Summary

Borrow, lend and unleash your financial creativity with Neptune Finance. Explore advanced strategies and competitive rates from a platform built for capital efficiency.

The protocol MVP is available on Injective with the following features:

• Lend for variable interest redeemed with nTokens
• Borrow using up to 10 subaccounts
• Use nTokens and staking derivatives as interest-bearing collateral
• Create isolated and cross-margin positions
• Explore the dashboard and detail pages to understand market conditions
• Rank up on the leaderboard to earn a share of rewards
• Connect with Keplr, Metamask, Cosmostation, and OKX wallets

Inspiration

The concept was created following the collapse of the Anchor lending market on Terra. Our team researched other markets to build our integrations but did not find anything suitable to what we needed. When conceptualizing a perfect market for integrations, our smart contract engineer mentioned how a PID controller could be used within the interest rate curve to improve rates and encourage borrowing.

In our research we could not find an implementation of a PID controller within a Cosmos lending market so we set forth to build one ourselves. Throughout the process we studied features of popular lending platforms and imagined an interface that had every useful feature offered in one. This resulted in a design that allows for multiple accounts, isolated and cross margin positions, receipt tokens for lending assets, and a robust liquidation system that lessens market impact during times of volatility.

Development

The Neptune protocol is made of four smart contracts. One contract handles the market actions, the second holds the interest model and a third is the price oracle contract. These three contracts form the core Neptune platform while a fourth querier contract is used to pull information related to the core platform.

Injective infrastructure used

• Injective blockchain to host the Neptune smart contracts
• RPC and LCD public endpoints for interfacing with the chain
• Injective’s oracle module for price feeds from Pyth, Band, Ojo
• Injective TS used by the front end to query the state of the chain
• Injective’s EIP712 data abstraction for Ethereum native wallet connections and transaction signing

The Neptune smart contracts are audited by Oak Security.

Design

To interact with smart contracts, we designed a UI that can handle all the features built-in to the contracts. We knew it needed to be easy to understand and that it had to display important information. The UI went through numerous iterations with each making noticeable strides towards a well-polished platform that is fast, user-friendly, and clearly displays market information and rates. Both internal testing and early access testing has been very helpful in identifying UI bugs that made it difficult for users to understand the platform or find information.

Value to the Injective Ecosystem

Lending and borrowing activities enable new yield, leverage, and liquidity strategies for Injective users. Assets such as INJ, USDT, ATOM, WETH, hINJ, and other tokens will have added uses as holders can now choose to earn interest lending and/or use as collateral to access credit.

The services brought onchain by Neptune help drive stronger volumes, deepen liquidity, and increase the overall utility for INJ tokens. Developers downstream can then use the Neptune API to build products like yield optimizers and borrowing-enabled functions that boosts liquidity and attracts new users.

Lending rates in DeFi are often too low to attract new capital into the space. Neptune’s rates are influenced by a PID controller which leads the market to a target efficiency by dynamically adjusting rates according to its market usage.

User functions

• earn passive yields (Lend)
• leverage or hedge positions (Borrow)
• rank up on the leaderboard (Leaderboard)
• explore market rates and usage (Dashboard)

Developer functions

• create automated saving products
• enable new financial strategies
• build aggregators and smart routers
• enhance existing apps with new features

Check it out at Neptune application to see the features in action.