R You Ready? Raft is Live

June 5th, 2023

The moment you've all been waiting for has finally arrived. We're thrilled to announce the launch of Raft on Ethereum mainnet!

Keep reading to learn more about Raft or you can start using the protocol right away here.

What are Raft and R?

Raft is a groundbreaking lending protocol that's changing the game for holders of Lido Staked Ether (stETH). You can generate our stablecoin R using your stETH as collateral.

And here's the best part: you can generate R with a 0.01% nominal fee while continuing to accumulate staking rewards on your stETH collateral. Now that's what we call capital efficiency at its finest!

R is the first decentralized USD stablecoin powered exclusively by stETH. It offers you an unparalleled opportunity to borrow in the most capital-efficient and cost-effective way using your stETH.

With its deep liquidity across an array of trading pairs and unwavering stability, R is poised to redefine the DeFi landscape.

LSDFi season

The Ethereum network has undergone seismic shifts and upgrades over the past year, stirring up a whirlwind of excitement around liquid staking.

Lido has emerged as a beacon of success in this arena, with 78% market share and a market cap of stETH soaring past a staggering $13 billion and still growing.

Now, Raft is seizing the day, offering all stETH holders an enticing value proposition to make the most of their stETH: borrow R stablecoin interest-free, while earning staking rewards.

How to use Raft?

We've built Raft to be as user-friendly as it is efficient.

To borrow R, all you need to do is navigate to the app, connect your wallet, specify the amount of stETH or wstETH you'd like to deposit, and determine how much R you want to generate.

Once you confirm the transactions, you’ll have R in your wallet, and your stETH will be working for you in the background earning staking rewards.

Now you can put your R to use in the wider DeFi ecosystem, starting with providing liquidity on Balancer and Uniswap. Continue reading to learn how!

How to provide liquidity?

We have launched liquidity pools on Balancer and Uniswap.

Liquidity providers can provide liquidity to earn trading fees. In case helpful, here is the R contract address: 0x183015a9bA6fF60230fdEaDc3F43b3D788b13e21.

Let’s go through how to provide liquidity into our current pools:

Provide liquidity on Balancer

There are two liquidity pools on Balancer:

Once you’ve clicked on the pool that you want to enter, look for the "Add Liquidity" section. There you'll need to specify the quantity of R tokens you intend to deposit into the pool, along with the corresponding wstETH and/or DAI tokens.

Once your transaction has been confirmed, you've successfully provided liquidity to the R/wstETH and/or R/DAI pool(s) on Balancer. This means you're now eligible to earn swap fees and BAL rewards.

If you need more information about providing liquidity on Balancer, you can check out the guide.

Provide liquidity on Uniswap v3

You can access the Uniswap v3 R/USDC pool and provide liquidity by clicking “Add liquidity.”

In the liquidity provision interface, you'll find input fields for R and USDC. Input the amounts of R and USDC tokens you wish to contribute to the pool.

We recommend setting a price range of approximately 0.99 to 1.01 R per USDC to maintain the stablecoin's peg. You can adjust this range by moving the sliders or entering the values manually.

If you need more information about providing liquidity on Uniswap v3, you can check out the guide.

Security first

Your safety is our number one priority.

That’s why we have conducted an audit with Trail of Bits, a top smart contract auditing firm in the DeFi space, as well as an audit competition with Hats Finance. You can read more about these audits here and here.

You can also audit the code yourself!

These Github repositories containing our smart contracts are fully open source. We welcome your feedback with open arms.

Frontend operators

Raft embraces decentralization by implementing independent frontends.

Frontend Operators can establish independent frontends to interact with the underlying contracts, in order to enhance the overall user experience.

Alternatively, Frontend Operators can integrate Raft into their own applications, onboarding their users to the Raft ecosystem.

Frontend Operators can apply for grants for their contributions to the Raft protocol. Interested operators are encouraged to contact the Raft team to discuss the details of the grant application process and learn more about available support.

The road to decentralization

Raft will adopt a governance-minimized approach, creating an efficient, transparent and community-driven protocol.

As the core parts of the smart contracts are immutable, the security and stability of Raft is ensured. The scope of the Raft governance, will be limited to three main areas:

Appointment of The Liquidity Committee
Treasury fund management
Protocol fees

You can read more information in the docs. Keep a look out for more announcements about this in the coming weeks!

One-Step Leverage, 11X Yield

There’s a lot more in store in the near future.

The first game-changing feature coming to Raft is One-Step Leverage, which will enable users to gain up to 11x leverage on their stETH in a single transaction.

With this feature, Raft offers the highest leverage on stETH at a cheaper cost than any other major protocol and it does so while seamlessly simplifying the complex and gas-consuming multi step “folding” process required to gain significant leverage elsewhere.

Keep your eyes peeled for more information about One-Step Leverage in the coming weeks!

R you ready?

The path for Raft is clear: increasing the adoption of R, and making it the stablecoin of choice within the DeFi ecosystem.

Raft is an improvement upon existing designs, built to support a rapidly growing liquid staking market. LSDFi is here to stay and Raft is positioned to grow with this market and beyond.

We invite you to try out our platform and start generating R today.

Welcome aboard, and happy rafting!

How to give feedback?

To create the ultimate DeFi experience, we need our users’ valuable feedback.

You can provide feedback by reaching out to the Raft team by opening a support ticket in our Discord server.

We're committed to making Raft better, and your thoughts and suggestions play a crucial role in achieving that.

FAQs

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about Raft. You can read the full FAQ list on our docs.

If I deposit stETH and mint R, does my collateralization ratio improve as my collateral accrues yields?

Yes. All rewards accrued while your position is open will improve your collateralization ratio over time.

Is there a minimum amount of R that can be borrowed?

Yes. You need to generate at least 3,000 R to open a position. This helps ensure that in case your Position needs to be liquidated, there's enough incentive for others to step in and cover it, maintaining the health and stability of the Raft protocol.

Does Raft only support stETH as collateral?

Yes. At the moment, Raft only supports stETH as collateral. In the future, governance may decide to expand Raft beyond stETH.

Who can liquidate positions?

Liquidations are permissionless so anybody is able to monitor for liquidatable positions and liquidate via the Raft contracts using flash mint or a flash loan on the liquidity venue. See our guides for more information.