Update from ApeSwap!

First of all, ApeSwap updated their webpage!! No, it is not blurry texts like Hive account@meesterboom mentioned in this iconic post! I didn't even mind the previous page that much, and I absolutely love this new page! I must say, when I first landed at ApeSwap about 15-20 days back, I didn't think much about it. However, as I explored various BSC LP ecosystems, I found that ApeSwap, not only is a robust ecosystem, but they also have a very active Dev team and a strong community.

I think this is where many of these project either shines or fails. The current state of de-fi requires a strong community. Just high return is not enough. Because, if there is no new money coming in and existing people continue to sell, TVL (Total Value Locked) which is a very important measure of these projects, bound to drop. As TVL drops, the return drops, the price of the native token drops, and people starts to leave. Therefore, we have a "run on the bank". I have seen it first hand with Comos. Once the run of the bank starts, it is very difficult to control it. The project team can try and reduce the token inflation, but without new investments it is hard to accomplish.

Liquidity Pool NEED active Dev Team AND Community

Notice, I haven't even talked about price yet. Because price will follow. After participating in many projects including our own CUB, I have a few basic understanding about what to look for in a BSC LP project:

1. Project needs a good 'doc'. That should have all the basic info handy, with all main contracts, Roadmap, Burn Schedule and Disclosure. Ape Score very high here! But so is many other projects....

2. Project requires an active blog location. Here I think nothing can beat Cub, due to https://leofinance.io/; because blog is what we specialize in; but that said Apeswap does have an active official blog. This is where projects like Comos lack big-time! Without an active official blog, there is no place to grow the community. Apeswap's blog is active; 3 posts with brand new partnetships and new token pair launches in last week is impressive,

3. Project requires an active social media presence: Twitter, Telegram, Discord....ApeSwap is nearly perfect here. Excellent social media presence there.

4. Project need a goot web page. This is actually tricky and my view on this have changed over time. I was initially in favor of serious/professional looking websites, but I have been wrong on this. Actually funny, goofy web presence is better in this space. The new design at ApeSwap took out the blurry fonts and the fresh look is awesome. Also the Ape Stat tool, is something unique, and I wish everyone has it. You don't have to go to a 3rd party tool like https://howmuchismylp.com/ every time you like to check the status of your personal balance. But I would have liked a table as well...

5. All the above, plus Youtube, and various podcast presence ensures a strong community who will put the money in the pool and keep it there. ApeSwap certainly has it and a 53M TVL is a clear sign of that!

A Table like the above would have been even better!

Price

Yep, this is yield farming. So at some point in time we must talk price. I personally like to look at charts when I talk price and this is where I get stuck in many cases on this space. It is not easy to pull up a chart for lot of the smart contracts. However, there are tools that are provinding relatively satisfactory results:

Here is the official one: https://info.apeswap.finance/token/0x603c7f932ed1fc6575303d8fb018fdcbb0f39a95

I do not like it that much. It doesn't allow you to draw lines and mess around with stuff like Trading View does; but it will get you a visual of the price..

Remember to click "all", as I didn't do that, thanks to Chimpin Chip for showing me that. It still doesn't take you back to the launch of the project, but it is close enough.

Then, we have this one...better than the previous ofter short term:
https://goswapp-bsc.web.app/0x603c7f932ED1fc6575303D8Fb018fDCBb0f39a95

Above is a 15-min chart and quite noisy. I am not sure how and where the back-end is pulling the data from, but volume seems unreasonable, and also the chart, but regardless, it will get you through at the short term.

That brings me to the usual point of yields for ApeSwap and similar projects. When I started with Cub and the Comos, I realized very quickly that they are all very similar and follow certain patterns. They lunch, they spike; because of the high yield in the beginning; then they collapse from the massive rally. Then one of two things can happen; either the project can stablizise to a rather low volatility equilibrium like Banana, Cub or Egg tokens; or they struggle with TVL like Comos. As you can see that their daily return is very similar for a standard BUSD pool.

Common BSC LP Price Update

Current prices and yield at the time of writing (updated at 10:00 AM CST, 04/21/2021)

IAO (Initial Ape Offering)

So, if everything is broadly identical for all these project, both the backend and the front end (to a large extent) what would be different? Matured project like to offer something new that others do not offer (at least in the beginning). For example goodse finance offers layered farming. ApeSwap is offerting IAO. Which is nothing but a new token launch inside the ApeSwap pool.

An Initial Ape Offering (IAO) is a fundraising vehicle utilized to launch new tokens and bring liquidity to those tokens

The way it works is fairly simple. One must follow the steps:

1. Purchase Banana and BNB to generate Banana-BNB LP tokens. Many of the existing farmers may already have it.
2. IAO will have a published time window (typically 1 hours). During this time window one can exchange the LP Token for the new IAO token
3. After the sale, any unspent LP token will be return, and one can claim the IAO token
4. The new tokens then can be sold or kept as per token holder's wishes

To me this is simple enough. I will be participating into the next IAO which is Bitfresh. I am not going to talk about Bitfresh on this post, because that is not the main topic of the post. I plan on writing a post regarding that in future when I have more information. Currently that project is just trying to raise capital. I like the token distribution plan, and I am keen to participate in my first IAO. A word of caution, that this is a completely new token, and no one knows about the deamnd and therefore the price of this post-launch. But for people of Hive blockchain that shouldn't bother us, as we started our own platform under a lot of uncertainity. I had no idea what the price of hive will be when we hard-forked from the Steem Blockchain.

Disclaimer: This is NOT professional advice, this is all just my own opinion and experience. I am NOT a Certified Financial Adviser. Consult professionals for any financial, accounting or legal related questions you have.

Charts are created in Tradingview.com, which is a free service.