Leaf Protocol

Next-generation, all-in-one DeFi Protocol

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
- Lending Platforms
- Automated Market Makers
- Governance Tokens

PROBLEMS WITH DEFI

- Poor User Experience & Complexity
- High Gas Fees & Slow Transactions
- Unstable Oracle Prices
- Transaction front-running 1
- Fragmented Liquidity

LEAF PROTOCOL
- Competitive Advantage
- Leaf Portal
- Leaf DEX
- Leaf Lend
- Leaf Labs
- Leaf DAO
- Roadmap
- Partnerships

LEAF TOKEN
- Token Features & Utility
- Token Distribution
INTRODUCTION

A short history of DeFi

Before introducing Leaf Protocol, it is important for us to revisit the origins of DeFi
and the main primitives which have resulted in the exponential growth and usage in the
space. We will also touch on how the market has evolved over recent years and the
problems and challenges facing current DeFi platforms from a scalability and user
adoption perspective.

Lending Platforms
May 2017 - One of the first decentralized lending platforms to go live was EthLend
(now known as AAVE) which allowed peer-to-peer lending of any ERC-20 token. Whilst
their MVP was quite basic and rudimentary, EthLend would continue perfecting their
UX as usage grew over time and would later undergo a rebrand to become Aave.

December 2017 heralded the arrival of the MakerDAO ecosystem via the launch of
DAI - an overcollateralized stablecoin whose value is pegged 1:1 to that of the US
dollar. Initially only ETH was accepted as collateral however over the years additional
tokens, including USDC have been added as collateral options. Users of the system are
rewarded for locking collateral and minting the DAI stablecoin.

This event would fundamentally change the DeFi landscape as DAI would go on to
become the de-facto stablecoin which lending platforms use to denominate loans in as
well as inform lending rates, as evidenced by the explosion of lending platforms and
tools to analyze lending rates across platforms such as LoanScan.

September 2018 saw the launch of the Compound Finance platform as a challenger to
MakerDAO’s dominance in the lending space. Compound would introduce innovations
to the space such as variable fees, decentralized liquidity pools for additional crypto
assets as well as rewards to liquidity providers depending on the amount of capital
they deploy to the system.

Automated Market Makers

Whilst the concept of automated market makers had been around since the launch of a
number of platforms such as Bancor, Kyber and Airswap in late 2017 - they failed to
gain significant traction and usage due to the popularity of centralized exchanges at the time
and the as-yet immature nature of key DeFi building blocks such as advanced
oracles.
November 2018 saw the launch of the UniSwap platform which would revolutionize
the way in which tokens are traded by introducing the concept of liquidity pools and
automated market making for tokens. This innovation alone would be a game-changer
for newer cryptocurrency projects looking to provide early liquidity of their token to
their community as, in the past a project would have to approach an exchange, pay a
high listing fee and also pay for a market maker to ensure there were enough buy and
sell orders on the books. With the advent of AMMs such as UniSwap, projects could
now list whenever they wanted to and not have to pay listing fees or market making
fees as the AMM would facilitate all trades.

UniSwap gained in popularity towards the end of 2020 / early 2021 and would become
the dominant DEX which projects used to trade tokens, resulting in high traffic on the
Ethereum network and as a result high gas fees. We will go into more detail later
around how gas fees are still a prevalent issue in the DeFi space and how the Future
Protocol aims to solve this.
Governance Tokens

June 2020 was a pivotal point in the DeFi market as Bitcoin had recently completed a
halving event and was about to enter a new bull market. At this point in time the DeFi
market growth had somewhat stagnated and was in need of a fresh injection of ideas
and capital. Compound would forever change the DeFi landscape by introducing the
concept of $COMP governance tokens as additional rewards for liquidity providers
and users of the network - this came at a time when many DeFi platforms and
Ethereum dApps didn’t have a token and were primarily monetizing their platforms via
fees. This would also coincide with the birth of the term “yield farming” - providing
liquidity and assets in DeFi protocols in exchange for governance token rewards.

Once Compound released their token, several other platforms followed suit and the
number of new DeFi projects coming out increased exponentially (many were simply
copies of Compound or UniSwap). Invariably this also coincided with an increase in
speculation with traders chasing “Total Value Locked” as well as an increase in scams
via an activity which would become colloquially known as “rugpulling”.
PROBLEMS WITH DEFI
Whilst the above innovations have moved the entire DeFi market leaps and bounds in
terms of adoption, common problems continue to persist to this day due to the limiting
nature of Ethereum as a base layer blockchain.

1. Poor User Experience & Complexity

Onboarding regular users with no experience of blockchain or DeFi continues to be an

issue as most platforms require the use of a MetaMask extension in order to gain
access to features and functionality. Most users in the traditional world have no
concept of wallets, keys or seed phrases which increases the barriers to entry to DeFi.

