Elk Finance — Where All Chains Meet
Elk is a peer-to-peer network for cross-chain value transfers and blockchain interoperability. ElkNet, the powerful cross-chain engine at the heart of the network, allows for secure and efficient transfers of value and information, reducing friction and asset fragmentation between blockchains. Community projects and developers are also able to build dynamic multi-chain applications that leverage ElkNet.
Elk Finance combines several innovative features:
- Cross-chain utility token for value transfer ($ELK)
- Cross-chain value transfer via ElkNet in seconds between all the chains Elk supports
- Cross-chain stablecoin for value transfer and loans ($CHFT)
- Non-Fungible Tokens (Moose NFTs) with unique abilities and features
- Impermanent Loss Protection (ILP) for Elk’s liquidity providers
- and more…
USE CASES
At the core, Elk’s goal is to provide the users with a simple and cheap way to transfer value across chains. However, Elk’s mission goes far beyond just enabling users to swap assets across chains. With Elk, will eventually not have to think about which chain they are on. Some of the functions Elk will support include: calling smart contracts across chains, allowing smart contracts on different chains to interact, using liquidity on one chain to get a stablecoin loan on another chain, allowing cross- or multi-chain synthetic assets (proxy tokens), utilization of an SDK allowing developers to build on top of ElkNet, and facilitating cross-chain arbitrage.
Is This Yet Another Bridge?
No. While bridges are a step in the right direction, Elk believe they just do not do nearly enough to enable cross-chain functionality. Below are some of the problems with bridges that Elk aims to solve:
- Expensive
- Slow
- Largely centralized
- Hard to manage
- One-off (you need to deploy a new bridge between every pair of chains)
- Only support bridging assets that exist on both chains
- Extra costly conversions if the two assets you want to swap do not exist in both chains
Elk’s approach is much more efficient and inexpensive than a bridge. It is a “multi-bridge on steroids” that is cheaper and faster, with support for many more use cases.
Cross-chain Swaps
Elk.Finance aims to support cross-chain swaps of arbitrary tokens at sub-second speeds. By combining a state-of-the-art liquidity pooling system with a decentralized peer-to-peer network, they can achieve fast, trustless, and cheap swaps across different chains. They believe value transfer across chains will play a large role in the adoption of cryptocurrencies over the coming years. Current solutions to that problem are slow and expensive. Elk.Finance will change that.
Stablecoin
In order to facilitate cross-chain value transfers and payments with minimal risk, Elk.Finance will release a stablecoin called CHFT. Upon release, CHFT will be the first cross-chain stablecoin based on a gyroscopic design.
Yield Farming
Elk’s community has the opportunity to participate in yield farming by providing liquidity pairs to bootstrap the Elk network and locking these pairs in staking contracts. The bulk of ELK tokens will, therefore, be distributed to early adopters of the Elk network. The sooner you join, the larger your rewards will be!
Impermanent Loss Protection
Elk.Finance believes in taking special care of their liquidity providers. In particular, it would not do if a liquidity provider decided to participate in the Elk network and suffered from impermanent loss (IL) as a result. “Investor” in the network should not walk away with less, ever! Therefore, they are going to implement IL protection for ELK Liquidity Pools. This insurance will take the form of additional ELK token payments (to be claimed as part of the staking contracts) in case the price of ELK drops drastically.
Supported Chains
Elk started with the Avalanche blockchain and have also added Polygon (MATIC), Fantom, and Heco , Binance Smart Chain, XDai, and many many more. Ethereum will soon be supported. The reason they started with Avalanche was because they planned for Avalanche to be a little bit more “central” to Elk.Finance than others. Avalanche truly is a chain apart (so to speak) and has a very bright future.
TOKENOMICS
The ELK Token
The ELK token is an ERC20-compatible utility token that underpins the Elk.Finance ecosystem. Central to the design of the Elk network is the fact that all liquidity pools pair exchange tokens with ELK. This design decision allows for sub-second transfer of value across chains and provides deeper liquidity for pools, reducing slippage and fees. ELK also doubles as the governance token for the Elk network.
ELK is a utility token built for cross-chain value transfer. All ELK sent through ElkNet will eventually burn a small amount of ELK. As an ERC20 token, ELK is freely tradeable on exchanges and fully compatible with EVM wallets as well as compatible wallets on supported chains. ELK will eventually be available on non-EVM chains.
- Ticker: $ELK
- ELK Token: 0xE1C110E1B1b4A1deD0cAf3E42BfBdbB7b5d7cE1C [Avalanche] [Polygon] [Fantom] [Huobi ECO] [xDai] [Binance] [Kucoin] [Harmony] [OKEx] [Hoo] [Elastos] [Moonriver] [Cronos] [Telos] [Fuse] [IoTeX]
*Please note that the ELK contract address differs on IoTeX
- Legacy token ($lElk) Address: 0xE1C8f3d529BEa8E3fA1FAC5B416335a2f998EE1C [Avalanche] [Polygon] [Fantom]
- Token Type: ERC-20 (supported chains) / native currency (Elk mainnet)
- Supported chains (14): Avalanche C-Chain, Polygon, Fantom, HECO Chain, Binance Smart Chain, xDai, Elastos Smart Chain, Moonriver, KuCoin Community Chain, OKEx, HOO Smart Chain, Harmony ONE, Telos EVM Chain, Cronos, Fuse, and IoTeX… with more to come!
