Top Things You Should Know About Cream Finance (CREAM)
Hey guys, Iâm back with another comprehensive Q&A piece, this time for the peer-to-peer decentralized lending platform â Cream Finance (CREAM).
Cream Finance is an open and decentralized financial system built on smart contracts. It provides its users with a spectrum of financial services including lending, exchange, payment, and asset tokenization services.
As of November 2, 2020, Cream Finance is ranked as the 14th largest DeFi protocol in terms of locked USD value with more than $127 million locked in.
Now, before we dive in, the following piece is similar to my latest articles on Dogecoin (DOGE), Filecoin (FIL), and Origin Protocol (OGN), so if you havenât already seen those, be sure to check them out as well.
Hope you enjoy!
The list of Q&A is kind of long so first comes the list of questions that I have prepared the answers to:
- What is Cream Finance?
- Who and When Created Cream Finance?
- What is the purpose of a $CREAM Token?
- What are the main products of Cream Finance?
- How is Cream Finance Governed?
- How was $CREAM distributed?
- Where to Store $CREAM?
- Where to Buy & Sell $CREAM?
1. What is Cream Finance?
Cream Finance website homepage
Cream Finance, based on a fork of Compound Finance, is a multi-purpose DeFi protocol that combines various aspects from other existing DeFi protocols to deliver ONE powerful ecosystem.
Cream Finance also borrows code from the likes of Compound Finance, Balancer, Curve Finance, Uniswap, and Blackholeswap to create its inclusive DeFi platform.
In doing this, Cream Finance is able to offer its users services such as lending and borrowing, liquidity mining, governance, and various automated market maker (AMM) functions.
As for the name Cream Finance, the âCreamâ in it stands for âCrypto Rules Everything Around Meâ, and the project is not to be grouped with other food-themed DeFi protocols.
Cream Finance actually has real potential and had more than $327 million locked USD value at its peak on September 13, 2020:
Total locked USD value in Cream Finance (Source)
2. Who and When Created Cream Finance?
Cream Finance founder, Jeffrey Huang
Cream Finance was founded by Jeffrey Huang on July 16, 2020.
Huang is a blockchain enthusiast who believes in the capacity of cryptocurrencies to create an open and inclusive financial system.
He began working in the cryptocurrency space in 2017 when he founded Mithril, an Ethereum-based social media platform, and prior to that, Huang founded Machi 17, a Taiwanese social media company with over 42 million users across its various apps and websites.
While Huang is the mastermind behind Cream Finance, it must be noted that he borrowed source code from various other DeFi protocols and there is no information on the platform's audits.
According to Huang, Cream Financeâs code does not need to be audited by anyone other than the entities which created it (e.g. Compound Finance, Balancer Labs, etc.).
3. What is the purpose of a $CREAM Token?
$CREAM token logo
The native cryptocurrency of Cream Finance is $CREAM and it serves as the governance token of the Cream platform. Additionally, $CREAM is used for rewards to incentivize users to interact with Cream Finance by either lending, borrowing, or providing liquidity in its various protocols.
Governance
Cream token holders will have governance control over Cream Finance and all its protocols once it has transitioned to the C.R.E.A.M. DAO, which is currently in progress.
$CREAM token holders will be able to vote on the addition/removal of liquidity pools, supported assets, changes in platform parameters, and more.
Rewards
Participants in the Cream Finance ecosystem can earn $CREAM tokens by providing liquidity in supported pools.
4. What are the main products of Cream Finance?
The three main products of Cream Finance are:
- Lending & Borrowing - lending and borrowing of digital assets
- Swaps - automated market maker (AMM) powered DEXes
- Rewards - liquidity mining and staking
Cream Finance Lending
(Source)
Lending is the primary product of Cream Finance and itâs almost an exact copy of Compound Finance, only it supports many more cryptocurrency assets.
Cream Financeâs Lending product involves decentralized lending and borrowing of assets whereby users them against other deposited assets that are overcollateralized.
Cream Finance incentivizes lenders to supply their tokens into a series of lending pools to earn interest. The interest rates that lenders make on deposited funds (and that borrowers will owe on borrowed funds) are dependant on the supply and demand for that asset.
Therefore, lenders are incentivized to supply the protocol with tokens which are undersupplied, which then increases the protocolâs liquidity and makes it an efficient lending/borrowing protocol.
Cream Finance Swaps
As described by Cream Finance, their Swap product is like âa fork of Balancer with a Uniswap-like frontendâ.
