We will preface this article with a question:
Would you seize the opportunity to save $5 with every swap you make or let it go to waste?

The goal of LeemonSwap is to be as capital efficient as possible — something we are achieving through the use of two powerful functions. First, as stated in ‘What’s the Squeeze on Trident?’, we are using SushiSwap’s Trident as a framework that opens the door to a plethora of different pool types. Second, and what we want to discuss in more detail in this article, is the use of a Decentralized Exchange (DEX) Aggregator.

What is an aggregator?
An aggregator is essentially a type of routing algorithm that allows users to plug into the entire available liquidity on a given network for whatever trading pair they’re looking to swap. Aggregators take a single swap’s volume and split it out to all available liquidity pools on the network resulting in the lowest possible price impact on the overall trade. Since the fees from each DEX used are percentage based, the overall fee taken isn’t increased much with exception of the aggregator fee (often minuscule) and the network ‘gas’ fee (which on Hedera is minute as well). This slight increase in fees is greatly offset by the efficiency created by the aggregator for any popular, multi-DEX pair.

Another key advantage of using an aggregator is that it allows users to access multiple DEXs with a single trade, rather than having to move assets between different exchanges. This can save time and reduce the risk of price fluctuations, especially in volatile markets.

However, it’s worth noting that there are some limitations to using an aggregator. For example, if the swap pair or desired token is only available on a single DEX, the aggregator may not be able to find a better price and the trade may still execute on this single DEX exclusively. This would result in the swap having a slightly higher price comparatively since it would include the aggregator fee on top of the pools origin DEX swap fee. As DeFi adoption grows on a network, this singularity can be overcome with the use of liquidity aggregators or yield farming pools where LP tokens are taken off their DEX of origin, however, this is another whole discussion entirely.

How can Hedera benefit from an Aggregator?
Being a young network, Hedera has relatively low DeFi adoption compared to overall market capitalization. With low liquidity on available DEXs and poor capital efficiency of the available pool types, traders suffer high price impact and slippage for any medium to high-volume swap. With an aggregator, the liquidity is essentially pooled together on all these different DEXs creating a larger pot to trade from. Even with less efficient pool types, a swap will experience a lower price impact as the overall liquidity is higher. Hedera specifically can benefit from this powerful tool by attracting experienced traders from other networks who can take advantage of the new efficiency created to compound the performance of the underlying hashgraph. Whales need a reason to leave their preferred trading platform and efficiency is typically at the top of that list.

Put simply, DEX aggregators play a crucial role in improving the efficiency and usability of decentralized exchanges. By pooling together liquidity from multiple sources, they allow users to access a larger pool of assets with a single trade, resulting in lower prices and slippage.

Let’s work through an example…
We are going to try to make this as simple as possible so let’s remove fees and strictly look at pricing change due to the use of an aggregator. We are going to make the following assumptions for the sake of this example:

• Three HBAR|USDC constant product pools in three different DEXs following the equation x*y=k (Pools A, B, C)
• Starting HBAR price of $0.05 and USDC price of $1.00 for each trade example
• Pool A has a size of $50,000 comprised of 500,000 HBAR (x1a) and 25,000 USDC (y1a)
• Pool B has a size of $30,000 comprised of 300,000 HBAR (x1b) and 15,000 USDC (y1b)
• Pool C has a size of $20,000 comprised of 200,000 HBAR (x1c) and 10,000 USDC (y1c)
• As a swap is executed it will follow the equation (x1+x2)*(y1+y2)=k where k is constant, x1 and y1 are the original number of tokens, x2 is the amount input, and y2 is the amount of tokens received

Following the equation x*y=k, the constant (k) remains unchanged during a swap. This means that the number of tokens (x and y) is adjusted based on what is input to the pool. For this example we are going to swap 10,000 HBAR ($500) for USDC — based on the pricing assumed above, you would expect to receive 500 USDC for this swap, but as we will show, the funds received are lower due to the nature and size of the pools. Now let’s work through the example as if we are trading using each of the pools alone:

By executing a 10,000 HBAR swap in each of the pools we get an output of 490.2, 483.9, and 476.2 USDC in pools A, B, and C respectively. This means that even in the largest pool worth $50,000 you’re losing $9.80 to slippage. Now let’s complete this same trade using an aggregator where 5,000 HBAR goes through Pool A, 3,000 HBAR through Pool B, and 2,000 HBAR through Pool C:

By using an aggregator to split out the volume of the trade, you end up only losing 5 USDC to slippage. This is obviously a very simple example and things can get complicated quite quickly as different pool types are mixed in, but the premise is the same — aggregators save you money by reducing the price impact of each pool used. If we increase the swap value, the difference in price impact starts to rise exponentially. If a user was to swap 40,000 HBAR ($2,000 at the above-assumed pricing) our aggregator would save them over $71 in the same example. For a whale or day-trader, savings will stack up fast.

