Bastion $1.5B TVL & raised 9M Series A, USN are released

Near has been the hottest ecosystem in the crypto market in the last few weeks as Near Foundation announced a new stablecoin would be deployed – $USN & a new $350M fundraising round has completed. In this article, an analysis of the latest development of the Near ecosystem will be given, with some predictions about how this ecosystem will develop.

Near Ecosystem overview (W17/2022)

Important updates

• Near Foundation & Aurora are continuously granting funds for projects in DeFi, GameFi, NFT & Infrastructure.
• USN is finally released with the minimum APR at 10%.
• Bastion Protocol raised $9M in their Series A, with the participation of top-tier VCs. They also launched their $BSTN token & had $1.3 billion in total TVL.

Impressive numbers on Near

Many impressive numbers were achieved on Near:

• TVL (excluding borrowing) reached $1.7B, while TVL including borrowing exceeded $3.1B.
• Bastion Protocol is the first protocol on Near reaching $1.3B in TVL. Aurigami’s TVL surpassed $500M.
• Ref Finance’s $2B accumulative volume milestone achieved!
• Flux Protocol secured a total of $3B TVL on Near & Aurora, and became the 6th largest oracle in the market.
• The ratio between the money inflow & outflow (through Rainbow Bridge) of Aurora is 4, while that number of Near is 27. Little money is withdrawn in comparison to deposited.

New projects & updates from existing projects

During previous weeks, there are one new significant project & several updates from existing ones:

• Decentral Bank is a new project which is a DAO managing the $USN Reserve Fund & main smart contract operations. They are supported by Proximity Labs – the DeFi arm of Near Foundation.
• Decentral Bank announced the $USN TGE on Apr 25th, with the minimum yield of $USN staking is 10% (which comes from the yield of staking NEAR that back $USN). With the participation of USN in the Near Ecosystem in the upcoming week, the TVL of the whole ecosystem is expected to rise significantly.
• Ref Finance would be the first protocol that opens farming for USN. The USN-USDT pool will be opened soon, which is expected to bring a huge amount of TVL to this AMM DEX.
• Many milestones were achieved by top projects on Near: Flux Protocol’s $3B total value secured, Bastion’s $1.4B TVL, Aurigami’s $700M TVL, Ref Finance’s $2B accumulative volume.
• 2 new orderbook DEXs brought new updates: Spin Fi released mainnet, Tonic DEX raised $5M in their first fundraising round from many big VCs (Framework, Move Capital, Electric Capital).

Analysis of each category on Near Ecosystem (W17/2022)

The Near ecosystem is growing faster than ever. More than 500 projects are being built on the Near& Aurora Ecosystem.

Lending & Borrowing

The lending war on the Near ecosystem is hotter than ever:

• Bastion raised $9M in a Series A & their TVL reached $1.4B, Aurigami’s TVL surpassed $700M.
• Burrow Cash witnessed a $450M TVL.
• And USN stablecoin is not even launched yet.  

Bastion Protocol

Bastion Protocol’s total TVL (including borrowing) is $1.4B now, even without the launch of $USN on Bastion. Last week, after announcing their $9M Series A fundraising from top tier VCs, $BSTN TGE happened & $BSTN valuation is currently $200M.

Currently, 8 assets are supported by Bastion Protocol, and more assets such as USN will be included in the future. Moreover, Bastion stableswap protocol has the one with the highest TVL in the Near ecosystem.

However, it’s worth pointing out that the TVL rise recently is basically by incentivizing asset borrowing. As a result, the actual deposit amount remains stable from the end of the second lockdrop.

Burrow Cash

Burrow Cash reached an ATH TVL of $438M deposited on their protocol, making them the largest protocol in terms of TVL on the Near ecosystem. However, it’s worth noting that $BRRR tokens are in the pre-mining period. Thus, providing liquidity for Burrow doesn’t give immediate reward.

Aurigami

Aurigami is the second biggest lending protocol on the Aurora ecosystem. Their IDO will happen  on Impossible Finance and Bybit Launchpad in early May. At the time of writing, the TVL of Aurigami is over $700M (including borrowing).

However, the increase in Aurigami TVL could be attributed to the yield boosting program from the Aurigami team – as a short-term way to increase TVL & prepare the best for the upcoming IDO.

Stablecoin

USN 

USN was released in Near Wallet and Ref Finance’s USN-USDT pool on Apr 25th by Decentral Bank. This stablecoin will give the minimum APR of 10% for stakers. By depositing NEAR to the reserve, $USN can be minted with a 1:1 ratio, and the backing NEAR would be used to stake to pay the 10% yield.

USN stability is supported by the on-chain smart contract for NEAR/USN arbitrage, the currency board-based Reserve Fund, full collateralization in NEAR and a basket of other stablecoins, and active use of the decentralized exchange optimized for swapping stablecoins.

In my opinion, in the upcoming weeks, USN will be included in all Dapps on the ecosystem: Trisolaris, Bastion Protocol, Aurigami,… 

Other stablecoins

Near Ecosystem stablecoin inflow is always positive in the previous week. The total stablecoin amount (without USN) on the Near ecosystem is more than $1B (10x compared to 2 previous months). The most deposited protocols of big stablecoin depositors on Near are Trisolaris, Bastion and Aurigami.

AMM DEX

Ref Finance

Ref Finance is the biggest AMM DEX in the Near-native ecosystem. Ref Finance is growing fast, as the TVL reached an ATH of $240M with the launch of $USN. The accumulative volume of Ref Finance also surpassed $2B last week. The APR of farming pools on Ref increased as the $REF price surged last week.

$REF tokens are mentioned with high frequency by content creators and KOLs on Twitter, as most of them believe it’s one of the best ways to get exposure to the release event of USN (as USN are released, the volume & the TVL would increase on top DEXs).

Summary

In summary, there were several significant events in the previous weeks in the Near ecosystem:

• Money inflow from both retailers and VCs is skyrocketing.
• USN is released, and the farming pools will be live soon on Ref Finance & other top Dapps.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below! The Pandoraland team will answer your questions as soon as possible! See you in our future posts