Solarbeam Recap & AMA!

9 min readOct 15, 2021

It has been several weeks since Solarbeam launched — time flies! We have been overwhelmed by the support for our project, and the response to the work we’ve done so far. Thank you!

As you can tell, we’re only just warming up, as more and more partnerships come to fruition in our goal to becoming the leading DEX and AMM.

In this post, we’d like to recap what we’ve been up to thus far…

ECLIPSE IDO AND NFT LAUNCHPAD

As a project committed to growing this ecosystem and having a strong desire for the success of other startups, we have created a launchpad for IDOs and NFT projects.

The platform gives users an opportunity to participate in pre-sale and early stage funding rounds, but also provides a base for entrepreneurs and startups to raise funds for their idea and project. Users looking to contribute need only 50 SOLAR in order to participate in a sale, which will be multiplied based on how long those users decide to lock up and stake those funds for.

We’re committed to adding value to the Moonriver and Kusama ecosystem, and part of that means ensuring we onboard high quality projects. The Eclipse launchpad is built around transparency, and our team will provide guidance and oversight to new projects to ensure that teams have everything they need for a successful launch.

We believe Eclipse will provide significant value to the SOLAR economy and its community via our high yield vaults, the opportunity to participate in exciting new projects, and by functioning as a burning mechanism for the SOLAR treasury.

Find out more about Eclipse here, and if you’re a project looking to launch an IDO or NFT project, fill out the application form here.

MAI POOL AND RELAYCHAIN PARTNERSHIP

We’ve all heard about the incredible success of the Polygon and Avalanche networks. However, since Moonriver launched in July, there has been no way to bridge stablecoins between the three networks. That all changed in late September when we secured a partnership with bridging protocol RelayChain, making it easy for users to bridge AVAX, MATIC, and MOVR assets in a simple, fast and secure manner.

This partnership has opened the door for another exciting development: The introduction of the first Polygon-based stablecoin into the Moonriver ecosystem: MAI.

MAI is the native stablecoin of QiDao, a community-governed stablecoin protocol built on Polygon, and provides users the ability to borrow against accepted cryptocurrencies as collateral, with the loans paid out in the native MAI.

Last week (October 6th) we were proud to launch the MAI/USDC pool, making it possible for users to transfer from the Moonriver ecosystem into the RelayChain supported networks of Polygon and Avalanche, with RelayChain adding support for more assets and networks in the future!

Read the details of our QiDao partnership here, and our RelayChain collab here.

SOLAR TOKEN BURN

As mentioned in our Docs, we use 50% of our received trading fees for buy-backs and token burns. On Wednesday 6th October we burned the substantial amount of 10,000 SOLAR, and bought back $45,000 worth of tokens from the open market, ensuring the stability and sustainability of SOLAR’s economy.

This is now our third token burn and buy-back, and following on from the burns of September 28th and 21st, brings us to a total of 25,000 SOLAR burned, and $130,000 bought back from the open market. Considering we’re only 7 weeks old and are currently trading up to $30 million of volume a day, we’re proud of our commitment to our tokenomic model and the effect it continues to have on our market.

Keep an eye on our Twitter and Telegram for more token burns and their ensuing amounts on a regular basis.

THE SOLAR TEAM IS GROWING

Do you want to be part of the rapidly expanding SolarBeam project, and be involved in the exciting experience of a crypto startup? Now’s your chance.

As SolarBeam grows in numbers, expands its offering, and matures as a leading DEX and AMM in the Moonriver ecosystem, we need our bandwidth to keep up! With the growth of SolarBeam, we’re in need of rockstar Developers, Marketers, Writers, Business Dev specialists, Designers, and other fitting prodigies for roles that fit our needs.

If that’s you, and you would like to be part of what we’re doing here at SolarBeam, simply fill out this Google Form here, and we’ll get back to you if we feel like you’re a good fit.

NEW POOLS

FTM

As the 34th highest crypto by market capitalization, with a cap of $5.4 billion, and a superstar team of founders, Fantom has become a prominent DeFi protocol in the cryptoverse. And in line with its popularity among the crypto community, our bridging partners RelayChain recently deployed a bridge between the Fantom and Moonriver networks.

This bridge was made possible with some core work by the SolarBeam devs, and means that Fantom holders and users can interact with the Kusama and Moonriver universe via the pair on our Dex. In addition, we’ve added an FTM pool to incentivize liquidity among these ecosystems. The pool went live after a short delay on Sunday 10 October, and has already generated a considerable TVL!

MIM

Due to popular demand, and good old fashioned regular demand, we also added a MIM/USDC pool that reached $4 million TVL within a day! Magic Internet Money (MIM) is a popular cross-chain stable coin developed by Daniele Sesta quickly that enchanted the community and quickly surged to $1.1 billion market capitalization.

A NEW LOOK

If you’ve visited lately, you may have noticed a few differences. As part of our hiring initiatives, we took on the amazing and talented Feth. Feth is a UI/UX artist that was responsible for giving the Solarbeam site a nice facelift.

This was well received by many in the community — a definite sign that you’ve noticed the effort we’ve put into the smallest details.

