did my claimable ALPACA decrease?
If you make any transaction involving a yield farming position related to that lending asset, the protocol will auto-claim the ALPACA for you. So if you have pending ALPACA to claim for a BNB-BUSD position, and you open or close any position on any BUSD pair, or add collateral, etc, the protocol will auto-claim the ALPACA and send it to your wallet.
As per emission schedule, ALPACA emission rewards have now concluded.
Will I get liquidated if my token pair has a flash crash? What oracles do you use for liquidation?
The short answer is no. We get prices from your pair's underlying exchange on-chain but they're cross-checked first against Chainlink's price feeds, and then against a batch of off-chain oracles: Coinmarketcap, Coingecko, Cryptocompare, etc. If the DEX's price is more than 10%(5% in some cases) off the other oracles' median price, the protocol will temporarily turn off liquidation. This protects you from price manipulation and flash crashes. This Protection Mode is a feature of our Alpaca Guard which you can read more about here.
What's the fundamental difference between 1x, 2x and 3x leverage?
1x leverage is the same as the standard farming you can do anywhere else. In Alpaca's case, we autocompound the rewards for you.
Above 1x, you’ll be borrowing an asset, which will allow you to multiply your farming position, providing you higher yields. The asset other than the one you borrow will have leveraged long exposure so your equity value will increase when its price rises. This is the same as standard yield farming. For the borrowed asset, at 2x leverage, you’ll have neutral exposure to that asset. This means at position opening, your equity value will be indifferent to a modest rise OR fall in the borrowed asset’s price; hence — neutral. (*For users who want to hedge neutral: Keep in mind that large double-digit price moves will shift your exposure on the borrowed asset from neutral to slightly long or slightly short. So opening one position at 2x is not the best way to hedge neutral. The 2x is only neutral at position open and is used as an example only to illustrate that. If you want to hedge neutral, please read this article for a better method. You can also view examples of these shifts from a user’s experience here, or get an idea of how your exposures change and affect position value using our yield farming calculator.) Above 2x, you will have a slight short on the borrowed asset, meaning your equity value will increase when that asset's price falls, and your equity value will decrease when the price rises. Below 2x, you will be long on both assets, but more long on the one you didn't borrow. In summary, to maximize your profits, if you have a choice of which asset to borrow, consider borrowing the asset OPPOSITE TO the one you are most bullish about. For example, in ETH-BNB, if you expect ETH's price to rise more than BNB's price, then borrow BNB.
As a leveraged farmer, where am I earning my yields?
In leveraged farming positions, your yields have 3 earning parts and one part of borrowing interest.
Total APR% = Yield Farming Rewards + Trading Fees + ALPACA rewards - Borrowing Interest
Yield Farming Rewards are the DEX rewards(ie. CAKE/WEX) that the protocol sells and auto-compounds into your LP. You receive these yields as additional LP tokens, meaning the number of LP tokens in your position grows over time. You can view your current LP tokens amount by hovering over your position's Position Value.
Trading fee rewards accumulate internally within your LP tokens. You receive these yields through your LP tokens accruing in value, meaning your LP tokens are worth more over time. (Similar to how ibTokens work)
ALPACA rewards accumulate based on your position’s debt size. You receive these yields by manually claiming them at the top right of the Your Positions dashboard.
Borrowing interest is the component that your above three revenue sources cover to pay the users loaning you their funds so you can use leverage. Borrowing interest reduces your equity value.
As per emission schedule, ALPACA emission rewards have now concluded.
How does the auto-compounding of leveraged farming positions affect equity value and debt value?
Earned rewards from auto-compounding trading fees and yield farming rewards are added to Equity Value. Meanwhile, accrued borrowing interest is subtracted from Equity Value.
Why can't I open leveraged yield farming position with multi-sig wallet?
For security reasons, we only allow whitelisted multi-sig wallets to open LYF or AV positions. Please send your wallet address to requests@alpacafinance.org to get yours whitelisted.
Alpies
What are Alpies?
Alpies are a hand-drawn, limited edition 10,000-piece NFT collection, which we’ll release in two parts on BNB Chain and then ETH. Both sets will be bridgeable between BNB Chain and ETH so you’ll be able to trade them on OpenSea and other marketplaces.
