Experiences with Songbird Finance so far?

[Seoulite]

During a downturn like this I tend to look away from the price, an approach that has served me well in the past. If I see the price is very low then I try to find a way to buy some more, but in general I just stay quiet. Crypto winter is a time for hibernating.

However it seems the smartest among us tend to use this time to sniff around for other opportunities. For example, our resident whale @brianwalden has his fingers in many pies, as do a lot of you I'm sure, you just don't talk about it. So in hoping to follow along with this approach, I am messing around with Songbird Finance and using spreadsheets and everything like I'm some bigshot on wallstreet or something. 

I started off real safe: those single-sided farm pool things. Basically this is the kiddie pool. You lose nothing, but you also gain relatively little. FF has started to add the APY onto the UI; not all of them are there but the lowest yield single pool (CAND) is currently at 143% APY. Compare to the SFIN/CAND LP which is at 554% APY. 

So I started off in the kiddie pool but quickly got bored. My stacks are not big but they are also not so small as to make the whole exercise futile, so I wanted to see if I could get some real passive income on the go. I was doing spreadsheets and trying to figure out how much this would all compound to (I was originally compounding twice a day, now once a day, at my level the difference is not huge but it ends up being a whole lot of transactions every time regardless) and no doubt making hideous errors in calculations. I decided to start providing liquidity.

I saw a strat on Twitter a guy was using: being in LPs, then claiming and swapping the SFIN 50/50 with something else then putting that into the LP, thereby increasing your LP tokens. Also doing a similar thing with the SGB delegation rewards. Seemed like a simple strat and one I could understand so I'm following it. Reward rates for LP tokens are about 4 times as much as single-sided pools, and the SFIN supply is also bigger. I'm not sure but I also believe the overall pools are much larger on the single-sided, because they are the risk-free ones. It is hard for me to calculate all that but it makes sense intuitively. So now my rewards are much better but I am exposed to IP which I still don't fully understand but I figure is worth the risk. I haven't put all or even most of my SGB into the LPs because I don't fully understand IP and I like my SGB, I would like to know very simply what price it is by looking at the chart. If (when) SGB and Flare really get going, I would like to know about it. 

I am guessing that the reward rates will continue to decline, as they have done with SGB. As more people come in. However, considering that the rate of rewards means the SFIN is distributed within less than a year, that doesn't give people much time. So I am wondering if the 'compounding' of rewards will really only help to maintain one's share of the overall pool, which is not bad but not the same as compounding in the traditional sense. 

Anyway this has been a rambling post but I just wanted to share some thoughts. I haven't been following the troubles with the Flare loans platform, in fact Mickey and Patty put a vid about it up today, and I haven't been in it so I haven't been negatively affected. My experience so far with FF has been smooth and the platform performs pretty well considering there must be so many moving parts and so many people doing stuff all the time. I can really see how it boosts the amount of activity on the network, which is great. I also think prices of everything will recover, including SFIN and EXFI. Price downturns like this are scary but as I said in the beginning, there are two ways to deal with it: look away from the price and work on some other areas. I'm not saying I'm successful at the second one but I'm giving it a go and it is also satisfying to see 'number go up' even if it is 0.00000000001 to 0.00000000002.

Good luck all.

 

 

[brianwalden]

For the record, my entire crypto portfolio is in the low six figures. It may be aspirational for some people, but I'm nowhere near whaleville. Also at the start of 2021 my only holding was XRP and I had been sleeping on it since the 2018 bear market started. Now I'm on half a dozen different chains. You (I mean y'all, not @Seoulite directly) can learn all this stuff too, but you don't have to. I'm big on the idea that there's a lot of ways to do crypto and you should do what works for you. For example I suck at trading and I know it, so I rarely try to be a trader. But if trading on exchanges is your thing and you're good at it, do that.