In addition to an improved look, we optimized some code to improve performance, and fixed several UI bugs to improve user experience.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, please feel free to stop by our Discord or Telegram channels, and get in touch!

ASK ME ANYTHING

The team currently opened questions from users in our Discord channel allowing users to ask anything that was on their mind. As promised, here are the answers!

Are there any plans to expand to other chains? (Moonbeam, Shiden, etc)

Expanding to Moonbeam is absolutely in the plans, and as a team, we’re considering expanding Solarbeam across the Dotsama ecosystem. Providing service and value to each of the networks, and helping facilitate an easy, seamless experience is important in promoting the ecosystem, and to elevate it within the crypto community as a whole.

Will there be “metrics staking” info provided that shows estimated yield per day/month/year?

We’re working on improving our analytics so we can display metrics about our vaults deposits and unlocks, farms, and user balances (liquidity pools, farming, yield returns, tracking deposits, profits, etc). We do not have an exact time yet as other tasks are currently a priority. However, we will announce it when we are ready.

What will be the purpose of Solarbeam token moving forward?

Currently, Eclipse will serve as our first major utility feature. Launching IDOs and NFT projects will prove to be significantly valuable. In addition to this, phasing in our governance will be another important aspect of SOLAR, particularly with potential projects that wish to launch on Eclipse in the future. Next, we are currently in the planning phase of a game that will make use of SOLAR and offer some gamified DeFi mechanics.

When the time is right, we will absolutely announce everything 😊

What sort of governance are you hoping to integrate?

We are still hammering out the details with this, however, the team is unanimous in the decision to bring governance and community involvement into several aspects of Solarbeam. One of the biggest would be with regards to our launchpad, and allowing the community to determine which projects they feel would be best to proceed with. We are exploring a variety of solutions, with one of them being a DAO.

What background and other projects do the teams have experience with that they are able to share with the community?

Our team has years of combined experience in the crypto industry, with most of us being involved in some form since 2017, especially as users and active community members. Outside of crypto, we are experienced in a variety of sectors: our lead developer having more than 10 years experience as a developer in the fintech sector; a security engineer with several years of experience, including actively working as a smart contract auditor; UI/UX design professionals, and more.

Are there any plans to list on exchanges?

There is no immediate plan for that, but we are going over some options.

Are there any plans for lend/borrow?

This is definitely something we are actively planning for. Lending and borrowing is a utility that is a must for every chain including Moonriver. We would prefer to partner up with a project that has lending/borrow based on Solar rather than set it up natively ourselves.

If we are unable to find something that we feel comfortable with, we will launch it ourselves.

What are the plans to keep Solar ecosystem stable/growing?

With our target to become the #1 DEX in the Dotsama ecosystem, we have put priority on increasing TVL and increasing the utility of SOLAR token. We consider these our main priorities. The launchpad will be a major step to increasing utility, as well as our plans to implement borrow/lending.

That said, we also understand marketing is an important aspect and we plan to begin marketing efforts and actively attracting TVL very soon.

How does the burn mechanism work, and will there be a more structured approach?

Currently we are burning tokens manually, but we plan to automate this process before the end of Q4 2021.

Are there any plans to expand the team?

Yes! We are constantly looking out for potential new team members and talents that are interested in joining us. If you are interested, please submit an application here.

What have been the biggest challenges so far?

The biggest challenge so far was the rapid expansion we faced in such a short amount of time. We hit milestones we did not expect to reach until at least 3 months from now. This resulted in a shortage of team members, and our current team going “all hands on deck”. However, with the help of our wonderful community and amazing mods as well as volunteers that stepped up, we were able to get through the all-nighters much easier than before 😊

Can you describe your mission/vision/values?

Our vision is to become the leading DEX for the Dotsama ecosystem. Currently, we are starting with Moonriver, with the intention to expand to Moonbeam. We are aiming to have Solarbeam be the go-to place for trading, and safe yield farming. We pride ourselves in promoting the ideals of trust and fairness in our community — which means creating an environment where everybody can feel comfortable enough to reach out to the team, and to each other.

In order to do this, we put our focus towards creating a smooth, and simple experience; empowering users with knowledge along the way, and consistently optimizing and building upon tried and tested systems in order to continuously improve the user experience and adapt to changing technologies.

Will you be integrating NFTs into the Solar ecosystem?

For sure! Eclipse, for example, will also support NFT artists that wish to launch their project in addition to IDO launches.

Can you tell us more about the IDO Launchpad “Eclipse”?

You can read all about Eclipse in our Medium article! Click here.

FINAL THOUGHTS

All in all, it has been a whirlwind here at SolarBeam, and we couldn’t be more excited about how openly you have received our work and contributed to making it what it is today. Your support has inspired us to go faster than ever before, and we can’t wait to keep building throughout October.

There are a myriad of exciting ideas that we have up our sleeves, and we’re only getting warmed up. We’re also chomping at the bit to see the first IDOs and NFT projects establish themselves off of our Eclipse launchpad.

There is just so much yet to unfold, and we’re working as hard as we can to ensure the smooth progress continues.

Thanks again for your support, and see you on Discord, Telegram, or Twitter!

Happy farming, SolarBeams!