aUSD Selected as the First Farm for Pulsar’s Concentrated Liquidity Beta

5 min readDec 8, 2022

We’re excited to unveil the first farm for the beta launch of StellaSwap’s concentrated liquidity AMM, Pulsar! 🎆 We’re going to launch Pulsar in the next coming days, starting with a closed beta for those that have been whitelisted. Pulsar will mark the beginning of ultimate capital efficiency on Moonbeam and the wider Polkadot ecosystem.

Before taking you through the thought-process of the farm selection process that has led to aUSD being the farm of choice, lets have a summary on Pulsar.

Pulsar: Next Evolution of Capital Efficiency DEX

Pulsar represents a ground-breaking enhancement to StellaSwap’s current hybrid DEX, utilizing the power of concentrated liquidity to provide a much more efficient way of trading and earning as before. With Pulsar, users will access optimal asset prices, low-slippage and greater yield optimization for LP stakers. We are utilizing the codebase of Algebra, one of the pioneers of concentrated liquidity in the space. Quickswap, the largest DEX on Polygon, is also utilizing Algebra’s underlying codebase.

The recent success of Quickswap’s concentrated liquidity AMM validated the notion of maximal capital efficiency, which would benefit all stakeholders in the ecosystem. Just looking at rough metrics on Quickswap, liquidity utilization can go as high as 80%, compared to the average utilization of between 5%-10% on a standard AMM.

That’s why we’re super pumped for Pulsar! 🌠

Pulsar’s Beta: aUSD as the First Farm

As part of our sequential launch strategy, StellaSwap will be launching a closed beta for our community in the coming days. The reason for doing so is to solicit feedback on Pulsar and address any bugs or issues that may surface. This will ensure that our public launch will be (close to) perfect. Additionally, having an initial group of beta testers represents a great way to reward our community members that has been with us since the start.

The thought-process in selecting the first farm for Pulsar’s beta is predicated in a few factors;

Exclusion of Strategic/Bluechip Farms: This ensures that the farm on Pulsar’s beta would not compete with strategic farms (farms incentivized by ecosystem GLMR) and fragment liquidity.
Highly Productive Farms: Farms that have been performing well in terms of trading volume would be in prime position for the beta, as it signifies strong interests by users and traders.
Partner Farms that has Exhausted Rewards: It would be ideal to list farms that are strategic to the ecosystem but its’ incentives have ran out. This means that the farm is now only incentivized by STELLA, instead of a dual-reward farm. With Pulsar, the focus would be on organic APRs, and therefore the dependency on reward incentives will gradually reduce significantly.

Taking all that into consideration, we selected:

Reasons for Selecting aUSD

We have chosen aUSD for the following reasons;

⭐️ aUSD is the Highest-Traded, Non-GLMR Incentivized Asset on StellaSwap

Based on our analytics, aUSD — GLMR farm is the most productive farm that didn’t receive any ecosystem (GLMR) rewards. This signifies organic demand from the community for aUSD trading.

As can be seen from above, the first four represents ecosystem-incentivized farms. It is important to list a farm on Pulsar that has strong, organic demand from users so that the premise of capital efficiency can be observed better on Pulsar’s setting.

⭐️ Native Asset Ecosystem Support

Although the narrative of aUSD was affected due to its depegging, it is vital to take into consideration the network effects of supporting native assets across the wider Polkadot ecosystem. The focus on native Polkadot assets was apparent when Nomad’s exploit resulted in the depegging of bridged assets. Beyond that, it is vital to provide support and harness synergies amongst parachains, in a bid to accrue shared value.

In a bid to provide greater clarity to the Polkadot ecosystem on the aUSD’s situation, StellaSwap organized an AMA with Acala recently.

Betty, the co-founder of Acala, provided key insights on what transpired and the corresponding steps undertaken to collateralize aUSD. With dedicated and transparent efforts via the governance route, Acala has stated that each aUSD is fully backed by the equivalent collateral value. More information can be extracted from the AMA here;

🎤 AMA with Acala on the State of aUSD

aUSD — Farm Details

The upcoming farm details for Pulsar’s beta will be as follows;

⭐️ Launch Type: Closed Beta Program (Batch 1 & Batch 2)
⭐️ Beta Duration: 1.5 Weeks
⭐️ Open To: Whitelisted Users
⭐️ Farm Launch: aUSD — GLMR
⭐️ Incentives: $STELLA + $aUSD
⭐️ Date: Jan 4, 2023 | 14:00 UTC

Emissions Transition Plan

aUSD’s listing on Pulsar means a transition of emissions from our standard AMM to Pulsar. This is aligned to our vision of sustainability, which is why Pulsar was developed in the first place. With Pulsar, farms will be self-sustaining in the long-run with higher organic trade fees, which means greater APR potential with lesser or no rewards emissions. With that goal, we plan to sequentially transit and reduce the overall emissions for aUSD-GLMR farm on our standard AMM to Pulsar.

Here’s the plan;

Phase 1: Reduce current emissions of 3,928 STELLA/day on our standard AMM by 50% on the first week of our beta

Phase 2: Stop rewards on standard AMM completely by public launch in mid-Jan, with (lesser) emissions transferred to Pulsar

After the beta ends in 1.5 weeks, the public will then be able to stake and LP their positions into Pulsar. 🚀

For more information on Pulsar, do join our Discord!

About StellaSwap

StellaSwap is the first and leading Moonbeam DEX that offers an integrated gateway to the DeFi world. Users can swap, earn, yield farm, bridge assets, explore new projects and engage in NFT trading all from a single unified platform. StellaSwap’s products are structured in such a way that facilitates decentralized governance of STELLA holders, while continuing to innovate on the collective foundations by design.