The Dauntless Collection:
5,000 dark-themed Alpies will first be sold on BNB Chain. Join these relentless capitalists in clearing their path to success through a fierce focus on execution.
The Dreamers Collection:
5,000 light-themed Alpies will be sold on Ethereum. Join these idealistic builders in their quest to grow the crypto industry into a financial utopia.
How can I buy Alpies?
The Dauntless collection on BNB Chain is listed at the following marketplaces:
The Dreamers collection on Eth is listed at the following marketplaces:
How many Alpies can I buy? How can I be sure the sales are fair?
We put several safeguards in place to prevent bots and whales from unfairly acquiring Alpies. These limits include:
Maximum of 30 Alpies can be purchased in one tx
Maximum of 90 Alpies can be purchased by a single wallet
5-minute cooldown after each 30 Alpies are purchased by a single wallet.
I am on the Whitelist for the Dreamers Alpies sale, what do I need to do to get my Alpies?
Please follow the instructions here:
Address to send your funds on Eth Mainnet: 0x2bfdacF6CdBC3ECcb95E68ec448ECf3d0693F732
What are the utilities for Alpies?
In addition to being glorious profile pictures, these Alpies will also have important roles as heroes in our upcoming play-to-earn game, scheduled to be released in Q2 2022.
These NFT avatars will be randomly generated from 200+ unique hand-drawn features of three rarities: common, rare, and epic. The rarer features will give higher stats within the game. There are also set effects between some features.
You will need to own 3 Alpies to play the game. If you manage to get your paws on one of the Alpies from this limited edition collection, you can also expect to gain the following exclusive benefits:
Presale allocation of future Alpaca game project token
50% higher max leverage on Alpaca Finance
Future NFT airdrops/giveaways
Beta access to Alpaca game
Higher game stats
Exclusive free game items
High-quality NFT Breeding
Access to exclusive Discords (Illamanati for Dauntless, Knights Tempaca for Dreamers, and both can access The Paws That Be)
Exclusive access to Alpaca physical merch
Where will the proceeds from sales go?
From the sales proceeds, 20% will go to ALPACA holders through buyback and burn.
In addition, 5% will go to alpaca-oriented charities and rescue operations to help real alpacas in need. 🦙
There will also be 5% royalties on the Alpies, of which half (2.5%) will go to ALPACA holders through buyback & burn.
You can track our buyback and burn from Alpies here.
Since we'll need 3 Alpies to play the game, won't the game be limited to only 3,333 players?
These Alpies will give beta access to the game. Once the game goes public, it will be more inclusive because there will be a breeding mechanism which will allow these Alpies to produce more Alpies(different generation, lower stats). Breeding will earn Alpies holders revenues by allowing them to sell their newly generated Alpies. This mechanism is similar to Axie infinity.
However, please note that all the utility benefits listed for Alpies will be exclusive to this collection of 10,000 Alpies. The future Alpies that come from breeding will be playable in the game but not have these benefits.
How will Alpies be distributed?
Of the 10,000 Alpies, 5,000 were put up on sale on BNB Chain and Eth respectively. Of each of those sets of 5,000, the team reserved 125 for testing for the upcoming game, promotions, auction partnerships with marketplaces, and distribution to partners.
For full disclosure, we have also created an Alpaca Team Alpie and will mint 100 copies of it for our current and future team members(team size is 60+ now). We will also mint some honorary Alpies for notable figures in the NFT/crypto space before the sales, but these will not be more than a few dozen. Both of the above Alpie types will not share in the rarity distributions of the main 10,000 Alpie collection.
All 5,000 Dauntless Alpies were sold out while 2,306 Dreamers Alpies were sold. The remaining 2,694 unsold Dreamers Alpies were distributed to the Alpies buyers.
How many Alpies will be required for the 50% max leverage boost? How will the math work? Will all pools benefit from this?
One Alpie will be enough to get the leverage boost on all the farming positions of the wallet address holding the Alpie. To check when this feature will be developed, please view our Roadmap.
The 50% boost will apply to total leverage so 2x->3x and 3x->4.5x.
Most pools will be eligible for this with the exception of those with too low DEX liquidity such that permitting higher leverage would be dangerous, and the highest leverage pools(6x) may have lower boosts, also for safety.