Anyway, my first ever interaction with smart contracts was the Flare Finance public beta test about a year ago. Back then I thought what you thought, that I would play it safe and single stake. Now my feeling is I'm long on Flare. I think the pattern has been set that if Flare can establish itself then eventually the money will flow into it. There's always developers and degens who are looking for a new, lightly populated network to exploit (as opposed to the more common strategy of launching on Ethereum because that's where the money is). So after the EXFI airdrop, I just went all in on the SGB/EXFI pool because in the long run I think they're both going to go up. As I said, I'm not a trader. I've gotten rekt because EXFI crashed way harder than SGB. But I'm earning good SFIN and I think in the long run it's going to work out just fine (but not as well as if I had trading skills).

I guess I'm rambling too. I think what I'm trying to say is these airdrops are free money and Songbird is a testnet (with real money). It might make sense to be a little less conservative with your funds on Songbird than you would normally be and use them as a learning experience for when Flare launches.

[Seoulite]

@brianwalden just kidding about the whale thing. But also I wanted to ask if I go more into the ExFi SGB pool then I will need to swap some of my SGB into ExFi. I think that’s what makes me reluctant, I’m not as in love with ExFi as I am with SGB, although I could greatly increase my SFIN yield by doing that. I dunno, turning fifty percent of my remaining songbird into ExFi feels a bit iffy.

[brianwalden]

6 hours ago, Seoulite said:

@brianwalden just kidding about the whale thing. But also I wanted to ask if I go more into the ExFi SGB pool then I will need to swap some of my SGB into ExFi. I think that’s what makes me reluctant, I’m not as in love with ExFi as I am with SGB, although I could greatly increase my SFIN yield by doing that. I dunno, turning fifty percent of my remaining songbird into ExFi feels a bit iffy.

Yeah, you've got it right. You would be to buy EXFI to go in 50/50. It certainly is an iffy strategy. I'm not advising it, just saying that's what I did.

[JASCoder]

18 hours ago, Seoulite said:

but I am exposed to IP which I still don't fully understand

( I'm guessing you mean impermanent loss (IL) ? )

One easy way to conceptualize impermanent loss is to visualize the case of starting with equal amounts (in USD valuation) of tokens A and B. 

Then, after one month, the price of A is lower, but the price of B is higher. 
During that month, the DeFi system kept auto-trading fractions of your B for more A (to keep the USD valuations of the pair equal).

IOW, you kept selling your rising B, for more of the falling A tokens  

Alternatively, if you had just kept your starting balances of the two tokens (un-pared in DeFi), that month's rising value of B would have helped make up for your falling valuation of A. 

Hope this is helpful  

[WrathofKahneman]

I'm only in the single pools, grinding for SFIN.  I don't trust the platform enough yet to get in the pair pools, especially after the exploit tanking SGB/arbitrage.  

So slow and steady, I guess.  Starting to wonder more what happens when Flare goes live.

[RobertHarpool]

Here's a rambler for ya' ... 

Well, I'm coming to understand that I'm going to have to track several things that I didn't before. One is obviously with regards to exposure to IL.( I have zero idea what I put in nor at what prices :-S)

The other is delegation rewards. I think for now, I'll be pulling my WSGB out of Flare Finance on Wednesdays, and putting it back in on Friday morning. At least until I can rememeber/learn/find the exact time FTSO delegations are marked on Thursdays ... it is Thursdays, right? 

This simple chart (using today's numbers) ranks for me the highest rate of SFIN return per unit. Granted with the pairs (LP), it's actually per multiple units, ... and that all units aren't value equivalent .... but the disparity is so great that it seems a no brainer to be able to roughly guesstimate when they are to your advantage and when they're not.  

In the end, the math is rigged in every way to get you to separate from your SGB or WSGB for a FF token.  For example: trading your WSGB for CAND at today's price earns 3 to 4 times higher SFIN return for staking CAND then it would for simply staking WSGB. 

The two I've focused on is 1.) SFIN to SFIN (obviously) followed by 3.) EXFI/CAND to SFIN .... I traded just enough SGB to get just enough CAND to pair with the EXFI was I given. No intention on buying any EXFI. 