If you are like so many others in this space and absorb information more thoroughly through video presentations, there is a fantastic video here made by The Defiant on DEX Aggregators. They make the comparison of DEX Aggregators to plane flight aggregators like Kayak or Expedia, which we find quite fitting.

In summary, DEX aggregators are a powerful tool that can greatly improve the efficiency and usability of decentralized exchanges. By pooling together liquidity from multiple sources, they allow users to access a larger pool of assets with a single trade, resulting in lower prices and slippage. This is especially beneficial for young networks like Hedera, which may have low DeFi adoption and limited liquidity on available DEXs. By using an aggregator, traders can take advantage of the increased efficiency to compound the performance of the underlying hashgraph, attracting experienced traders from other networks.

So let me ask you again:
Would you seize the opportunity to save $5 with every swap you make or let it go to waste?

On July 20th of 2021, SushiSwap revealed a new “next-generation AMM” called Trident at ETHCC in Paris. Joseph Delong, SushiSwap’s CTO, detailed how Trident was developed in-house and would feature new types of liquidity pools that extend the decentralized exchange’s (DEX) capabilities beyond the typical constant product pool used in UniSwap V2 fork. Let’s take a closer look at these features and why LeemonSwap chose to use this advanced AMM for our DEX.

Trident is comprised of three “prongs” that give a DEX more capability and flexibility while still providing the classic functionalities — swap, liquidity, and farming. Sushi details their three prongs eloquently in this article, but we will give you a TLDR version.

The first prong is called “BentoBox” which acts as the framework developers use to build more complicated, capital-efficient applications on top of — this includes Trident itself. The BentoBox is essentially a token vault that a user can choose to deposit their assets into instead of holding them in their wallet. Once in the BentoBox, a user can apply different strategies to their holdings in order to earn yield. The example Sushi highlights is the BentoBox Sushi Strategy:

To better illustrate, take the BentoBox Sushi Strategy for example. If you were to take your $SUSHI tokens from your wallet and deposit them into your BentoBox token vault, without doing anything else and without paying any gas fees other than the transfer fee from your wallet, you will start earning Sushi.com platform fees, accrued from staking $SUSHI in the SushiBar. Even if your assets are sitting in your BentoBox balance idly, you will automatically be earning yields from strategies that are applied to the vault.

Read more here.

The second prong is the diversity of pool types offered, including the classic Constant Product Pool, while expanding with the Hybrid Pool, Concentrated Liquidity Pool, and Weighted Pool. For those who are unfamiliar with the specifics of each pool type, let’s break it down:

Constant Product Pool
This is the classic Automated Market Maker (AMM) with the formula x*y=k. These pools are comprised of two assets with an equal monetary value on either side. To add liquidity, a user would need to include 50% of token A and 50% of token B in USD.

Hybrid Pool
This is a combination of a Constant Product and a Constant Sum Pools allowing users to swap traditionally similar assets with smaller price impacts. This pool most closely resembles a stableswap curve and thus is best used in application with stablecoins.

Concentrated Liquidity Pool
This pool type allows more savvy users to specify the price range at which they want to provide liquidity. By narrowing the price range of the tokens provided to liquidity, the user receives platform fees in a smaller pool of liquidity, thus increasing their share of the fees within the price range chosen. Simply put, when the assets are within your price range you earn a higher yield.

Weighted Pool
This pool type is similar in function to a Constant Product Pool but it allows users to provide liquidity of two assets at different weights, removing the need for a 1:1 value match. The user can choose whatever weight they want, for example, 75% of token A and 25% of token B, as long as the total adds up to 100%. This mechanism shifts the price impact of the tokens by their associated weights in the pool.

