Today, we’ll look at some exciting new ways to invest with the introduction of Light’s Open Launchpad, bold new ways to encourage and incentivize community participation via our new Contributor Rewards System, and the release of a new staking pool that distributed protocol revenue as USDT.
Introducing Light’s Open Launchpad
First off is the introduction of our new ‘Open Launchpad.’ The Open Launchpad is for projects which need or want to raise without leveraging the Incubator.
Projects looking to launch through Light’s Open Launchpad can do so by applying through the Incubator application form at https://lightningprotocol.finance/#incubator, simply mention that you want to launch through the Open Launchpad.
The Open Launchpad is also for projects that Lightning wouldn’t accept to an Incubator or Vetted launch. The Open Launchpad is for everyone. Projects here will be much more diverse than in the vetted section.
They can also be more degen; there will probably be meme tokens. However, that doesn’t make them any worse for investors at all. Just because a project is leaning more to the degen side does not mean it can’t perform well.
There’ll likely also be a lot of great projects who prefer to raise publicly and open to anyone. The introduction of the Open Launchpad allows Light to scale up the number of raises conducted and to increase our reach. This will enable us to serve exponentially more developers and investors and generate a lot of protocol revenue for the holders to earn as USDT through sLIGHT.
These projects will take advantage of our new tier requirement structure:
- Priority Early Access will be open to LIGHT holders who have staked their tokens in the 90-day pool. (5–10 minutes)
- Early Access will be open to LIGHT holders who stake their tokens in the 7-day pool or provide LIGHT-BNB LP. (5–10 minutes)
- Public Access is entirely new and will open up the raise to anyone. There are no tier requirements for this round, and the maximum contribution will be determined by the projects on an individual basis.
This not only still gives $LIGHT holders an advantage on these potentially “riskier” projects but also allows projects that build their own communities to raise through their community without having to convince the Lightning Community of participating. The increased raises will therefore boost the fee revenue accrued by Lightning, which will as always be shared with holders via our new sLIGHT mechanic, discussed later in the article.
So why would projects wish to use Lightning’s Open Launchpad over the competition?
- Access to a dedicated community to tap into and the resulting exposure
- Open to non-token holders, allowing them to grow and service their community
- Serviced raise allows them to pass the hassle and management of the raise to Lightning
- Pay for services via a cut of liquidity raised instead of paying in project tokens (that are often dumped by launchpads, thus hurting the project’s growth)
- Option to purchase additional marketing
We see the Open Launchpad as a complementary addition to our existing Incubator and Launchpad, which allows Lightning to maintain a focus on disruptive innovation whilst also allowing our holders to benefit from this currently untapped revenue stream by catering to a wider audience.
To help Lightning attract even more projects and at the same time become more decentralized, we are today introducing the Contributor Reward System.
Lightning does not endorse these projects, nor are they quality controlled. It is an open and decentralised protocol aiming to provide an ever-expanding DeFi ecosystem to everyone.
The Contributor Reward System
With the introduction of the Contributor Rewards System, Lightning is opening yet another revenue stream for holders and contributors to earn from participating in our growing ecosystem.
To participate as an independent contributor, you need to convince projects to host their raise on Lightning and receive verbal confirmation of their decision before submitting this ‘closed deal’* via a form accessible from the launchpad Dapp.
The contributor will then receive a 1% fee of the total raise of that project, as long as that raise meets or exceeds its soft cap.
For example, if a project referred by a contributor successfully raises $250,000, that user will then be able to claim $2,500 on the page of the project pool once the sale completes.
This expansion of the Ambassador role into a fully-fledged contributor to the ecosystem takes us one step closer to delivering a truly Decentralized Venture Capital (DeVC) platform, as originally envisioned during the creation of the Lightning Incubator and Launchpad.
One other aspect of the original DeVC vision was to pay out the crypto equivalent of dividends to $LIGHT holders. Today, we are happy to reintroduce this to our holders with the reveal of our newest rewards pool: sLIGHT.
Introducing sLIGHT and USDT rewards
sLIGHT is staked LIGHT and reimagines the idea of sharing protocol revenue with token holders by creating a new pool with USDT rewards.
The USDT pool will be accessible by depositing xLIGHT 7D or xLIGHT 90D (receipt tokens from the 90D or 7D locked vaults) into this new staking pool. 90D locked vault deposits will get significantly boosted APR over the 7D locked vault deposits. This is to ensure that the core contributors and supporters of the ecosystem are the ones that are rewarded the most.
All rewards from sLIGHT are additional to the APY of the locked vaults.
sLIGHT does not have any locking periods.
sLIGHT will also not have any deposit or withdrawal fees (subject to change).
Here are some example calculations to show how much users can expect based on current TVL:
The following calculations are additional to the fees that the Incubator, Launchpad, and trading volume generate. Currently, those fees are used 100% for automatic buybacks. Once sLIGHT is released, these fees will go towards USDT rewards for stakers.
This means that the following APR examples will add to the APR that will be fueled by the already existing fee revenue.
If the Open Launchpad generates ~$100k in fees within the first month, the additional APR will come out at roughly 40% paid in USDT. (We’re already 1/3 of the way to this threshold after only one night of closing deals).
If the Open Launchpad generates ~$500k in fees within the first month, the additional APR will come out at roughly 200% paid out in USDT.
If the Open Launchpad achieves ~$1m in fees within the first month, the additional APR will come out at roughly 400% paid out in USDT.
*APR will be backward-calculated, ensuring accrued rewards will only ever equal what is achieved by the protocol.
The Open Launchpad is just the start of the process for accruing USDT rewards.
Over the next few months, we add more ways to generate fees that further increase sLIGHT rewards, such as gradually adding more protocols and much, much more.
2022 will be an exciting year for Lightning. A major rebranding is on its way, a lot of groundbreaking development, and two things that will be so monumental that we can’t even tease any of it.
