Stablecoins and the problem
As much as people like to use volatile assets like Bitcoin as a means of exchange, they are too much of a hassle for daily transactions. That was why people came up with the idea of stablecoins. Over the years, stablecoins have proved their importance in the blockchain world as a hedge against market volatility, an entry for new crypto users, or a better yield instrument than normal fiat currencies. There are many types of stablecoins:
- Fiat-backed: USDC, USDT
- Crypto-backed: DAI
- Algorithmic: UST, FRAX
Different stablecoins provide different use cases in DeFi, which contributes to the prosperity of DeFi as a whole. Sounds great, but there’s a problem, what if we want to trade those assets? Prominent AMM DEXs like Uniswap V2, Sushiswap, Bancor, or Balancer all use a method called Constant Function Market Makers (CFMM), or a modified version of it. This works great for normal assets but does not work as well for swapping between stablecoins (or assets that have similar prices like WETH/sETH), because it results in a high slippage. It is unacceptable for people to swap 1 USDC only to get 0.9 USDT.
To maintain a small enough slippage requires an enormous amount of liquidity (token/money) in the pool, which is not optimal as most of the liquidity is left untouched, and the fees shared between liquidity providers are not so great.
AshSwap is the first decentralized exchange built on the Elrond blockchain that allows users to trade between stable assets with high volume and small slippage.
As Elrond grows to become the infrastructure of DeFi, more types of stablecoins will flow in, and users will need a place to swap them.
Elrond & UX
The reasons why we choose to build on Elrond will be discussed more thoroughly in another article but one of the biggest reasons is we like the UX focus of Elrond. We believe, in the coming waves of DeFi, normal users will join and play a key role, and they need to have a simple enough interface to interact with the blockchains without worrying about what is happening under the hood. We at AshSwap take it very seriously and work very hard to provide users with that ease of mind.
About Us
Roadmap
The current version of AshSwap with all the core functionalities is deployed on Elrond Testnet at https://testnet.ashswap.io. We are constantly adding new features and improvements to the dex to make sure users’ funds are safe and they will have the best experience using it.
We are also very welcome feedback from users, your ideas definitely matter. Kindly note that we will run retroactive programs in the future so make sure you try our product out. The detailed instructions for using the dex can be found at https://docs.ashswap.io.
We aim to release a battle-tested Mainnet version of AshSwap in Q1 2022. The token airdrop and sales are likely to happen after that. What’s next is a completely new version of AshSwap pools with better liquidity and farming use cases. Currently, the pools are similar to other stable-swap dexes, but there is so much more to come.
Funding
As of this moment, AshSwap has not received any funding.
Team
AshSwap is created by a group of talented developers and professionals. After having worked and developed in this industry (behind the scenes) for quite a while, we decided to step out and build a meaningful product. We are all aspired by the bright future of blockchain & DeFi and want to be a part of this innovation wave.
If you look ever wonder whether we are capable of doing this, look at what we are able to build being self-funded all along.
Governance Token
We have not launched our token. Our goal is to have the usable product and bring all the use cases to real life first, and only then we will consider releasing the governance token. We will announce TGE and public sales when we are ready, and in the meantime, your best chance to have our tokens is to use the dex, give us some feedback, and wait for that mighty airdrop, sounds fair?
