Trade

Traders use this section of the platform to exchange or trade cryptocurrencies. Here, you can use strategies for profitable cryptocurrency trading employing fundamental or technical analysis.

In the "Trade" section of the Ref Finance platform, traders have three features to choose from:

Swap
Used for classic cryptocurrency swaps where liquidity is provided from Ref Finance liquidity pools.

XSwap
XSwap allows cross-chain swaps. DEXs on the Aurora blockchain (Trisolaris and 1inch) are included in the swap. The XSwap feature tries to find the best way to swap cryptocurrencies, minimizing the price impact.

Limit Order
With limit orders, traders can buy or sell assets at a set (limit) or better price. By placing a limit order, an input asset is swapped for an output asset when the price of the latter exceeds that of the former. Limit strategies are only enabled on Ref Finance within the v2 pools $USDC.e - $NEAR, $ETH - $USDC.e, and $AURORA - $USDC.e.

The limit strategy is suitable for traders who have determined by analysis at what prices it is acceptable for them to buy or sell their chosen asset. By setting a limit order, they can acquire it at their chosen price. The algorithms execute the purchase for them once this price has been reached.

Pools

The safest strategies for providing liquidity are those where there is as low risk of impermanent loss as possible; i.e., the assets should be correlated in price to each other, but at the same time, they must generate sufficient income from the swap fees on the platform.

Strategies for providing liquidity can be divided into passive and active. Passive liquidity providers are token holders who invest passively to accumulate profits from trading fees, choose the most correlated pairs possible and, generally, do not actively monitor their positions and impermanent losses. Active liquidity providers focus on monitoring the current market situation, actively monitor their positions, and choose more speculative pools but at the same time, they try to avoid high impermanent losses.

The crypto correlations tool shows us how the different assets correlate with each other in price, which will let us know which cryptocurrencies to choose for the liquidity pool (LP)._‍

Farms

On Ref Finance, after you have created an LP, you can put your LP token into farms for additional profits. In this case, your earnings will consist of swap fees on the Ref Finance platform and you will earn additional rewards in farms in $REF and other rewards tokens.

Staking‍

By staking $REF, users can earn fees generated by the protocol. This strategy allows you to earn a share of Ref Finance revenue. By staking $REF tokens, you exchange your $REF for an $xREF. Over time, you will always earn more $REF by holding $xREF tokens. There is no impermanent loss when staking. This strategy can serve as a long-term source of income from the protocol revenue, but you should always carefully monitor the market situation, as the $REF token price can drop rapidly and your rewards will not be able to cover the losses.

DEXs built on the NEAR Protocol that can be considered competitors to Ref Finance are Spin, Jumbo Exchange, Tonic, and Orderly Network. Ref Finance has long maintained leading position in the TVL of DEXs on the NEAR Protocol. Compared to Spin, Tonic, and Orderly Network, Ref Finance underperforms in cryptocurrency trading functionality, as these platforms provide traders with an improved trading interface, similar to that which we are familiar with from CEXs. However, Ref Finance focuses on creating the necessary liquidity on the NEAR Protocols through liquidity pools, and handles this task very well. For users looking to earn interest from their cryptocurrencies through liquidity providing, yield farming, or staking, Ref Finance is still the best choice.

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We have gone through the different strategies that can be applied to Ref Finance. Ref Finance allows you to trade and interest cryptocurrencies by providing liquidity, farming, and staking. We have also mentioned similar protocols, how they are doing in comparison, and what experience we have with them. If you are inspired by any of the strategies you have read about here, always start by familiarizing yourself with them thoroughly, and always start with a small amount of capital. For a complete analysis and detailed functioning of the Ref Finance protocol, please visit Ref Finance - Protocol.