- Maximum supply: 42,424,242 across all chains
- Initial supply per chain: 4,242,424
- Emission rate per chain: ~1,350 $ELK / day
Unconverted legacy tokens ($lElk) will remain in circulation, but they will have no utility.
The hard cap of 4.2M $ELK per chain has been lifted (but the total across all chains remains 42M). The upgrade will prevent problems in the future as $ELK flows between chains according to demand. With the legacy contract, once the 4.2M per chain cap was reached, there would be no way to transfer additional $ELK funds onto that chain. The maximum supply across chains remains capped at 42M, so the tokenomics will not be impacted.
The Elk token is currently pausable, which is initially necessary for the security of the mainnet. There is a plan to keep this ability for a time and then relinquish it to a governing council of 7 people for approximately 6 months before it is left up to governance.
The upgraded token supports block-based snapshots, which will help to streamline cross-chain transfers, as well as things like analytics and airdrops.
To upgrade your legacy ELK (lElk) to the new Elk, follow the tutorial shown here.
Token Distribution
Distribution
Elk will distribute the 10 million liquidity provisioning tokens over the years to liquidity providers with halving every year according to the following schedule:
- 1st year: 5 million ELK tokens distributed.
- 2nd year: 2.5 million ELK tokens distributed.
- 3rd year: 1.25 million ELK tokens distributed.
- 4th year: 0.625 million ELK tokens distributed.
- …
The insurance fund token will be distributed to protect liquidity providers against impermanent loss up to a limit of the daily distributed rewards for liquidity provisioning. For example, in the first year, no more than 5 million ELK tokens will be paid by the insurance fund (if applicable), thereby limiting inflation. The community fund tokens will initially remain locked away and their distribution will be performance according to governance decisions by ELK token holders.
Note that initially the token release schedule will slightly vary across chains based on the start of yield farming. Each chain will start with a maximum of 4 million ELK tokens, allocated in the same proportions described above.
Team & Advisors
Elk.Finance is currently composed of four team members with wide-ranging experience. Unlike many teams in this space, our roots are technical. We are geeks and experts in Javascript, Solidity, and all things blockchain. We are not marketing or business folk: we are geeks who strongly believe in this project and have spent countless nights working on its initial design and refinement. We are committed to delivering the best technology to our users.
Elk.Finance’s founder, Ba’al, is a systems architect with 17 years of experience and early blockchain astronaut who has been in the space since 2011. Our lead developer, Howitzer, is a Javascript and Solidity expert with almost 6 years of experience. Our third developer, Bob, is a DevOps expert. Our product manager, Elktra, has 5 years of experience working at top companies.
We are also advised by several academics, finance experts, and blockchain experts.
ROADMAP
Below is an overview of the Elk.Finance roadmap* for 2022 and beyond.
Q1 2022:
- ElkNet V2 Upgrade
- Ethereum/Arbitrum Launch
- New dAPP/UI- Redesigned UI and UX for ElkDEX and ElkNet
- Mainnet Nodes- Secure ElkNet by staking ELK (Q1-Q2)
Q2 2022:
- Community Governance
- ElkNet Proxy Token Upgrade- Unlocking Utility of Moose NFTs
- Release of Elk Software Development Kit (SDK)
- Elk Launch on Non-EVM Chains
Future Plans:
- Ability to Utilize Cross-Chain Liquidity Pools
- Continuous Chain Expansion
* Note that all dates in the roadmap are estimates and subject to change.
Elk Mainnet Roadmap
Cross-chain transfers -
- Cross-chain transfer of $ELK token ✅1.
- Limit 100 $ELK per transfer ✅
- Swap 1 $ELK for gas for destination network ✅
- Limit 1000 $ELK per transfer ✅
- Limit 10000 $ELK per transfer ✅
- Unlimited $ELK per transfer
2. Elk SDK for developers and platforms to build on Elk
- SDK support for CEX withdrawals
3. Cross-Chain stablecoin
4. Mainnet node
- Ability for users to run an Elk mainnet node
5. Staking and delegation
- $ELK staking and delegation for mainnet nodes
6. Paranodes
- Ability for users to run an Elk paranode (requires Moose NFT)
7. Proxy tokens
- Initial support for proxy tokens
- Improved support for proxy tokens
8. Multi-chain tokens
- Initial support for multi-chain tokens
9. Cross-chain loans
- Initial support for cross-chain loans
10. Moose + Paranodes
- Delegation of Moose to paranodes
Usability roadmap
- Redesigned dApp
- Redesigned website
- Mobile app
- Integration into wallets
INVESTORS
Elk Finance haven’t accepted venture capital offers trying to keep everything community driven fair launch, fair farming for distribution.