Putting SFIN in 2.) is seems inefficient so long as 1.) is an option. 

The rest I keep in WSGB so I can more easily move it about and potentially deploy in other future Songbird projects. 

So far, I've managed to gain a whopping .0161 SFIN :-S 

Somebody STOP me! (-Jim Carry, The Mask) 

 

[jn_r]

4 hours ago, RobertHarpool said:

Here's a rambler for ya' ... 

Well, I'm coming to understand that I'm going to have to track several things that I didn't before. One is obviously with regards to exposure to IL.( I have zero idea what I put in nor at what prices :-S)

The other is delegation rewards. I think for now, I'll be pulling my WSGB out of Flare Finance on Wednesdays, and putting it back in on Friday morning. At least until I can rememeber/learn/find the exact time FTSO delegations are marked on Thursdays ... it is Thursdays, right? 

This simple chart (using today's numbers) ranks for me the highest rate of SFIN return per unit. Granted with the pairs (LP), it's actually per multiple units, ... and that all units aren't value equivalent .... but the disparity is so great that it seems a no brainer to be able to roughly guesstimate when they are to your advantage and when they're not.  

In the end, the math is rigged in every way to get you to separate from your SGB or WSGB for a FF token.  For example: trading your WSGB for CAND at today's price earns 3 to 4 times higher SFIN return for staking CAND then it would for simply staking WSGB. 

The two I've focused on is 1.) SFIN to SFIN (obviously) followed by 3.) EXFI/CAND to SFIN .... I traded just enough SGB to get just enough CAND to pair with the EXFI was I given. No intention on buying any EXFI. 

Putting SFIN in 2.) is seems inefficient so long as 1.) is an option. 

The rest I keep in WSGB so I can more easily move it about and potentially deploy in other future Songbird projects. 

So far, I've managed to gain a whopping .0161 SFIN :-S 

Somebody STOP me! (-Jim Carry, The Mask) 

 

But you should calculate the Total Staked to 1 type of value, e.g. CAND. Only then you can compare..

I scripted it, seems rather useful to have this ready under the button (the APRs should of course be in the GUI).
Not 100% sure I made no errors, but I think these are the current numbers (scroll to the right for the APR):

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SGB/CAND:       0.0924                EXFI/CAND:       3.2133                  SFIN/CAND:     87310.87
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Farm      | Token1 total | Token2 total |     Total in CAND | Reward | Reward per 1000 CAND |      APR
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SFIN      |    78.175965 |              |   6825611.50 CAND | 0.1369 |      0.00002006 SFIN |   63.96%
SFIN/CAND |    16.676115 |   1456006.08 |   2912012.17 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00014111 SFIN |  449.99%
EXFI/CAND |    646607.51 |   2077734.69 |   4155469.39 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00009888 SFIN |  315.34%
EXFI/SGB  |   1095356.19 |  38058832.18 |   7035236.47 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00005841 SFIN |  186.26%
SGB/CAND  |  25672957.41 |   2371444.61 |   4742889.22 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00008663 SFIN |  276.28%
EXFI      |   7093985.35 |              |  22795001.95 CAND | 0.2739 |      0.00001202 SFIN |   38.32%
CAND      |   2459513.96 |              |   2459513.96 CAND | 0.0684 |      0.00002781 SFIN |   88.69%
WSGB      | 426072186.05 |              |  39356844.33 CAND | 0.2739 |      0.00000696 SFIN |   22.19%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Edited January 26, 2022 by jn_r

[Seoulite]

3 hours ago, jn_r said:

But you should calculate the Total Staked to 1 type of value, e.g. CAND. Only then you can compare..

