MNI Finance is at the forefront of StakeFi protocols established in the SUI ecosystem. MNI is primarily a decentralized DeFi application providing liquid $SUI staking services but also a platform to aggregate resources and achieves protocol-owned revenue sharing. The latter makes the project somewhat unique and aligned with existing trends within DeFi.

Motivation

MNI contract developed by the MOVE language and deployed in SUI, shares and benefits from the same PoS mechanism and security as SUI. As a result, MNI Finance hopes to empower the SUI staking ecosystem by leveraging several advantages offered by Liquid-staking:

• Enables yield staking

The systemic risk of yield staking in DeFi is mainly caused by base layer protocol failures or extreme market fluctuations entailing collateral assets’ bank-run liquidation. However, liquid-staked assets are backed by the PoS network itself. This means that even whilst staking and if any DeFi project were to fail, users could still rely on the base yield coming from PoS networks.

• Ease of use

In order to retain a competitive staking income and liquidity, liquid-staking protocols usually automatically select reliable validators that don’t have any slashing history and have the highest uptime. This makes the user’s staking journey extremely simple.

• Security

The strength of the PoS network is directly proportional to the number of validators and the amount of capital they have staked within the network. If the limitations around staking — such as lock-up periods — are removed, more users can be incentivized to stake their capital. As the number of validators on the network increases, the amount of staked capital increases, and the network becomes even stronger as the staked capital increases.

MNI Product

Why Liquid-Staked with MNI Finance?

The platform enables users to stake $SUI via the MNI contract and to mint a representation token $mSUI or $fSUI you can choose (with different revenue features, which will be explained in the following sections). In other words, a new transferable, tradable asset represents the liquidity of staked $SUI, allowing for a wider opportunity set within multiple DeFi scenarios whilst in the staking period.

Collateral

The MNI system requires collateralization of 100% staked $SUI. For example, if you want to mint 100 staked $SUI liquid derivatives, you must deposit 100 $SUI as collateral. However, the collateral has no liquidation risk because its underlying is staked to the SUI network; a user can always initiate the redemption.

What is $mSUI and $fSUI?

The main products of the MNI protocol are $mSUI and $fSUI. Both are both representations of staked $SUI; each $mSUI or $fSUI is fully backed by staked $SUI, however, differ in their staking reward computation.

$mSUI: its underlying is staked $SUI, but it's staking reward appreciates and is reflected in the price of $mSUI. In other words, the switching ratio between $SUI and $mSUI is not a stable 1:1 ratio, as staking time increases, the staked $SUI rewards are accumulated in the MNI protocol, and the total $SUI volume increases more than the minted $mSUI. As a result, each $mSUI can be redeemed for more than 1 $SUI token, which includes its underlying $SUI staking reward.

$fSUI: its underlying is staked $SUI, but its staking reward is settled by MNI protocol’s native Token: $MNI. In contract, $fSUI is not transferrable, but it can be converted with $mSUI (no discount), which means you can still easily transfer or sell it but just convert it to $mSUI.

Although $mSUI and $fSUI are both fully backed by staked $SUI, $fSUI users can receive more rewards than $mSUI, because protocol only takes half of commission from $fSUI than $mSUI, which is part of the significant design that increases the loyalty of $SUI holders, protocol buying back $SUI rewards to $MNI token.

MNI Finance ($MNI) utility token and its functionalities

$MNI is the utility token of MNI Finance and is fundamental in sharing protocol revenues from MNI main products $mSUI and $fSUI. As such its 100% inflated from $mSUI and $fSUI minting, and the inflation cap is at a maximum of 33% of $SUI total issuance (to prevent PoS 33% attack).

All issued $MNI automatically go to an allocation pool, ready for protocol distribution.

$MNI Utility

$veMNI token holders play a fundamental role in the allocation pool. Holders can stake the $MNI tokens for a new voucher token called $veMNI, allowing them to participate in MNI protocol governance actively. In addition, the $MNI token has the following utilities:

• Switch to $veMNI, allowing holders to share more revenues from the MNI Vault*;*

• Decision-making equity in the MNI DAO, allowing active participation in DAO voting for $MNI pair liquidity distribution;

• Participate in open governance. Any protocol-level decisions or improvements will be put up as a proposal which will go through the open governance process to finalize. $MNI is the only accepted token used as the measure for voting in the governance process.

MNI Vault

The Vault is the standardization leading to diverse protocol earnings and revenue sharing with MNI different characters. These diverse earnings come from $mSUI/$fSUI protocol commission, which distributes to

• $veMNI holders who participate in $veMNI Farming;

• $mSUI/$fSUI underlying slash insurance, covering the slashing penalty;

• Reserve for MNI DAO spending;

• $MNI buyback and burn.

MNI DAO

The MNI DAO strives and leads initiatives and decision-making for the benefits of the MNI protocol through continuous community discussion. Reserved $MNI token will be distributed to several clear initiatives (some examples provided below):

• Providing $SUI/$MNI pair Liquidity;

• Protocol financing programs;

• Any novel protocol development ideas.

Conclusion

Striving to be one of the leading StakeFi protocols in SUI, MNI aims to successfully enable users to generate their riskless yield-bearing synthetic assets, $mSUI or $fSUI, without liquidation risk and to allow for better and more efficient utility and use cases within DeFi scenarios. In addition, the value capture reflected in the protocol token, notably revenue sharing and redistribution from protocol earnings allows for network incentivization essential for clear alignment amongst relevant parties and for the long-term sustainable growth of the protocol.