State of the Popsicle: next steps forward!

Popsicle.Finance (WAGMI)
6 min readFeb 3, 2022

As mentioned on discord, here is an update around the next steps forward for Popsicle.

First of all, although it may have been quiet around Popsicle, it certainly hasn’t been quiet around the team of Popsicle. Since the relaunch of Popsicle Fragola UniV3 optimizer of mainnet we also launched on Polygon. Interestingly enough, UniV3 and concentrated liquidity has been a topic of efficiency for a few weeks now. Mainly to the discussion around the efficiency and utility for the LPer. For the end user and trader it is a great asset. For the LPer though, discussions emerged.

Strategy Adjustments and Refinements

Our data wiz 0xDanger, made this twitter post a few weeks ago regarding the performance of Popsicle Fragola at a total pool level.

Overall we are satisfied with Popsicle Fragola, the market conditions overall are of course not favoring LPers, but currently in most of the pools you have lost less than if you would have just HODLed single sided assets.

Needless to say, we are also not blown away with the results, we would be lying if we were.

In order to refine our strategies further we are working on the following:

1. Continually develop and refine multiple performance frameworks to evaluate the performance of our UniV3 pools. One of these frameworks will look at allowing pool returns to be generalized across all pool participants irrespective of entries and exits within pools.

2. Engaged a Univ3 research team and strategist to further improve, tailor and refine strategies with the aim of further increasing profitability.

3. Additional UI changes are being made to improve the transparency of the APR calculations.

When Will Strategy Adjustments and Refinements Be Deployed?

The performance framework is a work in progress and will require multiple iterations to perfect. As a result, a timeline will be provided closer to completion date.

The UI changes are being tested as we speak they are expected to be completed within the next month.

Limone

So what are the next steps? How do we move forward? Does Popsicle want to Pivot?

As many know we always mentioned due to the unfortunate event of the hack last August, the launch of Limone would be pushed back.

So it is now with great celebration we say we are almost READY for the launch of Limone :).

How Does Limone Work?

The concept of Limone is very simple — a way to automate the time consuming process of monitoring and then deploying capital into farms to earn the best yields.

In particular, it performs 2 main functions:

1. Automates the process of identifying the most profitable yield farms for a given LP, allowing also leverage.

2. Compounds any rewards generated directly back into the LP to supercharge your returns

But How Does Limone Benefit Me (the Liquidity Provider)?

Instead of manually checking multiple farms on a daily basis for the best yields, Limone automates this process for you by identifying the most profitable farms and automatically placing your LP into these farms to generate the best yield.

This means regardless of whether the best opportunity is on Sushiswap, Trader Joe, or Pangolin, Limone will AUTOMATICALLY seek and deploy your capital into the most profitable farms.

Users also benefit from increased returns through:

1. Automated compounding of rewards into their LP positions

2. Reduction in gas costs associated with weekly compounding (as it is shared by all the users in the pool).

Which Chains Will Limone Operate On?

Limone will be available on FTM, Avalanche, and on BSC.

When Will Limone Be Launched?

We are expecting to launch Limone in approximately 5 weeks.

JIT — Just In Time Liquidity

One of the other main developments you would have heard is our development of a JIT (or Just In Time) strategy of liquidity provision.

Read on to find out how this could be a game changer for Popsicle Finance.

What is JIT and why is it interesting and what are we building?

The JIT strategy of liquidity provision is simple in theory and consists of the following steps:

1. The blockchain is constantly monitored for large trades.

2. When a large trade (buy or sell transaction) occurs on Uniswap V3, liquidity from Popsicle Finance is deployed into a narrow tick range allowing us to capture almost all (99.9%) of the trading fees for this trade.

3. The liquidity for this trade is then automatically removed within a single block.

This method of liquidity provision when compared to normal LPing is more advantageous to the extent that there is 0% impermanent loss when compared to traditional methods of liquidity provision, while at the same time allowing for the outsized fee generation (as a result of this highly concentrated liquidity).

We believe that this new method of liquidity provision will be important going forward as competition between UniV3 optimisers increases.

From our research, we have also noticed that currently only 2 active addresses are using this strategy.

When Will JIT Be Launched?

We are still looking into building a product for this, but we are yet to determine whether it will be its own unique product, or whether it will be a part of Fragola.

As a result we cannot provide a release date for JIT liquidity provision strategy as this is currently in development. Once we are able to obtain a more concrete understanding of what form the final product will take, we will update our community on a launch date.

Order Book DEX

Now to the big elephant in the room, which is the Order Book DEX.

What is the Order Book DEX, why have you not heard of it until now?

The Order Book DEX, is exactly what the name suggests.

It is a decentralized exchange that works similarly to centralized exchanges like Binance, Coinbase and so on.

It has an orderbook meaning that there is a buy side and a sell side, on each of these sides there are users that want to buy and want to sell. Orderbook DEXs allow for more efficient price execution, with less slippage. On the other hand they are better for market makers as the orderbook isn’t based on a curve like an AMM, but rather can be constructed however one would like. We will be providing an exact write up of how this Order Book DEX works, what we are going to call it and more in the coming week or two.

When Will The Order Book DEX Be Launched?

We release further information about this in approximately 1–2 weeks.

Leveraged PLPs

What Are Leveraged PLPs?

Leveraged PLPs are basically PLP positions that have been created via our Univ3 pools and Limone based pools but with additional leverage applied (leverage is facilitated using MIM from Abracadabra Money).

The process works as follows:

1. An initial PLP is created by entering into a Univ3 pool or Limone Pool on Popsicle Finance.

2. Users are able to apply leverage to this PLP via using Abracadabra Money but using Popsicle Finance’s UI.

When Will The Leveraged PLPs Be Launched?

There are a couple of things that are delaying the release of Leveraged PLPs:

1. As MIM has recently traded below peg, this makes the process of leveraging the PLP expensive as users would lose for each successive loop of leverage that is applied.

2. After completing testing we will be releasing only leveraged stable asset LPs. Due to our concern about magnified impermanent loss due to leverage and a higher probability of liquidation with volatile asset LPs we believe this is the most prudent choice in this market.

In light of this we cannot provide an exact timeline but we believe that once the MIM peg has stabilised we should be almost ready for launch.

Berkserker NFTs

The berserker NFTs artworks are being finalized, and we are nearly ready to start minting.

We are internally discussing what is the best possible use for these are, so expect more on this in the weeks bringing us to Limone!

When Will The Berserker NFTs Be Launched?

As discussed above, further details about these NFTs will be released in the next 4 weeks.

Conclusion

One last point, I just wanted to say thank you to all the Isvikingers that are a part of the Popsicle Community right now. LPing has not been simple, the team is learning along the way, we are excited to see the next products to come out and see where we will be in a few weeks.

The next steps specifically on the communication side is to explain further how exactly the Order Book DEX will work, closer to the 4 weeks of launch of Limone, we will be releasing what exactly the asset pools will be on each of the chains. You’ll hear from us soon!

Make sure to Follow us on Twitter and join our Discord!

--

--