Introduction to Francium on Solana

Francium is a decentralized yield strategy aggregator built on the Solana blockchain network. This is a decentralized product built with different features that can help you manage your financial assets better. With the tools created by Francium, users can enjoy a decentralized way to save, trade and invest in other assets.

With the primary purpose of providing a yield aggregator on Solana, their decentralized application now does this effectively. 

Armed with grants received from Serum and Solana, it is safe to say the team is capable of creating more services that can help improve their ability to earn yield from their assets.    

Farming on Francium 

Farming is an activity where users deposit their cryptocurrencies in a pool so that they can earn passively through the transaction fees generated and from other interests that can be earned from this pool.

The total value locked in the protocol, the annual percentage rate and some other data needed are displayed in the dashboard and the farm pools respectively. 

Francium, since it is an aggregator, pools their yield from a combination of platforms on Solana (mostly from Raydium and Orca). By optimizing resources from different platforms with robust liquidity, users can get access to good yields on the platform. One example here is being able to farm with the double-dip strategy specific to the Orca pools.

When you select the pair you want to farm, you can put your leverage if you want to farm with it but if you don’t want to, you can just select the pool and remove the leverage. Before depositing your token pair to a farm, do well to check the Annual Percentage Yield (APY) and their respective Annual Percentage (APR) since these are some of the factors that determine your profit from the farming pool.

I selected the SOL-USDC Farm. You can max out the total token balance in your wallet or just manually input the amount you want to deposit in the farm. Please note that you should put in an equal worth of each of the tokens to be deposited into the pool. 

You can add or remove leverage from the Leverage input box. This will serve as a multiplier that helps increase your capital in the pool. After selecting your choices, click Farm and approve the transaction. 

Before approving the transactions, scroll below to view the summary of the transaction you are about to approve (e.g., The Asset supplied and if you borrowed any asset it would also appear there). 

After clicking on the Withdraw button above, you will get this modal shown below. Francium protocol offers multiple means for you to withdraw. This makes it easier for you to retrieve your fund in different forms. For me, I withdrew both my USDC and SOL in the farm directly as SOL because I would later convert it to SOL. This protocol just made it easier for me. 

Lending

This is the process of depositing an asset in a particular pool to make liquidity easily accessible to those willing to borrow. 

I selected SOL. And as shown below, I can put in the total amount of SOL tokens I can lend out.

Your lending position is also displayed here and you can withdraw.

In this lending aspect, if you select withdraw, this is how it is displayed and you can also use the slider to choose the amount to withdraw.

Farming Strategies

There are different kinds of strategies used in decentralized finance platforms for yield farming. These are predefined routes taken with one’s deposited funds to earn passively. Some of the types available on Francium are:

Auto-Compounding Strategy

In this type, you deposit the two assets whose liquidity pool you want to invest in. An example is the SOL-USDC liquidity pool. How this works is that as you supply that token pair, you will begin to earn from the trading fees received in that liquidity pool (and from any form of earnings that liquidity pool providers get)

• Neutral Hedge Strategy

There is something called the delta neutral strategy. (I’m not going to bore you with economics, don't worry). What this simply means is that your asset would assume a trading position in two opposite directions in the sense that there could be a loss or a gain in either of the two positions but at the end of the trade, the both cancel themselves out so that there would be no loss and risk of liquidations. 

After you have picked the strategy of your choice, you can invest your funds in it. I “dropped” some USDC here.

On the top of the Farming Strategies page is a display of the position you have activated. From there you can choose to withdraw your holdings. 

After some minutes, I decided to withdraw by selecting the withdrawal button. Simple!

This is a very good strategy for you if you do not want to get involved in anything risky.