ApeSwap FAQ
April 2022 — Don’t Worry, Be Happy
There has been a huge spate of hate related questions and accusations of ApeSwap being a “scam” protocol lately that I felt I had to do something. Whether these incidents are coordinated or just pure spite from being in a bad situation, I would not comment. However, I have compiled some of the answers in a neutral (I hope) and objective fashion below in order to save a lot of effort in typing standard replies to those who are seeking answers.
Do note that these are my personal take on matters (and I do also get the same vibes from most of the community) and do not represent any official message from ApeSwap.
Inflating Supply
[Q] One of the most common questions is related to why is the ApeSwap token, $BANANA inflationary and that emissions should be halted or half the supply should be sent to the burnt wallet.
[A] The fact that $BANANA is inflationary was never hidden from users. Tokenomics and burn mechanics have always been published in the ApeSwap docs. Burn mechanics are constantly being added to keep fighting against inflation with the hope that one day, neutral emissions will be met and sustained.
Inflation is needed to keep rewarding users who participate in staking/farming on the DEX, without which, the DEX would collapse if there is no liquidity supplied to allow for trading. The recent move to Treasury Bills will ensure that ApeSwap, in the long run, will own some, if not most, of the liquidity and that should be a good opportunity to consider any tokenomics changes.
Golden Banana Tokenomics
[Q] Why would anyone give up 30% of their $BANANA when swapping to $GNANA? And the APRs on $GNANA pools are not high anymore.
[A] $GNANA is designed as a governance token for users who decide to want to have a say in how ApeSwap grows over a long period of time. It is not mandatory to swap $BANANAs to it.
The 30% “loss” is only realised when $GNANA is redeemed back into $BANANA. The article above will explain that in further detail.
As for APRs on $GNANA pools, they are associated with the price of the reward token as well as the amount of $GNANA staked in the pool. Both of which are out of anyone’s control as the Crypto space is global.
If the price of the reward token goes parabolic, common sense will dictate that more people will want a piece of the action and get into the same pool together and APRs will slowly dilute.
CEX Listing
[Q] ApeSwap promised multiple CEX listings in Q1–2022, where are they?
[A] The ApeSwap devs have come out multiple times to clarify that the CEX listing news was misinterpreted as a delivery guarantee. The article below will explain it in clearer detail and by the way, BitMart did list ApeSwap at the end of March 2022.
ApeSwap Marketing
[Q] Why is there a lack of marketing? Not many people know about ApeSwap.
[A] ApeSwap has built a reputation in the BNB Chain as a protocol focusing on community engagement and growth. Even then, there is a huge marketing push on the backend that most of us, even myself aren’t aware of. I have seen Brave Ads on the browser and even an ApeSwap banner ad on CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko once. But do remember that advertising is usually targeted to a certain demographic — like a specific country, age, gender etc and it is highly possible that you nor I would be exposed to that.
Personally, I’d prefer to have hype from users instead of depending on the devs when it comes to spreading awareness. It’s not difficult to spread news that ApeSwap exists on social media. Anyone can do it and it brings more eyes to the protocol.
On top of this, one of the core team members have reached out to me and have confirmed that ApeSwap marketing is very much alive and well and to seek our understanding to be a little more patient to await some announcements and statistics on this particular topic.
YouTube Presence
[Q] Why is there so little YouTube videos about ApeSwap?
[A] Other than an in-house channel with video guides made by Tim, a simple search and filter on YouTube does pull out recent content made by a good mix of content creators. I normally like to filter by videos uploaded within the last month as the default search results show “influencers” with old videos made during the last bull run in 2021.
ApeSwap’s Liability
[Q] Lost a huge amount investing on an ApeSwap partner or lost everything to a scammer pretending to be from ApeSwap, how will ApeSwap compensate me for my losses?
[A] ApeSwap’s core responsibility is to provide a stable and efficient token exchange platform — the swap, in order to facilitate the exchange of BNB Chain tokens.
In the DeFi world, being decentralised and unregulated, all consequences arising from our actions are owned by oneself. There really isn’t anyone or any project to put the blame on and compensations are far and few between, if any.
Read the above to protect yourself from the many types of scams present in the Crypto world today. It is not exhaustive but it will give you a good start to not become a victim.
As for bad investment decisions, there is little anyone can do in this anonymous and unregulated space. ApeSwap tries to vet as best as they can with regards to partners but there is still no guarantees on a partners’ sustainability in the long term. It all still boils down to us, as the users, to accept the risk of exploring this new wonderland called DeFi.
Closing Thoughts…
At the end of the day, investing is all about emotions. Rarely does one successfully disassociate it from the technicalities, even though many “professional” traders will claim that that is the only way to secure life-changing gains.
Some strategies that I advocate, and that I personally adhere to (sometimes unsuccessfully) are listed below.
- Set a stop-loss. Once prices hit my stop-loss, regardless of the situation or market sentiment, I take the damage and start watching from the sidelines and consider my next move.
- Take profits when everyone is shouting “Buy!”. One of the advantages of doing this is to “make it real” so that you can keep going. It also helps by spending some of the profits in real life.
- Diversify to other protocols or different tokens so that when one is down, you can find encouragement in others that didn’t.
- Don’t ask what they can do for you and rather what you can do to help them. DeFi is new and experimental and staying positive to help one another will set you on relationships and opportunities that you will not get just by standing by the sidelines.
- Invest with funds you can afford to do without for a long time, if ever. Stability and volatility are the same as risk vs rewards. You can never find stability and rewards in the same place for a long time. (If you have found something that is stable and gives huge returns for a long time, do share what it is.)
- Take responsibility for your own investments. No one owes anyone anything, especially in this space. If you lose, chalk it up as a life lesson that you will never forget. If you win, be empathic to those who didn’t.
I sincerely thank you for reading up till this point and I really hope that WAGMI together and meet up for drinks or even a degen meal. Until then, if there are hard times, let’s keep each other going because hard times don’t last, hardy folks do.
