TEL x Balancer Liquidity Mining Begins

Telcoin
7 min readOct 2, 2020

It’s time to initiate Balancer Phase 2: Bootstrap liquidity pools with TEL mining

By Parker Spann

This article will recap the first month of the Uniswap Liquidity Mining program and the data we’ve captured from it. We will then discuss the launch of the second phase of Telcoin’s Balancer roadmap: bootstrapping liquidity with rewards.

Uniswap Recap

As Telcoin works to bring fast, affordable, and high quality financial services to the mass market, one of our main priorities is to make sure the costs to buy and sell TEL are as low as possible for end users of the Telcoin platform.

Automated Market Makers (AMMs) like Uniswap and Balancer enable token holders to passively make TEL markets more liquid and earn trading fees. More liquid markets means end users deal with less slippage costs when purchasing TEL.

Via Proof of Liquidity aka liquidity mining, TEL miners are currently earning inflation for providing the service of creating more liquid, cost efficient markets over time on AMMs.

Telcoin first initiated liquidity mining on Uniswap at the beginning of September, and the program has been a solid initial success. We are going to extend that program at least one more month and have decided to launch a similar one on the TEL-ETH 80/20 Balancer pool, starting Monday, October 5th at 15:00 UTC.

If you would like to learn more about TEL, the Telcoin 2.0 Roadmap, and the purpose of TEL liquidity mining, watch this video AMA with Telcoin VP Parker Spann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx0uoQZDl9Q.

Now let’s dive in!

Uniswap Market Stats

Data sourced from CoinGecko on October 1st, 2020

When Telcoin first launched the TEL-ETH pool on Uniswap in early August, there was around $5,000 of TEL-ETH liquidity in the pool and virtually $0.00 USD worth of trading volume. Now, two months later, Uniswap is currently the most heavily traded TEL market with the tightest spreads and, as of October 1st, over $135,000 USD worth of TEL market liquidity!

This is important for a number of reasons. First, on Uniswap, the liquidity providers (LPs) earn all of the trading fees. On a typical centralized exchange, traders pay Kucoin for trading on their platform.

What does this mean and why does it matter? It means that in the past 24 hours, TEL holders made more in TEL trading fees on Uniswap than the largest TEL hosted centralized exchange! This is an exciting step towards creating a TEL economy where long term TEL power users capture the value of the TEL marketplace rather than third party companies who pocket the profits themselves.

Second, as made clear by this week’s Kucoin hack, counter-party risk on centralized exchanges continues to remain a major risk in crypto. We view the fact that the majority of TEL trading activity is happening on non-custodial, on chain exchanges as an important step in the right direction towards TEL powered secure, self-sovereign financial services.

And lastly, we’ve made a fantastic step towards bootstrapping cost-effective, self sustaining, TEL holder owned markets for end-users of the Telcoin platform!

Uniswap Pool Stats

  • Miner count grew 262.50% from 8 to 29
  • USD liquidity grew 80.65% from $75,000.00 to $135,486.00. Increasing every week despite a marketwide +30% drawdown.
  • TEL liquidity grew ~200% from 95 million TEL to 283 million, increasing ¾ weeks.
  • ETH liquidity grew 76.65% from 105 to 185.3 ETH, increasing every week.
  • All 19 of the week 1 miners pooled for the entire month! They will receive an additional retroactive liquidity mining distribution (outlined below).

Uniswap Mining Stats

A total of 25 million TEL (~5,500 USD October 1st) will be distributed to September miners across the month of October and into the first week of November. Please review the Telcoin Liquidity Mining Schedule for more information. Here are the details of the September TEL mining:

Retroactive Mining Distribution (August 27th Snapshot)

Total Mined: 2.5 Million TEL

Average Mined: 312,500 TEL

Number of Miners: 8 miners

Distribution Schedule: The week of October 4th-9th

Week 1

Total Mined: 5,000,000 TEL

Average Mined: 286,516 TEL

Number of Miners: 19

Distribution Schedule: The week of October 4th-9th

Week 2

Total Mined: 5,000,000 TEL

Average Mined: 185,185 TEL

Number of Miners: 27

Distribution Schedule: The week of October 12th-16th

Week 3

Total Mined: 5,000,000 TEL

Average Mined: 172,413 TEL

Number of Miners: 29

Distribution Schedule: The week of October 19th-23rd

Week 4

Total Mined: 5,000,000 TEL

Average Mined: 172,413 TEL

Number of Miners: 29

Distribution Schedule: The week of October 26th-30th

Retroactive Mining Distribution(LPs who mined for all four periods in September)

Total Mined: 2,500,000 TEL

Average Mined: 131,578 TEL

Number of Miners:19

Distribution Schedule: The week of November 9th-13th

Uniswap TEL Distribution

The miners who pooled for the entire 4 week program earned a proportion of 2.5 million TEL or 131,578 TEL each on the week of November 9th-13th! You all are power users. Congratulations!

