Saffron.Finance website homepage
Saffron Finance – a cryptoasset derivatives protocol that allows users to earn interest through liquidity mining and diversify risk and returns via tranches – launched on the Ethereum mainnet on November 1, 2020.
The protocol was launched by the anonymous developer(s) under the psykeeper alias on Twitter. They launched Saffron with all liquidity being added to the S tranche to kick off liquidity mining. The S tranche launched along with the first epoch (which are 14 days in length) and in the second epoch, the AA and A tranches were enabled.
Saffron Finance now has three different tranches, each with its own set of properties that enable liquidity providers to better customize their risk and return profile.
15 Nov 2020 - Minting of the first SFI Tokens
Saffron Finance (SFI) token logo
Saffron’s native cryptocurrency, the $SFI token, or Spice token, launched via $DAI liquidity mining in the first epoch in the A tranche, which kicked off on November 15, 2020.
$SFI is mined using the “dsec” (dollars per second) equation:
dsec = dollar value * seconds
Liquidity providers (LPs) minted dsec tokens represented by the $DAI dollar value of capital they added to the pool multiplied by the number of seconds until the end of the current epoch. If at the end of the epoch, an LP had 10% of outstanding dsec tokens then they received 10% of the SFI subsidy.
The first epoch attracted $18.3 million worth of DAI to mine $SFI into existence and generated a total of 40,000 $SFI tokens. In the following epochs, the $SFI token subsidy is halved every epoch up to and including epoch 7.
From epoch 8 and on, the halving is discontinued and $SFI tokens are minted at a rate of 200 tokens per epoch until the 100,000 $SFI cap is reached.
Also 15 Nov 2020 - Uniswap Listing
Uniswap logo
On the same date that $SFI liquidity mining launched, Uniswap launched an SFI/ETH pool in which the Saffron team added 2,000 SFI and 100 ETH ($100,000 USD value) in liquidity to. This pool locked liquidity into Uniswap for the entire duration of epoch 1 and rewarded liquidity providers with 3,750 SFI.
20 Nov 2020 - Saffron Joins BTSE Labs Incubator
On November 20, 2020, Saffron Finance became the first member of the BTSE Labs incubator. The BTSE Labs incubator is for up and coming decentralized finance products and will see that Saffron gets additional resources to build a dynamic risk layer on top of the existing DeFi ecosystem.
29 Nov 2020 - Smart Contract Bug & Recovery
When Saffron’s epoch 1 came to an end on November 29, users tried to withdraw their funds from the liquidity pool but their transactions were reverted, making user funds effectively stuck.
The contracts affected were:
- The Saffron DAI pool (~15,000 SFI)
- The Saffron DAI/Compound Adapter (~$53,000,000 worth of cDAI)
- The Saffron SFI/ETH Uniswap LP Staking Pool (~$4,000,000 UniV2)
While the stuck funds was a nightmare come true, the Saffron team managed to quickly resolve the issue within 3 days, returning almost all of the funds. Using emergency governance functions, the Saffron team created an epoch recovery UI in which users could use to recover funds from the DAI/Compound Adapter and the Uniswap LP Staking pool.
As for the SFI locked in the epoch 1 DAI pool, they are locked for 8 weeks due to a timelock on the Saffron pool’s governance function. Therefore, Saffron developed a plan to airdrop rSFI (redeemable SFI) to all holders of locked-up SFI.
These rSFI now have their own staking pool with rewards similar to the SFI staking pool that exists right now.
More info on the rSFI can be found here.
14 Dec 2020 - Saffron Partners With Alpha Finance Lab
Saffron Finance partnered with Alpha Finance – a cross-chain DeFi lab building an ecosystem of cross-chain DeFi products – to enable liquidity providers of the ibETH/ALPHA pool on Uniswap to provide liquidity through the Saffron platform.
The strategic partnership expands and strengthens both Saffron’s and Alpha’s DeFi ecosystems by giving LPs more risk-averse options while earning interest.
18 Dec 2020 - Saffron Available on Dharma.io
Buying Saffron’s $SFI token became easier and more widely available on December 18 when it became available to buy on Dharma.io. Dharma.io enables users to buy cryptocurrencies like $SFI by using nothing more than a linked bank account. It helps knock down the barriers of entry for new cryptocurrency users by providing a simple and user-friendly experience for buying crypto.
Users can now buy $SFI on the easy-to-use Dharma.io app in addition to decentralized exchanges (DEXes) like Uniswap, 1INCH Exchange, 0x Protocol, and Balancer.
