The Alpine Testnet App is Here
Sustainable DeFi Savings with Near-Zero Transaction Costs
Today, we’re releasing a public version of the Alpine Testnet App. With it, we take one step closer to bringing the benefits of DeFi everyone. Sustainable DeFi yield across multiple chains, easy diversification, near-ZERO transaction cost, connecting with email or metamask for the crypto natives, and radical transparency. There is a lot to unpack!
Our Journey
We set out on this journey last year, long before the market downturn, and believed that there was an opportunity to build an easy-to-use — even delightful — way for retail investors to access diversified DeFi assets. We know and have personally experienced high gas fees and difficult user experiences that have limited adoption of DeFi for most people. To date, unless you are a high net worth individual or a sophisticated institution like a hedge funds DeFi has been out of reach due to its costs and complexity.
Now, with the backdrop of a general downturn, the insolvency of notable centralized crypto yield platforms, and investor trust at an all time low, we think that DeFi remains more important now than ever. This is because as Pantera’s Dan Morehead noted, “DeFi worked great” and its transparency has proven to be a key feature that will enable its long term success.
Alpine Protocol and App
To that end, we built Alpine because we believe in the merits of DeFi and want to make it easier for anyone to access it in a safe, sustainable way. At its core, this means obliterating transaction fees, simplifying the user experience, and above all making balanced strategies no more than a click away. We’re proud to share that we’ve taken the first public step on this journey with the release of our public testnet app at alpha.tryalpine.com.
There, you can connect with Metamask or your email and experience our end-to-end yield generating and growth baskets. This comes with near-zero transaction fees and a user experience that feels more like web2 than Web3. Once you have connected, you can claim your testnet USDC and matic tokens by following instructions on the deposit page. You can find more detailed instructions here.
We welcome your feedback and are excited to share more announcements with you as we march towards our mainnet launch in the coming months.
If you are more curious about the magic that went behind, here is a deep dive!
How it Works
Alpine works by providing an easy-to-use entry point to investing in multi-chain assets. We call these abstractions “baskets” and describe more below:
Baskets
Baskets are diversified and dynamically rebalancing smart contract vaults. They provide users the benefits of a diversified portfolio by interacting with numerous assets or protocols with the ease that comes with holding a single asset. In particular, assets can contain one or more underlying strategies. A strategy is simply a given asset allocation. For instance, a strategy might be holding Bitcoin, Ethereum, lending USDC out on Compound, etc. When combined in some proportion, these would be considered a basket. This is analogous to a pre-constructed portfolio.
Yield Bearing Baskets
Yield-bearing baskets are those that have strategies that provide yield to users. The most common examples are baskets containing strategies like lending USDC on Compound or Aave. USDC Earn is our Testnet version of a yield-bearing basket.
Token Baskets
Token baskets contain strategies that provide direct price exposure to a given asset such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. Alp Large is our Testnet version of a token basket. Mechanically, the vault purchases wBTC and wETH on Polygon so that your holdings in the Polygon vault are backed by holdings of wrapped assets.
Protocol Mechanism
When a user buys tokens in an underlying basket vault, the following occurs. This process varies slightly based on the type of basket so the illustration explains the most complex scenario where cross-chain activity occurs.
- On Polygon, users buy basket tokens with USDC.
- These tokens are a claim to the vault’s underlying assets. When new tokens are minted and the USDC is transferred to the contract, the smart contract dynamically allocates these assets into the necessary protocols.
- For example, part of the USDC will be lent out on Aave on Polygon while the remainder will be bridged to L1 where they are then lent out on Compound. A user’s tokens grow in value proportional to their vault TVL and total amount minted.
- When a user sells these tokens the process occurs in reverse.
Alpine came with a powerful innovative combination to make the best DeFi UX for everyone! We are excited to have you on our journey!
