2022 Highlights: Minterest Year in Review

2022 marked a year of dramatic developments at Minterest. The protocol switched chains, never a small endeavour, making the jump from Moonbeam to Ethereum. Broader market developments forced major shifts in Minterest’s launch and product cycle, delaying its intended unrefined early launch strategy to deliver instead a finalised, highly advanced protocol feature suite.

The year finished with a flurry of activity, including revisions of Minterest’s tokenomics. All together, it’s no surprise the Minterest team has poured more than 50,000 hours into the project since inception, with Minterest now the most extensive, most secure code base ever conceived in DeFi.

So, what went down last year exactly? Here is a selection of key milestones in 2022.

Early 2022: Planning to launch

As 2022 began, Minterest was in the middle of community-focused fundraising events. The Community Allocation Event (CAE) took place in late January, and allowed supporters to secure MINTY token allocations up to 500 USDC at the lowest price in the upcoming Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool (LBP).

That event was quickly followed by the LBP, which in February raised over $5.5 million to support continued bootstrapping of the protocol. Together, the CAE and LBP provided crucial early support for the protocol and established an ever larger base of supporters.

Early-to-mid 2022: Major market shift

In late February, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine played into emerging macro-economic factors, which together saw market sentiment decline significantly. Hindsight showed the broader crypto market cap had peaked in November 2021 and by early April 2022 was beginning to face stiff headwinds.

Minterest planned to launch on Moonbeam, but increasing instability in the sector combined with Ethereum’s continued DeFi dominance, caused the switch to Ethereum in April 2022, a critical strategic decision. It resulted in extensive unforeseen development work, but the decision has been applauded ever since.

In May, the crypto crash, aka the Do Kwon Krash, began with the infamous Terra/Luna implosion. The algorithmic Terra USD stablecoin lost its peg and Luna’s value plummeted from over $100 to mere fractions of a cent.

What no one saw coming was the brewing macroeconomic negativity that turned Luna’s implosion into a match which ignited crypto’s sector-wide collapse.

Minterest did not sit idly by during these events. A constant stream of information came from key players with regular AMAs and community discussions held on Discord and social media to keep supporters informed.

Minterest responded rigorously to the changing market conditions. First and foremost, that meant reappraising not just the launch schedule but the overall protocol product strategy. Doing so protected the interests of all token holders investors while ensuring the protocol’s best chance of success.

A snapshot of fundamental improvements the team worked over the year include:

Revised token emissions structure and tokenomics

A new, highly sophisticated feature suite

Extensive additional auto-liquidation developments

Brand-new, DeFi first UX and UI features

The team also unrolled Lock & Load, a key opportunity to reward early supporters who participated in the CAE and LBP events at the start of the year. Lock & Load was a unique chance for such supporters to double their MINTY token allocation in return for locking up their MINTY for a year and vesting them over the following 12 months. The offer was hugely successful, with over 600,000 tokens or more than 50% of eligible participants taking it up.

2022 into 2023: Building a better DeFi

Where does that leave Minterest today?

Key token markets deployed

Whitelisted access to key features for product testing

Lock & Load concluded in December, with over 50% acceptance for eligible tokens

4th security audit completed

5th security audit on the way

Full functionality rollout and NFT access early 2023

Public launch early in 2023

Despite the carnage of the broader crypto market, Minterest has never panicked. The bear market has separated, and continues to do so, the good from the bad, with the opportunity now open for new projects with strong fundamentals to emerge and stake a claim for dominance as the cycle resets.

DeFi is evolving. Its new reality means hyper-inflationary token emissions are no more. This has allowed sound, sustainable projects to now develop and flourish, which will be the building block of the next generation of DeFi, with Minterest leading the way.

Minterest. Yield gets real.

12, January 2023