The third prong is the routing engine, Tines. Designed to make Sushi’s front-end more easily navigable, Tines is a multi-hop, multi-route swap router that searches multiple pools and paths a token can take during a swap. By querying all pool types and taking into account fees and price impact, Tines will always generate the best pricing for any given swap.

Considering assets perform differently depending on what pool type they are in, Tines will efficiently allow multiple pools to act as one big pool resulting in significantly reduced price impacts.

LeemonSwap is an upcoming decentralized exchange (DEX) built on top of the Hedera Hashgraph network. One of the main focuses of LeemonSwap is capital efficiency, which is the ability of the platform to make the most out of the available capital. The platform aims to provide a highly efficient trading experience through the use of SushiSwap Trident in conjunction with our aggregator, particularly when it comes to stablecoin trading.

One of the reasons for LeemonSwap’s focus on capital efficiency is the current state of the Hedera network. At the moment, Hedera has relatively low liquidity compared to other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs or commonly referred to as Blockchains), and only a small fraction of HBAR’s market capitalization is flowing through existing DEXs on the market. This means that there is a lot of untapped potential for trading on the Hedera network, but it also means that there is a lot of volatility and instability in the market.

Recent events in the crypto market, such as the “black swan” events that caused sudden and drastic changes in the prices of cryptocurrencies, have made the need for efficient stablecoin swaps even more important. Traditional decentralized exchanges are often inefficient when it comes to stablecoin trading, as they can be slow and expensive, and they can also suffer from large slippages due to the nature of the constant product AMM.

LeemonSwap aims to solve these problems by providing a highly efficient and stable trading experience for stablecoins. It does this by utilizing Trident’s hybrid constant product/constant sum pool in order to maintain the stability of the trading pairs and combining it with a swap aggregator to split the volume of any one trade across the liquidity on all available DEXs. In addition, the platform has been built on top of the fast and efficient Hedera network, which enables faster trade execution and low transaction fees.

SushiSwap Trident is available through a GPL3 License detailed here:

“At Sushi, we firmly believe in standardization across DeFi will propel protocols across the board to mass adoption and, in line with that ethos, until and beyond that standard is set, we will continue to have an open source ecosystem. Our new set of Next Generation AMM: Trident contracts are GPL3, and we view it as a matter of principle to release all software developed by the Sushi team to be under GPL3, or other permissive OSS licenses.”

LeemonSwap is $JUICEd to announce the newest edition to our budding picnic table — Matrix! The Matrix team has a long history of success in both the web2 and web3 arenas, with their multi-chain yield optimizer being the most recent installment to their impressive portfolio. At it’s core, Matrix is a farm aggregator that helps users to maximize their returns through an auto-compounding yield farm system, allowing users to take advantage of the compounding interest.

With a simple to use platform, the Matrix team has proven to have the customer experience at the top of their priority list. What you may not know is the team has plenty more up their sleeve, and experience building a multitude of products that will accelerate LeemonSwap’s development and progression. Some of these products include an extensive user dashboard and ‘Zapper’ functionality to easily add liquidity.

With this addition, the LeemonSwap family has become more robust and includes even more experienced security experts to further our mission of becoming the most advanced decentralized exchange Hedera has seen to date. Make sure to give the new team members a warm welcome by following them on Twitter or heading into their Telegram to learn more about their past endeavors!

“Matrix is honored to be part of the vibrant team at LeemonSwap, eager to get started growing and developing the LeemonSwap ecosystem!”
- Arm4x, Matrix Founder

LeemonSwap is $JUICE’d up to announce our official partnership with the fresh DieFi platform Fortknoxster! To show you how serious we are about security, we are completing a smart contract audit with Certik and giving every community member who purchases a tier 1 pre-sale LeemonSwap NFT a free Platinum Fortknoxster account for one full year! That’s a savings of nearly $360, giving you more cash to buy $JUICE when we launch.

What is Fortknoxster’s DieFi?

DieFi is an automated crypto recovery platform. In case of memory loss, computer crash, or worse, DieFi enables users, or their loved ones, to recover crypto credentials, NFTs, ledgers, files, and more.