The Uniswap liquidity mining program will continue for at least another month starting today on October 1st and ending November 5th. The updated mining calendar can be found here: TEL Liquidity Mining Schedule.

We will allow a grace period up until Monday, October 5th at 15:00 UTC for new miners on Uniswap to pool, whitelist and participate in the first week of TEL mining.

Remember, if you haven’t whitelisted your address, you are not eligible for liquidity mining. The whitelisting form can be found here: Telcoin Liquidity Mining Whitelisting Form.

Balancer Liquidity Mining

As we discussed earlier this week when we launched the first Telcoin x Balancer pool, we are excited to continue creating and bootstrapping new types of DEXes in order to create a highly liquid, open, and accessible global TEL marketplace.

We are now launching phase 2 on Balancer: bootstrap liquidity with TEL mining and capture the data needed to properly self sustain sufficient liquidity for TEL end users.

The Balancer TEL-ETH 80/20 pool is ready to be mined and liquidity staking commences Monday, October 5th at 15:00 UTC. Remember, if you want to receive mine, you must whitelist your ethereum address via the Telcoin Liquidity Mining Whitelisting Form and stake for the entirety of each period for which you would like to mine.

TEL on Balancer x BAL Mining

We are thrilled to announce that TEL has been whitelisted for BAL mining and has been added to the Balancer front-end interface after being proposed in BAL Whitelist Round 14 of the Balancer Governance Forum. TEL traders and liquidity providers can now select TEL from the drop down menu on Balancer and will begin earning weekly BAL rewards for providing TEL liquidity to Balancer pools.

This is an exciting first step towards long term TEL holders and power users owning governance rights over the marketplaces they use!

Balancer TEL Mining Details

Requirements

Value Pooled: At least 0.5 ETH worth of total TEL+ETH liquidity

Timing: Must be staked for the entire duration of each period

Pool Address: https://pools.balancer.exchange/#/pool/0x6cb5c5cb789fae62ce5ce280e1fbc5dd3bbdad81/shares

How to Pool on Balancer: Telcoin x Balancer Guide

Whitelist your address here: TEL Liquidity Mining Whitelisting Form

Mining and Distribution Schedule: TEL Liquidity Mining Schedule

Week 1

Start: October 5th at 15:00 UTC

End: October 12th at 14:59 UTC

Inflation: 5,000,000 TEL

Distribution: Pro-rata based on proportion of pool ownership

Distribution Schedule: The week of November 9th-13th

Week 2

Start: October 12th at 15:00 UTC

End: October 19th at 14:59 UTC

Inflation: 5,000,000 TEL

Distribution: Pro-rata based on proportion of pool ownership

Distribution Schedule: The week of November 16th-20th

Week 3

Start: October 19th at 15:00 UTC

End: October 26th at 14:59 UTC

Inflation: 5,000,000 TEL

Distribution: Pro-rata based on proportion of pool ownership

Distribution Schedule: The week of November 23rd-27th

Week 4

Start: October 26th at 15:00 UTC

End: November 5th at 14:59 UTC

Inflation: 5,000,000 TEL

Distribution: Pro-rata based on proportion of pool ownership

Distribution Schedule: The week of November 30th-December 4th

BONUS

Congratulations to all 21 TEL-ETH Balancer Pool LPs! You all mined an equal share of 2.5 million TEL which will be distributed next month.

Retroactive

Snapshot: October 1st at 21:30 UTC

Inflation: 2,500,000 TEL

Distribution: Equally divided between all 21 LPs at the snapshot

Distribution Schedule: The week of November 9th-13th

Resources

TEL-ETH 80/20 Pool Address: https://pools.balancer.exchange/#/pool/0x6cb5c5cb789fae62ce5ce280e1fbc5dd3bbdad81/shares

How to Pool on Balancer: Telcoin x Balancer Guide

Whitelist your address here: TEL Liquidity Mining Program Whitelisting Form

Mining & Distribution Schedule: TEL Liquidity Mining Schedule

What is Uniswap?: Telcoin x Uniswap Guide

Disclaimer

Please remember that you cannot control the amount of any individual token you get out of the pool. Sometimes the amount can consist of a larger share of ETH than TEL or vice versa.

Telcoin has no control over funds lost on Balancer. Use at your own risk. Telcoin reserves the right to cancel or modify the mining program at any time.

Send Money Smarter. Earn Money Smarter. Telcoin.

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