Ethereum is facing 2 structural problems that jeopardize its ambition: 1. ETH Staking is overblown into a yield source for ETH while it is validation activity 2. The top DeFi usecase, stablecoins, is served by pure extracting parasites @polarisfnd tackles both head on

1/ Last month I explained how every USDp CDP on @polarisfnd acts like a virtual USDp/pETH LP, and how that can create a deep onchain ETH/USD route. The same architecture has a much bigger endgame: A universal liquidity hub for onchain forex.

I was out on holiday a few days when this round for @polarisfnd was announced, but I am very excited for Polaris to go live this fall, and after getting to know the team and protocol this year, Polaris is my first angel check in 2026. Why? A protocol that puts ETH at the center of it and should appeal to the most cypherpunk long term ETH investors, as well as savvy non-ETH investors looking for synthetic assets that exist entirely onchain without KYC or relying on custodians. Assets like GOLDp, tracking the gold price using overcollateralized minting positions backed by pETH. Users will be able to earn yield with GOLDp. All built on Ethereum 🫡

Someone recently asked me "Do you understand this @polarisfnd ?" I told him ya. Watch this video He came back and said it's pretty complicated. So i told him. If you want you... Dont need to think about minting stablecoins Dont need to think about the Spliting the yield/principle Dont need to think about borrowing from the bonding curve. Dont need to think about the solana:AwqTYGTfCrfqYJBp8hbYzMZVMYzFcVQEkrX7ahsspump token revShare. You can think of it as a simple alternative $ETH apr and leave it at that. FYI. Ceazor seeded this with tiny bag

What is actually the most interesting about the pETH bonding curve is this curve carries the same properties over all sizes of TVL This means that once the curve has a a couple of hundred million in TVL it actually becomes one of the most liquid and least volatile ETH liquidity venues During market stress it will have far more depth and likely less volatility than LSTs that rely on the backlog of the exit queue and onchain liquidity pools This actually makes pETH extremely stable collateral with an extremely liquid market for large orders to be facilitated both ways with very little price impact Now at billions in TVL this becomes an enormous ship sailing through the ocean during rough seas hardly moving at all

To whom it may concern, Those who participated in the Testnet Bootstrap three weeks ago saw their pETH grow by around 70%. That may look like volatility, but it’s actually the child of economic activity across Polaris. For every 100% increase in TVL, pETH increases roughly 10% against ETH. On the downside, selling 29% of the pETH supply through the bonding curve moves pETH down roughly 5% against ETH. In practice, we had an insane amount of activity from users and bots, and testnet TVL grew exceptionally fast. Testnet money, though the same mechanics will carry over to the real Mainnet Bootstrap. Yours truly.

These are all really good questions and for some reason I never got a notification of your reply above. I will answer below but if you want to dig deeper feel free to dm me and we can discuss there for ease of communication The bonding curve will be using a beta of 0.15. To put this into perspective beta of 0 means pETH trades lock step with ETH with no additional volatility. With a beta of 0.15 each doubling of the ETH denominated TVL results in a 10% price move of ETH/pETH. This means that if the curve has 5,000 ETH, for pETH to increase 10% in price the curve must consume another 5,380 ETH. This is true across all sizes of the curve. So if there is 50,000 ETH in the bonding curve, an additional 53,800 ETH need to move the pETH price 10% higher. Now thinking of a whale manipulating the pETH price hunting minters. Assuming the figures on the current testnet bonding curve a whale would need to sell 28.96% of the ENTIRE pETH supply to move the price down 5%. They are also required to buy this pETH to begin with, which will push the dynamic swap fee up to its 1% upper bound, pushing pETH yield to pAsset minters as they do it (they also make their pETH worth more as they buy). Then as they sell they hit the 1% fee bound on the sell and continue to drive yield to pAsset minters from the selling. Roughly the pETH price is impacted 88% by the ETH/USD price and then 12% by the bonding curve inflow/outflow. Using just ETH as the collateral token has been tried before, by both Maker (DAI) and Liquity (LUSD). It has also been attempted many times to use LST's as collateral and all have failed to reach any meaningful scale due to inherent issues with using ETH and LST's as collateral. They are not scalable and they rely on borrowers to continually increase demand by borrowing. There is no way to tie demand for the stablecoin to its growth without borrowers continuing to borrow. What pETH enables is: - Scalable collateral that grows with adoption of the protocol and becomes safer over time - Allows for the first ever decentralised ETH based PSM that allows for permissionless minting and redemptions for peg stability - First ever peg driven dynamic interest rate for a stablecoin - A low risk passive ETH yield from the floor price represented as fpETH that will be a genuine alternative to ETH staking - The ability to over collateralise low yielding tokens such as gold - The ability to offer negative interest rates due to the ability to incentivise asset minters in pETH on their collateral - Many, many other unlocks For us, the risk of a slight volatility vs ETH is well and truely worth the reward for all users of the protocol...including minters

Sick of seeing all the @polarisfnd testnet airdrop guides so I’ll say it since no one else will: THERE IS NO POLARIS AIRDROP! THERE IS NO POLARIS AIRDROP! THERE IS NO POLARIS AIRDROP! THERE IS NO POLARIS AIRDROP! THERE IS NO POLARIS AIRDROP!

Testnet is important for us to test the code and trial some launch configurations It will not be incentivised nor will there be an airdrop However using it will give you alpha on how to best utilise the real incentives that flow come mainnet

Non-liquidatable ETH loops, brought to you by the yield-bearing fpETH. Coming soon to a Polaris near you. (Don’t worry if you haven’t figured it out yet. Tutorials are coming next week, and you can check out our extended docs)

Polaris will likely be my one and only angel investment in 2026. What they're building is exactly what I want to see more of in Ethereum: a bringing together of existing DeFi primitives that places ETH at the center of it all. My fellow ETH maxis, Polaris is for you.

Truly proud of the entire team here - The painstaking work it took to raise in a bear for a product that has long term vision, and not short term value extraction, will not go unrewarded. @robpolaris & the other Polaris Contributors are excellent - onwards lads!

Raising funds is really hard with these market conditions. And yet @polarisfnd team did it.🙌 Why because they are actually building something needed in this industry. Something that pretty much everyone forgot. 👀 I really hope they can make real DeFi great again 🫡 Congrats guys.

Raising in a bear market was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done Sleepless nights, hundreds of calls and tears went into ensuring the world will get to see Polaris Thank you to all the angels who backed us