If you have ever wondered what would happen to your digital assets if you die or lose access, you are not alone. Heck, even my parents, who are novices in crypto, made sure to tell me where they hid their private keys. But how can you guarantee that the right people get the right information pertaining to your cryptocurrency after you die? That’s where DieFi comes in — an automated beneficiary platform for all digital asset owners. DieFi allows you to set up a beneficiary testament, which will automatically be activated when you fail to sign in to your Fortknoxster account for a period of your choosing (default is 12 months). They call this automated trigger a ‘Dead Man’s Switch.’

DieFi allows users to register beneficiaries for every single one of their digital assets that is included in their account. All document and wallet registrations are encrypted and only accessible to the intended recipients. Once your beneficiaries get access to your account, they are able to read all the information you have prepared. You can even upload videos to explain how to utilize the data you are releasing to them!

The main DieFi features included with your free 1-year platinum membership:

Store Wallet Information

• Store all your crypto credentials in one safe place. Custodial, non-custodial wallets, and trading account details. E2E encrypted.

Crypto Beneficiaries

• Make sure you — or your family, friends, lawyer, or anyone you wish to, can access your digital assets when you are not able to anymore.

Dead Man’s Switch

• Only you control when your beneficiaries are contacted. The default timer is 12 months after your last log-in. You can edit all details as you wish.

ID Verification

• Your beneficiaries will undergo strict real-time ID & face recognition scans, including 100’s of automated background security checks. They use AI & machine learning to eliminate fraud.

NFTs

• Manage, organize and display your NFT portfolios across multiple blockchains.

“We are happy to partner with LeemonSwap and sharing the innovative passion in the space. We foresee the Hedera network as one of the main future ecosystems and a dedicated advanced DEX on the Hedera network is a great partner for us. Enabling LeemonSwap’s users to protect their funds with DieFi is a pleasure and we are looking forward move forward.”

- Fortknoxster Team

For more details on DieFi and Fortknoxster, check out their whitepaper!

What are token lock-ups and how can they sweeten a project?

Often times in the crypto ecosystem, projects will enact a token lock-up, which refers to the restriction in sale of a platform token by early investors for a predetermined time period. Essentially, initial token holders are unable to sell the asset in large amounts until the lock-up period completes. This mechanism protects early participants by giving the protocol enough time to scale and mature decentralization.

In the case of a Decentralized Exchange (DEX), projects typically issue a platform token or NFT voucher to venture capitalists, early public investors, and team members or developers giving them the sufficient capital to provide liquidity to a variety of pool types or fund protocol development initiatives.

If large enough, pre-launch token sales could effectively crash the token price at the initiation of the exchange liquidity pools. With a lock-up period in place, the token supply can be more easily managed and participants in the initial DEX offering will have greater protection against volatility and sell pressure.

In the case of LeemonSwap, investors can rest assured that all presale participants, including team members, are in for the long haul. We are issuing all tokens tied to presale NFT vouchers and team allocations in the form of $vxJUICE — our time-locked derivative token with a linear divesting schedule that unlocks at 1/730 of the total holding daily. This mechanism, we hypothesize, will result in the DEX launch having lower volatility and allow LeemonSwap the time needed to grow in both total value locked and volume in order to seamlessly absorb any future sell pressure from $JUICE token emissions.

There are many examples of tokens not enacting a lock-up period for early investors, across every DLT, that have resulted in high volatility at platform launch and broken tokenomics. Projects typically compensate for the volatility by gifting liquidity providers with high token emission rewards, resulting in an unsustainable APR expectation that slowly leads to loss in liquidity provider incentive and their ultimate demise. Liquidity providers are then forced to hop-scotch their liquidity from DEX to DEX seeking the highest APRs to offset the lack-luster price appreciation of each respective platform token.

Although presale NFT participants of LeemonSwap effectively lock their liquidity up for a long period of time, there is a net positive effect for $JUICE and the platform in general. LeemonSwap is further protecting liquidity providers by enacting a modest sell tax on the $JUICE token and routing 100% of it back to $vxJUICE holders. This additional mechanism protects the longest of HODLers and fuels the JUICE Black Hole that will extend the liquidity provider emission rewards pool indefinitely.

For more information on the JUICE Black Hole and LeemonSwap’s various tokenomic novelties, check out our Litepaper, follow us on Twitter, or hop into our Discord to ask questions!