When will I be able to see the design of the Alpie I minted? When will I be able to list my Alpie on marketplaces?
You can view your Alpies at the Alpies site gallery page here: https://alpies.alpacafinance.org/gallery
For Dauntless Alpies holders, you can also view the rarity of your Alpies through Fabboard here: https://fabboard.vercel.app/alpies
How can I see my Alpies in my wallet?
ALPIES contract addresses:
BNB Chain Dauntless: https://bscscan.com/token/0x57A7c5d10c3F87f5617Ac1C60DA60082E44D539e#balances
ETH Dreamers: https://etherscan.io/address/0x57A7c5d10c3F87f5617Ac1C60DA60082E44D539e
Add the token for Alpies to your Web3 wallet. If you don't know how to do that, we have a guide for metamask. Just use the above contract address for the set/network of your Alpie, instead of ALPACA, and set the decimal as 0. Guide here
If you use a Web3 wallet other than metamask, the process should be similar. If you still can't figure it out from the above guide, please google "how to add custom tokens to [WalletName]" and make sure the guide you find belongs to an official URL of the Wallet company.
Please also keep in mind the actual designs and features of your Alpies will not be visible until after the end of the Eth sale.
How many presale tokens of the upcoming game will Alpie holders be eligible for?
Each Alpie in a wallet will make it eligible for a certain max allocation of presale tokens. The more Alpies a wallet has, the more tokens they will be able to receive presale allocation for.
Automated Vaults
Why have my Profit/Loss results been lower than the expected APYs on the UI?
APY is dynamic and depends on many factors including the DEX token price (e.g. CAKE, MDX), recent trading fees of the underlying farming pool, and recent borrowing interest rate. These can fluctuate. Although, with the exception of trading fees which are on a 7-day average, these terms are real-time for the APY listed for the Automated Vaults and thus accurate if there are no rebalances.
Each time a rebalance to restore market-neutral exposure is necessary, there is a small cost to the equity value due to swap costs and cemented IL, and the number of rebalances can't be accurately predicted because it depends on market volatility. Asset price volatility can lead to many rebalances in some short-term periods which can temporarily reduce equity value. You can view the backtest results on the Invest pages to see that there are brief periods of sideways or downwards movement on the P/L backtest graphs. The Maximum Drawdown stat captures the historical backtest result's maximum drop during such a period.
Remember that market-neutral Automated Vault positions are long-term investments. Think of them as investing in real estate, and not of investing in a memecoin. You wouldn't check the price of your house every day. So it's recommended to monitor AV positions month-to-month or week-to-week over which time short-term volatility is very unlikely to continue, not day-to-day.
Won't APYs drop further if more instances of vaults are created on the same pair?
While there will be some dilution to the yield with additional TVL, before any additional capacity is added to Automated Vaults of the same pair, the team performs a thorough analysis to forecast the new APY level and make sure that it will still be attractive for farmers.
More importantly, we implemented flat borrowing interest rate for Automated Vaults to create predictability and operational stability. For simplicity and ease of implementation in the initial stage, we will use a flat slope for all utilization levels. However, in the future, we might create a positive slope curve at high utilization to also incentivize managers to return some debt. Given the vault’s controlled capacity at launch, this should not be an issue.
What are the risks of Automated Vaults?
You can review the risks associated with using Automated Vaults and Alpaca Finance here.
Why are there no Automated Vaults for the ALPACA token?
Automated Vaults require that the underlying crypto pair has deep liquidity and high trading volume to safeguard the strategy from price manipulation. Only the top stablecoins and crypto tokens (BTC, ETH, BNB, FTM, etc.) currently fit this criterion.
Why are there multiple instances of the same pool?
Automated Vaults require rebalancing from time to time when asset price movements cause deviations from the strategies' targeted exposure of market-neutral. These rebalances require swaps. In order to keep the price impact during swapping within the acceptable range, we need to limit the size of each pool.
How is the 2% AV management fee calculated?
It's not the whole 2% when users make a deposit. It's not a deposit fee. The 2% management fee is calculated by the equity, 2% per year taken pro-rata. So if you farm for 1 month, during that month, the management fee would be 1/ 12 * 2% = 0.17%.