A DeFi application's objective should be to create a simple application that anyone can
use to borrow and lend without much complexity. Currently, end users need to follow
multiple steps to be onboarded into the system and even once onboarded, education
around operational security is required in order to mitigate the challenges and risks we
will discuss in the following sections.
2. High Gas Fees & Slow Transactions

Onboarding regular users with no experience of blockchain or DeFi continues to be an

issue as most platforms require the use of a MetaMask extension in order to gain
access to features and functionality. Most users in the traditional world have no
concept of wallets, keys or seed phrases which increases the barriers to entry to DeFi.

High gas fees and slow transaction times continue to plague the Ethereum network
and this has only escalated as a result of the booming popularity of decentralized
exchanges. During the peak of network usage in April 2021, some users were reporting
gas fees in the region of $300 for a DEX trade on UniSwap (these fees were even
higher for contract calls such as minting a liquidity provider token or deploying a
contract to mainnet).
3. Unstable Oracle Prices

Much has been said about the now infamous Black Thursday event on the MakerDAO
platform - an error with the Maker oracle whereby a flash crash in the price of ETH
resulted in the liquidation of $8.32 million in collateral being liquidated. This was also
due in-part to network congestion on Ethereum and an increase in gas fees meaning
that updates in the Ethereum price weren’t being fed to the Maker oracle in a
timely-enough manner, triggering liquidation rules in its algorithm.

There have since been advancements made around oracle construction to mitigate
future occurrences of these events via mechanisms such as time-weighted average
prices (TWAP) and volume-weighted average prices (VWAP) however oracle stability
is a continued source of vulnerability for DeFi projects
4. Transaction front-running

Transaction front-running can come in many forms and for the most part is also a result
of slow transaction times. Whilst this initially started as front-running on Initial DEX
Offerings via whales ape-ing early into listings and manipulating prices subsequently, it
has since evolved into other more advanced practices involving bots on DEXes via the
concept of “Miner Extractable Value” (MEV).

MEV is a process whereby transaction miners take advantage of how blocks are
formed by front-running profitable trades and extracting any potential pricing
arbitrage between when a user submitted the transaction for the trade, and when the
transaction is finalized by the network. Depending on when these transactions are
submitted, and during periods of high network congestion, miners are able to make
lucrative sums from transactions which take hours to finalize.
5. Fragmented Liquidity

With the need for improved transaction processing times and lower fees across
Ethereum-based projects, Layer 2 solutions have been under development with the
aim of tackling some of these problems. This has however resulted in liquidity
becoming fragmented across several technologies and as a result introduces more
complexity for projects with regards to composability and asset bridging.
 LEAF PROTOCOL
Leaf aims to improve the DeFi space by combining a number of unique features
which will not only solve some of the aforementioned problems but also differentiate it
from other projects.

Competitive Advantage
The primary value proposition of Leaf Protocol compared to other swap platforms is
that we are creating an easily-accessible, all-in-one platform for DeFi products. Whilst
other platforms are focused on providing highly-specialized features in their
respective niches, our goal is to consolidate those products used on a daily basis by end
users into one interface and make it simpler for those users to access and interact with
those products, namely;

● Swaps
● Lending Platform
● Yield Farming
● Staking
● Launchzone

Compared to other platforms, we will also play a much more active role in projects’
end-to-end development lifecycles by providing them with a full suite of services
ranging from incubation, advisory, pre-seed funding and all the way through to launchzone.
 Leaf Portal

The Leaf Portal is a game-changing user portal and dashboard, focusing on the user
experience front and centre and making the onboarding process for users seamless.
This portal will provide users with a centralized cockpit view of all products, allowing
them to navigate between our DeFi product offerings with minimal difficulty, in
addition to a token distribution portal allowing projects to automate their token
vesting schedules and distributions to token holders.

Leaf DEX

Leaf DEX is our very own swap platform built on

Binance Smart Chain (BSC) with unique features which
distinguish it from other popular swap platforms.

We offer an attractive opportunity for users to generate

passive income thanks to a unique feature on our
decentralized exchange: anybody who uses the platform
can earn fees proportional to their holdings and amounts
swapped.

The platform achieves this via a custom algorithm which automatically distributes a
percentage of fees collected from swap transactions to all Leaf Protocol token
holders on a proportional basis.

Key Features:

● Low Fees & Fast Transactions:

Given we are built on BSC, we address the issues facing current DeFi platforms by
offering low transaction and near-instant transaction settlement, ensuring minimal
disruption for users of the platform. As a result, users can have more confidence in
their ability to make more trades in a way that is not costing them time and money,
meaning increased usage and adoption of our swap platform.

● Advanced Oracle Mechanism:

Our oracle system is also built on BSC and is based on both an inbound and outbound
price feed, this ensures that we offer the best/most accurate swap price. This
combined with near-real-time transactions means we mitigate the risk of catastrophic
liquidation events as a result of flash crashes in collateral prices.
 Leaf Lend

Whilst there have been a significantly large number of

lending platforms launched in the period post DeFi
Summer in 2022, we believe our lending platform is
unique and different in several ways.