Who knew our sweet little Leemon Lemons were actually packing HEAT! We are making an oath to the Gangsters Paradise family and solidifying our relationship with an official partnership! After sipping on our last metaverse announcement, we knew the picnic was just getting started within Hedera — we decided to get out our tommy guns and really make a scene! LeemonSwap will be the exclusive in-game swap for Gangsters Paradise (GP), allowing users to more easily swap between their tokens of choice at the best prices!

GP will host a number of games and experiences within the Metaverse — gather a group of friends anywhere in the world to browse NFT artwork collections cultivated and displayed by other players in one of the many in-metaverse Art Galleries. Players will be able to view, buy, and sell NFTs directly from these galleries. They will also host NFT market places from partner projects making it a central hub for Hedera NFT collectors seeking to explore new collections and discover new artists in a virtual environment. GP partner marketplaces will be able to display their entire catalog of NFTs for players to explore, buy, and sell. GP seeks to become the #1 Metaverse for Hedera NFT collectors and marketplaces to thrive. Gamblers will also rejoice at the plethora of games available in the GP Casino!

Gangsters Paradise has been tearing up the ecosystem, collaborating with the likes of Dead Pixels Ghost Club, Hangry Barboons, HGraph Punks, and Creamies! They have already created some dope galleries for these projects and even for LeemonSwap — check out these beauties!

In addition to being the exclusive in-game swap, LeemonSwap will also be the only host of the incentivized GPX|HBAR liquidity pool. In exchange, GP will open up their games and markets to allow payment with the LeemonSwap $JUICE token, giving our users even more utility for all their gains!

To learn more about how to get involved with Gangsters Paradise, join their Discord and follow them on Twitter. Stay tuned for more info on their November 10th NFT mint coming up fast!

Sip on that while you toggle and chill.

The LeemonSwap NFT presale is about to get extra $JUICE-y.

In the past week the LS dev team has been working nonstop to ensure everything goes smoothly on Round 2. With a little extra time on their hands, the creative team ended up designing something that will probably set the next rounds and the community on fire. Something that every serious $JUICE drinker will identify as the most efficient way to get the precious drink out of any container. Yes, Straws.

The LeemonSwap Straws collection will create a new dynamic allowing community members to get their Leemonaire hands on delicious amounts of extra $JUICE. The collection won’t be available for direct purchase, and the only way to get Straws is by buying NFTs in Presale Rounds. Every NFT buyer from each round will get a Straw airdropped to their wallet after the round is finished for each NFT they purchase.

Each Presale Round will have a unique straw type that will have its supply limited to the amount of NFTs sold on that round, so keep an eye on the scarcity. Users will be able to have one Straw of each type adding a bonus amount of $vxJUICE and $JUICE from the Presale NFTs they hold in the same wallet when they claim their tokens at launch. Two straws from the same type won’t stack their bonuses, but there will be additional bonuses for having the whole Straws collection and also a smaller bonus for holding at least 2/3 of the collection.

Each Straw will have it’s own individual bonus and the range of the bonuses will work in the following way:

• Straws given to Tier 1 NFT buyers: 0.86%-1% extra $JUICE and $vxJUICE
• Straws given to Tier 2 NFT buyers: 0.71%-0.85% extra $JUICE and $vxJUICE
• Straws given to Tier 3 NFT buyers: 0.56%-0.70% extra $JUICE and $vxJUICE

The completion bonuses will be:

• Full collection bonus: +25% $JUICE and $vxJUICE
• Minimum 2/3 of Straws Collection: +10% $JUICE and $vxJUICE

If a user holds multiple Straws of the same type in the same wallet only the one with the highest bonus will be considered.

For participants of Round 1 that are getting a Broken Glass NFT, Straws from that round will be airdropped with a bonus between 0.56% and 1%.

The number of Presale Rounds and the amount of NFTs sold at each Round are variable, so strategies must be adjusted accordingly. What is guaranteed is that at least 10 Presale Rounds will take place. The more rounds that are held, the bigger the chance for users to multiply the amount of $JUICE they get at launch.

For example, if there were 10 rounds and a user bought one Tier 2 NFT every round, they would have 10 Straws with a 0.71–0.85% bonus each plus the +25% bonus for having the whole Straws collection. Using an average of 0.78% bonus, the straws would give the user a 7.80% and the full collection would add 25% more $JUICE and $vxJUICE. So the 10 Tier 2 NFTs would get the user 379,429.52 $vxJUICE and 15,179.04 $JUICE instead of 285,715 $vxJUICE and 11,430 $JUICE, lowering their token cost basis from 0.037 to 0.025.