The way it works is the contract mints extra token shares. For example. Let's say there are 100 shares outstanding in the pool and it has been 1 day since the last management fee was accrued. The protocol would calculate the following: Number of outstanding pool's share = 100 shares Time elapsed since last mgmt fee accrued: 1 day Mgmt fee rate: 2% / annum = 0.005479% / day Mgmt share to mint = 0.005479% * 100 shares = 0.005479 shares minted as mgmt fee
What exactly happens when a user invests in an Automated Vault?
Alpaca calculates the necessary sizes for the short & long positions to be aggregate market-neutral, including how much to borrow.
Alpaca executes the transactions to borrow and deploy liquidity into the underlying positions in the DEX, receiving LP tokens in return.
For safety, Alpaca checks that the value of the LP tokens received (hence, the actual position value) does not deviate too much from the pre-calculation due to slippage or a difference from Oracle prices. If there is a deviation, the tx is reverted. (Maximum allowable deviation for 8x is 1.2%) If there is no problem, the process continues.
Alpaca stakes the LP tokens to receive token rewards from the DEX.
The Automated Vault’s share tokens (i.e. n8x-BNBUSDT-PC1) corresponding to the user’s equity in the Automated Vault’s pool are minted and sent to the user as a unit of account, and are composable and transferrable for future use cases.
Why is there a 0.3% withdrawal fee in the Automated Vaults?
The withdrawal fee:
Covers the costs of rebalancing and managing Automated Vaults, which are expensive costs
Protects from potential exploiters because they can't get in and out without paying the fee
Incentivizes long-term positions which is good for the health of the platform and Automated Vaults investors that lack understanding about how short-term volatility can affect P/L
Is in line with the competitive landscape. Tranchess, Beefy, Autofarm, and many other platforms have withdrawal fees for similar reasons
Why is there more deployed TVL than Capacity on the AV instances?
The extra amount is the profit from currently deployed investors.
Why can't I open Automated Vault position with multi-sig wallet?
For security reasons, we only allow whitelisted multi-sig wallets to open LYF or AV positions. Please send your wallet address to requests@alpacafinance.org to get yours whitelisted.
1x long indicates the target state of the vault, while in live operations, it might get to as high as 4x to 6x. Some clarification on why this is the case:
With the nature of concentrated Liquidity (CL) on UNIv3, the exposure would appears more "extreme" than what it used to be on the previous version of AV. This is simply from the nature of how CL works. When the price moves to the edge of your LP range, you ended up with just almost one asset (and completely in 1 asset when it's out of range). This is in contrast to the UNIv2 where the exposure shift slightly as price move because you are providing LP from 0 to infinity.
As such, in some particular situation for the BNB Savings, the appeared high Long exposure on BNB is not due to a leveraged bet, but rather accumulated exposure from the BNB price move.
Why is the vault not being hedged?
A short answer is that because there is a high expectation from the model for mean reversion. This is typical for market making strategies.
Unfortunately, a simple rebalancing / hedging rules when price moves beyond the price band would not be profitable. This fact is evidenced by the first version of our automated vault. We did this and it was unprofitable - and that's when we went back to the drawing board and came up with AVv2. There are also many other products trying to offer auto-management of an LP position on UNIv3 through a simple rebalancing rule. They also appear to not be profitable as evidenced by 1.) none of them are willing to show historical actual performance, just the current instantaneous APR% or 2.) minimal TVL in non-stable pairs vaults.
That being said, we do have a safety parameter in place, and if the BNB price are to continued to move downward, we would start partially hedging.
Bridge
Which Bridge protocol does Alpaca Finance integrate with?
The bridging widget on Alpaca Finance website is integrates with Li.Fi, a leading cross-chain bridging protocol. With the bridging widget, you can quickly send assets to any of Alpaca’s networks to deposit them and start earning yields.
Is it safe to use the bridge?
LI.FI is a bridging service aggregator and is trusted and used by many leading protocols. It is audited by Quantstamp and Code4rena.
What are the fees for using the bridging service?
All of the fees collected during the bridging process are charged by the bridging protocols. Alpaca Finance does not charge any fees to users for using the bridge. Since the bridging widget aggregates from many bridges, you will generally get the lowest cost available for this kind of service.
Last updated
