After Tendies, YFI, and YAM, it is time for Based Money — “game theory for degenerates.”
As a good farmer, you gotta rotate your crops. Investigating BASED today. Come shitcoin with me!
— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) August 13, 2020
This week’s latest decentralized finance (DeFi) is Based Money, a massive multiplayer online game whose anonymous “Ghouls” founding team welcomes the users with:
“WE ARE LIVE. GET THE FUCK IN YOU DEGENERATES.”
In the case of this new DeFi project, you farm the BASED token, pump the price, and exit before the rules are changed.
“The BASED Protocol is a DeFi game of chicken designed to shake out weak hands and yield the highest gains for those who understand the rules,” reads the website.
In this protocol, there are no owners because the private keys are burned, and the contracts can’t be changed, making an “exit scam impossible.”
It’s all about Rebase
The project leverages Synthetix’s stablecoin sUSD for its stability, which means if the price difference between $sUSD and $BASED is more than 5% in either direction, a rebase is triggered.
Yet again, this protocol adjusts the supply of its token (rebases) every 24 hours in an attempt to target $1 peg.
However, the token is currently trading at $217.80 down from its all-time high of $1,393 earlier this week, as per CoinGecko.
There are no pre-mine or founder fees. Based on Ampleforth’s economic policy and YFI’s distribution mechanism, “the result is a post-modern economic game that continually resets.”
The difference between BASED and YAM or AMPL is that the rebase will only occur after 97% of the supply has been claimed.
As such, the real madness here begins only after 97% of the total 100,000 BASED, that will be issued across two pools, are distributed.
Already, nearly $30 million are locked in the contract.
This is to be Expected
These DeFi projects are “minimally viable monetary experiments,” as YAM Finance, that came and went in 48 hours, dubbed itself.
They are making crypto fun while being all about making money.
Now, creating these projects has been made even easier as Jordan Lyall of ConsenSys, who is DeFi Product Lead at ConsenSysCodefi, introduced “The Degenrator.”
Introducing The Degenerator.
Spin up a new #DeFi project in as little as 5 minutes! pic.twitter.com/qpiod6uqSf
— Jordan Lyall (@JordanLyall) August 15, 2020
This week, the market saw people pouring over $600 million in the unaudited project YAM Finance, which people might not have even understood completely. “YAM’s fall from grace was even quicker than its rise,” as after a bug was found in its rebase function; its token plunged over 99%.
$YAM takes:
+ creators made so. much. money. for affiliated projects. they’ll get comped bigly in “tips”.
+ zero loyalty in DeFi. it’s mercenaries not missionaries; bad long-term for these projects, perfect P&D setup, but could last a while.
+ 20% chance this The DAO’s DeFi. pic.twitter.com/w8ON3bgk8P— Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) August 12, 2020
But in a bull market, “things are known to get a bit insane,” wrote analyst Mati Greenspan in his daily newsletter Quantum Economics.
“When it comes to investing in this environment, the risk factor is through the roof, but all risk metrics and meters have long been broken, so we really need to approach all investments with extreme caution right now,” he said.