Leaf Lend takes existing lending primitives and

expands on them by incorporating additional features to
offer a robust and feature-rich suite of lending products
not currently available on the market.

Key Features:

● Flexible Lending Pools

One feature we will introduce is the concept of flexible lending pools where;

1. Anyone can add liquidity to a pool and lock it for a set period of time
2. Lenders are able to make loans in line with Leaf Protocol lending criteria and
requirements
3. Anyone in the pool can receive interest based on their liquidity margin
By enabling users to lock liquidity for a set period of time, this aligns Leaf Protocol
with more traditional financing methods such as Fixed Term Deposits.

● Security & Insurance

At Leaf Protocol we take our users’ security seriously and have implemented a
number of security measures to ensure the platform is robust and secure. These
measures include;

1. Two-factor authentication whenever a user wants to use the platform

2. Multiple smart contract security audits to ensure any vulnerabilities and
security attack vectors are identified and addressed before code is shipped to
production
3. Insurance fund in the unlikely event that the platform suffers a hack or smart
contract exploit
 Leaf Labs

Leaf Labs is our very own project incubator where we

play an active and strategic role in helping projects come
to life by assisting with decisions around protocol
direction, token mechanism design, project management,
marketing and a range of other activities.

We leverage the entire Leaf ecosystem, from our

community right through to our Funding and Launchpad
platforms to enable projects to achieve their full
potential.

We truly believe in building long-term relationships with the projects that we fund and
partner with and we do so in a way that is aligned with our philosophy, choice of
technology and roadmap.

In order to make the process seamless, we will have a standardized application form
which prospective projects will be required to fill-in prior to submitting their
application. This is so that our project assessment team has sufficient information and
a project so as to make an objective decision around whether the project will be
incubated by Leaf Labs or not.

This form will consist of the following sections and criteria;

● Project Name
● Elevator pitch / tagline
● Website
● Whitepaper
● Pitch Deck
● Business Model
● Target market & total addressable market size ($)
● Team size, team members and background
● Project Stage (Pre-Seed, Seed, A, B etc)
● Timeline & Roadmap
● Competitors
● Technological Innovation & Competitive Advantage
● How will your project contribute to the Leaf Ecosystem?

Leaf helps motivate and mentor the latest crypto projects with our deep expertise in
the industry and ensure that we set projects up for success, hence we require as much
detail as possible from prospective projects when filling in their applications.
 Leaf DAO

Leaf DAO is the utopian end state for Leaf Protocol

where the team will exit the protocol codebase to the
community and handover day-to-day running of the
ecosystem to the DAO.

In the initial phases however, the DAO will serve as a way

of bootstrapping community engagement and
involvement in various aspects of decision making on the
platform, by rewarding $LEAF token holders for
participating actively in governance decisions.

All Leaf DAO activity will be coordinated via the Leaf Portal and we will be
leveraging the latest thinking in “lightweight” DAO participation methods by utilizing
such tools as social sign in via Discord or Twitter, so as to provide for a more robust
trust system yet still allowing users to maintain their privacy by not requiring a full
KYC process.

More details around how governance token rewards work can be found in the Token
Features section of the whitepaper.
 Roadmap

2022 Q1 Project Launch

Idea, Website and Whitepaper released to Community

Q2 Funding Platform

Q3 DEX Release

Q4 Launchpad Zone Go Live

Q5 Lending Platform

Q6 NFT Marketplace

2023 Leaf Blockchain Mainnet

LEAF TOKEN
Token Features & Utility

1. Fees & Rewards

Users can use the $LEAF tokens to pay for discounted transaction fees and receive
rewards by participating in the governance proposals via Future DAO.
Leaf plans to reward liquidity providers in LEAF tokens every week, relative to
the percentage of the pool they have provided liquidity to. Note that the rewards will
appear for 24 hours so users can claim their rewards. However, if users fail to collect
their rewards within 24 hours, their rewards will be redistributed later.

2. Staking

Staking on Leaf Protocol works in line with the Tiered Launchpad structure by
assessing the weight of a token holder’s stake to determine the amount of IDO tokens
they will be able to receive.

Additionally, standard staking rewards for holding $LEAF and securing the overall
Leaf Protocol will apply, whereby token holders will receive rewards for actively
taking part in market making and liquidity provision on the swap platform.
 Token Distribution

Verified Contract address: 0x7D65e40613cB9A8f701eb7f2c2b1328b80abFad3

Name: Leaf Protocol

Symbol: LEAF

Decimals: 18

Total supply: 500 Billion

Circulating Supply: 100 Billion

liquidity: 10%

Foundation Reserve (locked 2 years for 2 vesting period): 40%

Ecosystem growth: 20%

Community development: 10%

Liquidity incentives:10%

Team: 5%

Advisors: 5%
 www.leafprotocol.com

( FOLLOW US )

THANKS FOR VISIT WHITEPAPER