UMA, Yam Finance Launch WSB-Tracked Stocks

Degenerative Finance is launching a stocks index that “tracks the sentiment of the r/WSB community.”

Degenerative Finance, the partnership project of UMA and Yam Finance, is launching synthetic stocks. 

uSTONKS are designed to track the price of the “ten most bullish stocks according to WallStreetBets.” It will initially launch with an April expiry and features synthetic assets like Apple, Tesla, GameStop, Silver, and Nokia. It’s available from today.

Yam Finance posted a tweetstorm detailing how uSTONKS will work. 

Get pumped for $uSTONKS, our new product in collaboration with @UMAprotocol launching tomorrow on #DegenerativeFinance!

Read below for:
– important uSTONKS details
– drool-worthy extra $UMA $YAM bonus rewards for Minting and LPing $uSTONKS
– limited release NFT airdrop

▼ pic.twitter.com/dCnmAWDr4N

— Yam Finance (@YamFinance) March 8, 2021

UMA said that the product “represents UMA’s dedication to DeFi and our mission to achieve Universal Market Access.” 

As it “tracks the sentiment, or excitement, of the r/WSB community,” Yam said, users will have the “freedom and opportunity to express their opinion” from the WallStreetBets point of view. In other words, they could long or short the index. 

UMA and Yam are also offering bonus liquidity mining rewards. There’ll be 5,000 YAM and 5,000 UMA available in week one, and rewards then double to 10,000 tokens of each project in weeks two and three. 

Users will be able to mint and provide liquidity to uSTONKS to earn the rewards. First, they need to deposit USDC as collateral to mint uSTONKS, then provide liquidity with ETH in the Uniswap pool. 

The project is also giving away a set of WallStreetBets-themed NFTs to celebrate the launch. 

The WallStreetBets community, which largely centers around a popular subreddit, has received heightened exposure from the crypto and mainstream worlds this year, owing to the infamous short squeeze involving GameStop’s GME stock. Traders successfully pumped the price of GME over 1,900% in January, liquidating hedge funds like Melvin Capital in the process. Several major entertainment houses are producing movies of the events, including HBO and Netflix. 

Earlier this month, key members outlined their plans to launch an on-chain investment pool. “WallStreetBets 2.0” will allow investors to bet on stocks through a smart contract pool. Announcing the update, the group said:

“It’s time to stop using a broken financial system that is archaic and inefficient. It’s time to decentralize.”

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies. They also had exposure to UNI in a cryptocurrency index.