The LeemonSwap NFT Presale Round 2 begins October 31st between 3PM and 5PM UTC. Get your lawn chairs and cup holders ready for a $JUICE-y Halloween!

• Anyone who purchased a Tier 3, Tier 2, or Tier 1 for the price of the Tier 3 NFT will receive 2x the number of tokens a Tier 3 NFT will receive. We are calling the new reduced cost basis NFT a “Glitch NFT” and it will be made available, with its own unique artwork, to everyone that purchased any of the 3 tiers.
• Should anyone that purchased an NFT not be satisfied with this new offering they can submit a help ticket and will be refunded 100% of the HBAR used to complete the transaction.

This is but a minor setback in the long run as many projects we all know and love have had issues with their mint process. We will continue to work diligently to deliver the premiere DEX on Hedera and we deeply appreciate the amount of positive support we have received during this hiccup.

What Everyone that participated in round 1 will receive in place of the NFT purchased today is “The Broken Glass Glitch NFT” which is 2x more tokens vs the Tier 3 NFT at the same price:

• 12500 vxJUICE
• 376 JUICE
• 1 Random LeemonSwap NFT in the future LeemonSwap Collection with an APR boost

Cost basis in per JUICE token received is $0.0194.

We’ll walk you through the steps of getting your hands on your very own NFT, so you can sip on some nice, chilled JUICE. Please note, all NFTs will be purchased with $HBAR.

Before you begin, we recommend that you clear your browser’s cache and have the latest version of HashPack installed. Let’s Begin!

1. Open your browser and delete your cache so you don’t run into issues while connecting your wallet or purchasing your NFT.
2. Visit www.leemonswap.com
3. Select the “Connect Wallet” in the right hand corner, choose the pairing option for your wallet and log in to your HashPack Wallet.
4. Approve the connection and select the wallet you would like to use for the transaction.
5. Navigate back to the website and select the “NFT Presale” link
6. Select the NFT you would like to purchase and follow the instructions in the pop-up window to complete your purchase.

Congratulations, you’ve just purchased your very own LeemonSwap NFT!

If you’d like to purchase more, you will be able to buy another but please note you will only be able to purchase 1 NFT per transaction. There may be chances in the future where we’ll restock our Leemonade Stand, so follow our twitter and join our discord for the freshest news!

You may view your collection of LeemonSwap NFTs in your HashPack wallet by selecting the NFT tab.

At launch, users will be able to burn their NFTs in order to receive their portion of vxJUICE tokens, JUICE tokens and more!

LeemonSwap is ready to give the squeeze on our first exciting, lip puckering partnership with Earthlings! The gaming metaverse and LeemonSwap are teaming up to bring maximum value to the Hedera gaming ecosystem and bring play-to-earn gaming to new heights! While LeemonSwap is changing the DEX game on Hedera, Earthlings is bringing a whole new definition of gaming to your home (or office).

In Earthlings, one can complete quests to earn the in-game STEAM tokens, track down NFT collectibles, explore the gigantic 2800km2 map for lost cities and civilizations, own real estate property in the main cities, or buy a town, village or plot of land. Become a mayor, shop owner, tech specialist, banker or even an airship captain, and earn STEAM tokens. We won’t forget strategic gameplay either! Combining classic gaming with the metaverse to give you the best of both worlds.

LeemonSwap will be the official in-game swap or “Bank” for all Earthlings users. Swapping in or out of STEAM will never be easier with the help of LeemonSwap, giving users the best possible pricing with our exclusive DEX aggregation technology. To add to the fun, LeemonSwap will be giving Earthlings a $vxJUICE airdrop at launch! (Details to be announced)

Don’t miss out on Earthlings NFTs available in their market right now. Follow Earthlings on Twitter and join their Discord for more information and upcoming news. So hold onto your hats, pack some freshly squeezed $JUICE and get ready to play-to-earn like never before!

“Earthlings is very excited to partner with Leemonswap. We can’t wait to share the design of the Leemonade stands, bringing DeFi to Earthlingsland!”

Patrick, Earthlings Founder