IronLend Launch & ICE Emission Changes

TL;DR:
1. IronLend launching with ICE incentives, August 4 @ 1PM UTC
2. Reducing ICE rewards for IronSwap stablefarm, August 4 @ 1PM UTC
3. Increasing ICE rewards for ICE/ETH and ICE/USDC farms
4. Overall, no increase in daily ICE emissions

1) IronLend

We are proud to announce the long-awaited release of IronLend. The platform has completed testing and is fueled to launch this Wednesday, August 4!

a) Assets

Iron Lend is a fork of Compound on the Polygon blockchain. At launch, the lending platform will support the five most liquid blue-chip coins: BTC, ETH, MATIC, USDT, USDC. These coins were chosen due to their resilient Chainlink oracles and resistance to flash loan exploits. Once liquidity around these blue-chips has built up, additional coins will be added, possibly next week already, including partnership coins and other popular, exploit-resistant and liquid coins on the Polygon Network.

b) Audit

An important aspect of a successful lending platform is maintaining code integrity. We are about to sign a working agreement with a Tier 1 auditor and will announce the name as soon as possible, certainly this week.

c) Insurance

We are researching and talking with decentralized insurance protocols such as Tidal Finance, Union Finance, Helmet, Risk Harbour and others to integrate insurance for user deposits on IronLend. This step reinforces our commitment to providing high-quality, trusted DeFi products to our community. We expect to have an insurance solution in place in the second half of August.

d) ICE liquidity incentives

Keeping with the tradition of other lending protocols, lending and borrowing will be incentivized with ICE tokens, allowing users to profit by both lending and borrowing. Daily liquidity incentives at launch amount to 228,000 ICE and are divided as follows:
- BTC > 20,000 ICE per day
- ETH > 20,000 ICE per day
- MATIC > 20,000 ICE per day
- USDC > 90,000 ICE per day
- USDT > 78,000 ICE per day

Besides ICE incentives, an important aspect of all lending platforms is keeping positions over-collateralized. This is maintained through an incentivized liquidation mechanism, in which users may liquidate under collateralized positions and receive a reward. The initial liquidation incentive will be set at 15%.

e) IronLend & Governance Profit Model (BlueICE)

In our previous article, we have already announced that lending platform fees will flow to BlueICE stakers (via USDC dividends). This feature is a code innovation that has not been forked or is being used by any other lending protocol. After discussing with our advisors and even auditors, in order to ensure code integrity and to allow ourselves for VERY thorough testing (attack vectors simulation foremost), and perhaps more than one audit and cryptoeconomics analysis before live release, the profit-model aspect of IronLend must be postponed for a few weeks. While this may be bitter for news for BlueICE stakers who expected, like we did, that the profit model would be live with IronLend launch, there is absolutely no secure shortcut, easy fix or workaround to launch this feature right now.
The main concern and threat is that any related flaw in such code would be fatal for IronLend and most likely also for ICE token. Meanwhile, we must focus on IronSwap, on ramping up liquidity and listing additional tokens on IronLend with 3rd party incentives, as well as deliver our new IRON stablecoin (aimed for launch in August).

f) ICE token integration

ICE token will be live on IronLend next week, once we ensure liquidity robustness and resistance to flash loans. For that, we are developing an ICE oracle. Also, to prevent short selling of ICE, we will first enable ICE to only be used as collateral. Integrating ICE as collateral will effectively remove ICE out of circulating. Also, we are looking into ways to incentivize and promote usage of ICE for collateral.

2) ICE Emission Changes

We already pointed out 2 things related to ICE emissions in this article:
1) No increase in daily ICE emission (1,369,864 ICE per day)
2) Daily liquidity incentives for IronLend amount to 228,000 ICE

We have listened to proposals of respected users and community members in our Governance channel and are changing ICE emissions as follows:

• IS3USD: 913,242 -> 456,621 ICE per day (50% reduction, sorry Alameda!)
  - ICE/ETH: 228,311 -> 342,466 ICE per day (50% increase)
  - ICE/USDC: 228,311 ->342,466 ICE per day (50% increase)
  - IronLend: 228,311 ICE per day (from emissions rearrangements)

These changes will be in effect on Wednesday, August 4 @ 1PM

The desired impact should be reduced price pressure on ICE from IS3USD stablefarm(ers) and more incentives for becoming an ICE liquidity provider, which in turn locks up more ICE.

Thank you for your attention and stay tuned for more information about our next building block, the IRON stablecoin and more partnerships! Please join our governance channel.

Website: https://iron.finance/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IronFinance
Discord: https://discord.gg/RtA37hgGrK
Docs: https://docs.iron.finance/
Telegram Ann: https://t.me/IronFinanceAnn