I scripted it, seems rather useful to have this ready under the button (the APRs should of course be in the GUI).
Not 100% sure I made no errors, but I think these are the current numbers (scroll to the right for the APR):

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SGB/CAND:       0.0924                EXFI/CAND:       3.2133                  SFIN/CAND:     87310.87
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Farm      | Token1 total | Token2 total |     Total in CAND | Reward | Reward per 1000 CAND |      APR
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SFIN      |    78.175965 |              |   6825611.50 CAND | 0.1369 |      0.00002006 SFIN |   63.96%
SFIN/CAND |    16.676115 |   1456006.08 |   2912012.17 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00014111 SFIN |  449.99%
EXFI/CAND |    646607.51 |   2077734.69 |   4155469.39 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00009888 SFIN |  315.34%
EXFI/SGB  |   1095356.19 |  38058832.18 |   7035236.47 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00005841 SFIN |  186.26%
SGB/CAND  |  25672957.41 |   2371444.61 |   4742889.22 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00008663 SFIN |  276.28%
EXFI      |   7093985.35 |              |  22795001.95 CAND | 0.2739 |      0.00001202 SFIN |   38.32%
CAND      |   2459513.96 |              |   2459513.96 CAND | 0.0684 |      0.00002781 SFIN |   88.69%
WSGB      | 426072186.05 |              |  39356844.33 CAND | 0.2739 |      0.00000696 SFIN |   22.19%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Thanks for this, and thanks to @RobertHarpool too. Jnr's calculations seem closer to the risk/reward profile. Robert your initial calculations have SFIN-SFIN as the highest reward but that doesn't make sense to me because it is a single-sided pool carrying no risk and very little opportunity cost (in terms of different ways to use SFIN compared to EXFI, SGB, etc).

Jnr's calculations seem closer too because it tracks with how people are likely to be behaving. EXFI/CAND LP is offering the highest return partly because fewer people are in the pool. Why? Because as Robert said it means exiting Songbird/Flare and being all into Flare Finance. At the moment I am in the EXFI/SGB LP, and looking at the calculations I could be making more if I transferred that value to EXFI/CAND but that means losing my SGB and as I wrote above I'm just not ready to do that. I've already converted a decent chunk of my SGB to EXFI and even that is a little jittery.

So the guys who are going all-in on FF are getting the most rewards from FF and that makes sense. The single pools should offer the worst return, with CAND being the lowest because it is theoretically the least risky. SFIN/CAND has a good return at the moment I think partly because of the limited amount of available SFIN. EXFI/SGB is giving a little less return because more people are in the pool because it is comparatively less risky.  

 

[RobertHarpool]

I agree that putting the reward rate in terms of 1 value makes things more apples-to-apples comparable ... and thus better able to determine which type of unit is more lucrative. 

I was content with rough estimates in my minds eye. 

But, since you worked it out, Jn_r, let's drill into this so we can make sense of any discrepancies. 

The first is with SFIN to SFIN ...  @jn_r where did u get 78.+ as the total number of SFIN? I show a pool supply of 47ish, of which only 31ish are staked? Since the reward is only being distributed to those that are staked, the 31+ figure seems to be all that matters for the SFIN to SFIN calculation. Right? 

I must be misunderstanding what is meant precisely by 'pool supply' and 'total staked'. Can someone explain it to me please? 

Edited January 27, 2022 by RobertHarpool

[jn_r]

1 hour ago, RobertHarpool said:

But, since you worked it out, Jn_r, let's drill into this so we can make sense of any discrepancies. 

good idea :-)

1 hour ago, RobertHarpool said:

The first is with SFIN to SFIN ...  @jn_r where did u get 78.+ as the total number of SFIN? I show a pool supply of 47ish, of which only 31ish are staked? Since the reward is only being distributed to those that are staked, the 31+ figure seems to be all that matters for the SFIN to SFIN calculation. Right?

I can not understand where the difference comes from with the SFIN pool, I've noticed it too and no explanation. For this single pool I check the amount of SFIN tokens that the SFIN Farm account holds (check the link). It points 78 SFIN. The same procedure I did for the other single tokens and for those others it does match. (CAND, EXFI, SGB)

1 hour ago, RobertHarpool said:

I must be misunderstanding what is meant precisely by 'pool supply' and 'total staked'. Can someone explain it to me please? 