That said, itâs an AMM DEX, that uses the ratio of two or more assets in a pool to determine price instead of an order book like a centralized exchange. Liquidity providers (LPs) supply the Swap protocol with liquidity and earn a portion of the poolâs trading fees, plus $CREAM token rewards.
Digital assets can be swapped for a 0.25% fee (compared to Uniswapâs 0.3% fee), of which 0.20% is rewarded to liquidity providers and the remaining 0.05% goes to the Cream Finance network.
Cream Finance Rewards
(Source)
Cream Finance has two different methods for earning $CREAM token rewards: Liquidity Mining and Staking.
On the Cream Finance app, if you click on the âSwap Poolsâ tab, you will be presented with a series of pools. Here, you can add liquidity to any of these pools to start earning yield on your idle crypto assets. Sometimes these yields can be upwards of hundreds of percent APY, depending on the pool size and your share of the pool.
Another way to earn $CREAM rewards is through staking $CREAM tokens. If you click on the âRewardsâ tab, you will be presented with a series of $CREAM staking contracts:
- 1-year lock: 81% APY
- 2-year lock: 163% APY
- 3-year lock: 237% APY
- 4-year lock: 268% APY
When staking $CREAM in these contracts, you will not have access to your tokens for the allotted staking period. You cannot use staked tokens for voting and they can only be withdrawn at the end of your staking period.
5. How is Cream Finance Governed?
(Source)
Cream Finance will be governed by $CREAM token holders once the C.R.E.A.M. DAO is launched.
The C.R.E.A.M. DAO will exist to control, govern, manage, and direct all Cream Finance-related decisions on behalf of the $CREAM token holders. Such decisions may include but are not limited to: the addition/removal of liquidity pools, supported digital assets, rule changes in platform parameters, as well as operational maintenance such as paying developers.
The transition to a DAO was officially announced on September 2, 2020, but the DAO itself is still in development as of this writing (November 4, 2020).
According to the announcement post, the C.R.E.A.M. DAO will take bits and pieces from other DAO implementations such as the Moloch DAO and Aragon to build it. Also, Metacartelâs very own Raid Guild is consulting Cream Finance on the strategy and implementation of the C.R.E.A.M. DAO.
6. How was $CREAM distributed?
The $CREAM token launched without an ICO and all circulating tokens are from the $CREAM liquidity mining program.
50,000 CREAM was distributed from Cream Financeâs YOLO Alpha Launch pool, and 99,928 CREAM has thus far been distributed from the Beta Liquidity Mining program.
The initial total supply of $CREAM was 9 million CREAM, which has since been reduced by 67.5% after a community discussion and token burn on September 20, 2020.
The new max supply is just shy of 3 million CREAM (2,992,500 to be exact) with a current circulating supply of 149,928 CREAM.
$CREAM Distribution:
- 10% - Team (vesting over 2 years, 6 month cliff)
- 10% - Seed (vesting over 2 years, 6 month cliff)
- 20% - Liquidity Provider Incentive
- 60% - Governance Allocation
7. Where to Store $CREAM?
MetaMask website homepage
Cream Finance (CREAM) is an ERC-20 token residing on top of the public Ethereum blockchain. That said, you can store CREAM in any ERC-20 token supported wallet.
However, the best wallets for storing CREAM are non-custodial Web3 wallets that provide seamless access to the best DeFi applications, like Cream Finance. That said, DeFi wallets are the best for storing CREAM because the token is widely used and supported in the Ethereum-DeFi ecosystem.
Popular Cream Finance (CREAM) Wallets:
- Trust Wallet (mobile)
- Argent (mobile)
- Coinbase Wallet (mobile)
- Ledger Nano S (hardware)
- Metamask (web)
In addition to the above-listed wallets, Cream Finance (CREAM) can be stored on a wide variety of other reputable wallets supporting ERC-20 tokens.
8. Where to Buy & Sell $CREAM?
Cream Finance (CREAM) can be bought and sold on a peer-to-peer (P2P) basis but the most popular way to buy, sell, or trade $CREAM is through centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
You can buy and sell CREAM with cryptocurrency or fiat currency at the following top DEXes and exchanges. In most cases, you will be able to buy CREAM with BTC, ETH, or stablecoins.
- Binance - BNB, BUSD
- FTX - USD, USDT, PERP
- Uniswap - WETH
- Kyber Network - ETH
- 1inch Exchange - ETH, LINK, YFI
In addition to the exchanges listed above, Cream Finance (CREAM) is also traded on a wide variety of other exchanges and platforms that enable people to buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrencies.
Hope you enjoyed that read, Let me know if I have missed something in the comments.
Ethereum DeFi Yield Farming liquidity mining Cream Finance (CREAM)
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