Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight – Beefy Finance
Don’t let the cute cow logo fool you, Beefy Finance is all business. Beefy is a sophisticated but easy-to-use yield optimizer that numbers among the most popular protocols in DeFi.
Beefy boasts support for 10 blockchains and a total TVL of over $1B ‒ Fantom being the largest, with a current TVL of $335.32M. Beefy’s rise to prominence is perhaps unsurprising, however, considering the inclusive, knowledgeable, and committed community driving the project.
1. What is Beefy Finance?
Beefy Finance is a decentralized, multi-chain yield optimizer platform that allows its users to earn compound interest on their crypto holdings.
Through a set of investment strategies secured and enforced by smart contracts, Beefy automatically maximizes user rewards from various liquidity pools (LPs), automated market making (AMM) projects, and yield farming opportunities in the DeFi ecosystem.
Beefy's main products are Vaults, in which you stake your crypto tokens. The investment strategy tied to the specific vault will automatically increase your deposited token amount by compounding yield farm reward tokens back into your initially deposited asset. Despite what the name “Vault” suggests, your funds are never locked and you can always withdraw at any time.
Beefy is a permissionless and trustless DeFi application, meaning that anyone with a supported wallet can interact directly without the need for a trusted middleman.
Users remain 100% in control of their crypto, even while funds are staked in a vault.
The Beefy project is structured as a DAO, and anyone who holds our governance token can vote on key decisions. Beefy doesn't just have a community, it is the community.
2. How do you introduce Beefy to a novice or someone who knows relatively little about DeFi?
While DeFi can be a complicated topic, the core of what Beefy does is quite simple.
Imagine that you have bought a bond, shares, or another asset that generates interest. You then reinvest the profits by purchasing more of that asset, compounding your interest.
However, this process takes time, effort, and money. It would be much more efficient to automate the process.
Here’s where a service like Beefy steps in. Beefy automates the compounding process for interest-bearing crypto financial products.
You don’t need to do any of the hard work yourself. Just sit back and let our smart contracts generate optimized yields on your holdings.
3. How did you come up with Beefy/what was your inspiration?
Beefy has been and always will be a community-driven project.
Of course, we can’t claim to be the first yield optimizer out there. Projects like yearn.finance paved the way for auto compounding and yield farming in DeFi 1.0, but Beefy has drawn from its predecessors to create something new.
Our real inspiration came from the community of DeFi users who wanted a project that emphasizes safety and a vast range of vault products.
4. How is Beefy different from other yield optimizers?
Beefy is a safety-first protocol.
This goes for own vaults, projects, and even tokenomics. Unlike other projects that use inflation and burning to control their token supply, $BIFI has a maximum supply of 80,000.
Beefy is also blockchain agnostic, meaning that we look for yield generating opportunities across multiple blockchains. This gives our users the best chance to put their crypto to work no matter the chain they use.
Beefy has a vested interest in helping to grow all the blockchain ecosystems on which we deploy. We're here to help everyone optimize their crypto gains.
5. What’s the background of the DAO that builds and maintains Beefy?
The Beefy DAO is a diverse group of mostly anonymous people from all around the world.
Beefy is open for anyone to join the community and develop. As the discussions across our Discord and Telegram chats show, brilliant minds participate in Beefy's development. This passion and commitment to the project is something we hope all DeFi projects can work toward.
So while voting power and proposals are only for $BIFI holders, you don't have to hold $BIFI to participate at Beefy. The DAO goes a lot further than just vote.beefy.finance. Our team has grown with contributors due to the DAO principles that we live and breathe.
6. How did you learn about Fantom?
Beefy keeps a close eye on the blockchain, crypto, and DeFi ecosystems. Our developers and community flag up every promising and innovative project they come by, meaning a lot is already on our radar.
You might have already stumbled across our Discord and Telegram channels full of DeFi degens reporting their latest finds. There is almost nothing that the Cowmoonity misses, and we use this to capitalize on new opportunities just like Fantom.
7. Why did you decide to build on Fantom?
Our community and developers kept a close eye on the network after it appeared on our radar.
We’d always had plans to extend to the network due to the earning opportunities we saw and compatibility with our pre-existing smart contracts.
Beefy also at the time was in the early stages of becoming THE multichain yield optimizer it is today. As Beefy was preparing a launch on Polygon, another yield optimizer declared that it would be the first yield optimizer on Fantom. Let’s just say we are a bit competitive.
We had a strong push by our community and focused our development effort to launch on Fantom as soon as possible.
8. How was your experience of building on Fantom?
Building on Fantom was a great experience.
It was already onboarding many of the infrastructure tools we needed, like Chainlink and Anyswap. We were introduced to many of our great partners like SpookySwap, Scream, Tomb, and SpiritSwap.
Since Fantom is EVM, our smart contracts were compatible. The low fees and nearly instant transactions were fantastic both for us as builders and our users. It is no surprise that Fantom has become our largest TVL chain.
9. What brings you to DeFi, and what excites you most about the space?
There are multiple reasons why DeFi is one of the most cutting-edge sectors of the blockchain world.
First, DeFi is a space where financial services aren’t only for the rich and privileged. Anyone with a wallet and some crypto can start earning, investing, and participating in the world’s most open financial market. And with smart contracts at the core of DeFi, it’s also totally auditable and transparent. That’s something you can’t always say about traditional finance.
DeFi also pushes the boat out regarding what’s possible with financial products. DeFi 2.0 is solving the problems we’ve seen in the first generation of decentralized finance and innovating with new ways to earn and reduce risk.
10. How did the Fantom community receive Beefy?
We launched our Fantom vaults over a weekend. Weekends are typically slow in DeFi, and I remember watching the TVL ticking up and up. Even before Monday, our Fantom network offerings had already hit $10M TVL.
Of course, since then, the amazing Fantom community has embraced Beefy and made us one of the biggest projects on the blockchain.
From developers to investors, everyone has been friendly, intelligent, and willing to work toward the greater good of DeFi. We are just happy that we could be part of the growth from the beginning.
11. What’s coming up for Beefy?
Apart from new vaults and Launchpool promotions, we have a couple of very exciting developments coming soon.
First, we've completely revamped our UI to bring Beefy more in line with the DeFi 2.0 world. Our Beta version, which is open to all, offers a preview of some of what’s coming.
While there are no changes to our underlying smart contracts, the new UI provides a more fluid experience with information that can help all Beefy users make more informed decisions while staking their tokens.
We also have our Beefy Avatars Collection releasing in the upcoming months. This will consist of 8,000 NFTs to celebrate more than a year of Beefy-powered yield optimization.
We'll have private and public offerings for anyone who wants to get their hands on an NFT Avatar, and a share will also be given to the Beefy Cowmoonity and team.
Each NFT will have a unique version of the Beefy Cow with a combination of unique attributes. If you want to get involved and secure yourself a mint slot, make sure to follow our socials or join our Discord and Telegram groups. We always hold regular giveaways!
12. What advice or suggestions do you have for fellow developers who haven’t started building on Fantom yet?
Security, security, security.
SAFU is the single most important goal of your project or any project. Crypto has a huge mountain to climb to be generally accepted. The stigmas and stereotypes are well embedded in the general public's mind, and the media will jump on any story to paint crypto in a negative light.
Revolutionizing finance is the goal, and we all must understand there is a responsibility involved to make DeFi as safe as possible for all investors.
Every hack, exploit, rug, and sloppy cut and paste job is a harsh reminder that we all have to be better.
We all have to prioritize SAFU. Your code is all that matters. Keep it clean, keep users safe, keep building.
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