Proposal to start discussion on whitelisting Apecoin as an asset and Apecoin staking as a strategy.
Motivation:
Apecoin has become the biggest NFT and metaverse related asset with a close to $2B market cap while the native staking is paying ~85% APY from inflation.
Context:
Yuga labs has established themselves as the leaders at the metaverse front. Apecoin, the token powering the Yuga ecosystem is paying high APY for staking. Staking has no timelocks or other requirements and the yield comes from inflation.
While Apecoin is somewhat volatile and this might need to be considered in LTV, Chainlink has full support for Apecoin. The accrued interest in the pool can be queried directly from the contract.
At the moment the only leveraged Apecoin staking I’m aware of is Abracadabra. The interest rate for this vault is 18% making the possible Gearbox strategy superior.
Down the road if there will be any lending protocol with Apecoin lending whitelisted, the inclusion of Apecoin staking would also create a great way to leverage farm just the Apecoin rewards coming from inflation.
As the smart contract for Apecoin staking is straightforward and the rewards come from inflation, I find the protocol risk low. The highest risk in my opinion would be any liquidations. This risk could be reduced with a conservative LTV.
Technical note:
Some kind of wrapper for staked Apecoin would make the implementation simpler in my opinion. One option being a Gearbox native contract wrapping the staking contract but also working with Yearn to add a vault for Apecoin staking would work (with a lower apy).