I don't know what the 'pool supply' is, also looking forward for someone to explain :-)

[Seoulite]

1 hour ago, jn_r said:

I don't know what the 'pool supply' is, also looking forward for someone to explain :-)

I think the pool supply is how many SFIN will be given out by that pool. So at .401 a day, 143 SFIN is just under a year.

[jn_r]

48 minutes ago, Seoulite said:

I think the pool supply is how many SFIN will be given out by that pool. So at .401 a day, 143 SFIN is just under a year.

That explains the difference l see in the SFIN pool, my 78 includes both the 'pool supply' and the 'total staked' :-) 

Check: 31.6344 + 47.2005 = 78.8349 

Edited January 27, 2022 by jn_r

[jn_r]

Here's a new overview, now with SFIN farm excluding the 'pool Supply'. I hardcoded the 'pool Supply' to 47.2005, I don't know how to retrieve it from the smart contract.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SGB/CAND:       0.0988                EXFI/CAND:       3.3815                  SFIN/CAND:     86004.67
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Farm      | Token1 total | Token2 total |     Total in CAND | Reward | Reward per 1000 CAND |      APR
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SFIN      |    31.604147 |              |   2718104.18 CAND | 0.1369 |      0.00005037 SFIN |  158.22%
SFIN/CAND |    17.154435 |   1475361.47 |   2950722.94 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00013925 SFIN |  437.44%
EXFI/CAND |    633847.27 |   2143381.83 |   4286763.65 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00009585 SFIN |  301.11%
EXFI/SGB  |   1110100.57 |  37838816.11 |   7493603.54 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00005483 SFIN |  172.25%
SGB/CAND  |  24763860.16 |   2447504.24 |   4895008.48 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00008394 SFIN |  263.69%
EXFI      |   7088883.43 |              |  23971364.49 CAND | 0.2739 |      0.00001143 SFIN |   35.89%
CAND      |   2144497.16 |              |   2144497.16 CAND | 0.0684 |      0.00003190 SFIN |  100.19%
WSGB      | 344794663.58 |              |  34077336.75 CAND | 0.2739 |      0.00000804 SFIN |   25.25%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Seoulite]

2 minutes ago, jn_r said:

Here's a new overview, now with SFIN farm excluding the 'pool Supply'. I hardcoded the 'pool Supply' to 47.2005, I don't know how to retrieve it from the smart contract.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SGB/CAND:       0.0988                EXFI/CAND:       3.3815                  SFIN/CAND:     86004.67
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Farm      | Token1 total | Token2 total |     Total in CAND | Reward | Reward per 1000 CAND |      APR
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SFIN      |    31.604147 |              |   2718104.18 CAND | 0.1369 |      0.00005037 SFIN |  158.22%
SFIN/CAND |    17.154435 |   1475361.47 |   2950722.94 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00013925 SFIN |  437.44%
EXFI/CAND |    633847.27 |   2143381.83 |   4286763.65 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00009585 SFIN |  301.11%
EXFI/SGB  |   1110100.57 |  37838816.11 |   7493603.54 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00005483 SFIN |  172.25%
SGB/CAND  |  24763860.16 |   2447504.24 |   4895008.48 CAND | 0.4109 |      0.00008394 SFIN |  263.69%
EXFI      |   7088883.43 |              |  23971364.49 CAND | 0.2739 |      0.00001143 SFIN |   35.89%
CAND      |   2144497.16 |              |   2144497.16 CAND | 0.0684 |      0.00003190 SFIN |  100.19%
WSGB      | 344794663.58 |              |  34077336.75 CAND | 0.2739 |      0.00000804 SFIN |   25.25%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

These closely match the platform itself, which lists 436% APY for SFIN/CAND and 99% for CAND.