Introducing Pylon Gateway

Published on: 17.06.2021

Pylon Gateway is the premier token launchpad and crowdfunding-via-yield platform for Terra.

Built on the idea of “Deposit to Invest,” Pylon Gateway offers yield-bearing fundraising options that rework the dynamics between investors and project teams, aiming for long-term value alignment with the project’s direction.

For Investors

Pylon Gateway provides a forum for prospective investors to discover hidden gems and become an early patron for new and exclusive projects launching on Terra. The prospects of a “lossless” investment are more enticing than the risk-heavy expenditure of capital for traditional IDO platforms with one-off purchases of project tokens.

Investors can select a deposit pool with varying vesting periods and rewards, make a custom Terra stablecoin deposit ($UST), and earn project tokens, governance rights, and other designated perks. Investors can withdraw their full principal after the pledged vesting period to claim project tokens and other corresponding rewards.

Since the initial principal deposited in UST is fully returned after the vesting period and project funding is allocated through yield rather than upfront capital expenditure, investors can make “no-loss,” value-additive investments that are principal-protected.

For Project Teams

Pylon Gateway intends to lower the barrier of entry for project fundraising and encourage new projects to launch on Terra, empowering both early-stage and existing ventures to raise funds and scale their ideas. Project teams can focus more time building and growing their products rather than marketing and fundraising.

Project teams can customize flexible funding options and crowdfunding-via-yield in return for consistent payouts that actively scale with project growth over a specified period detailed in the deposit contract. Over that term, it is in the best interests of the project team to continue fulfilling their roadmap promises and investor mandates to continue to build on their sustainable yield payouts over time.

Built on both Pylon and Terra, Pylon Gateway will open up project teams to a larger initial audience reach than if each project had deployed their own token campaigns.

Pylon Pools for Deposits

One of the central features of Pylon Gateway are the customized Pylon Pools, where investors can deposit UST (and later, other Terra-based currencies) in exchange for project tokens and exclusive benefits over the long-run.

Each pool will come with different vesting periods. The investor deposits in TerraUSD will be locked for the remaining duration of the vesting period, while project tokens will be distributed linearly. Upon completing an initial project token lockup duration (set by each project team), investors can start to claim and withdraw project tokens. Depending on the timeline for each project, investors may be able to claim project tokens earlier than the investor’s pledged UST deposit withdrawal date.

As an example, if the Pylon Pool for $PROJECT has a token vesting period of 6 months and an initial project token lockup duration of 3 months, an investor’s principal-protected UST deposit would be locked for 6 months in its entirety, while the investor would be able to claim and withdraw $PROJECT tokens starting 3 months from the launch date of that particular Pylon Pool.

Akin to the concept of yield farming, some flexible pools may offer no lockups and allow investors to freely deposit and withdraw stablecoins while claiming project token rewards on a daily basis.

There are no upper limits on the total amount of tokens an investor can commit to each Pylon Pool. All Pylon Pools remain open for investors to enter at any time until the end of the vesting period, although early investors are rewarded for their long-term support. Project token rewards allocated for each pool will be distributed to all investors, weighted according to their contribution to the pool.

Pylon Swap for Fixed Swaps

Pylon Gateway also features Pylon Swap, which is a virtual fixed swap pool with one-way token price guarantees. Investors may swap UST to project tokens right away on Pylon Gateway but must wait for lockup period expiry before withdrawing their project tokens.

Using Pylon Swap, investors can reverse swap project tokens back to UST during the lockup period by paying a withdrawal fee, which increases as reverse swap demand also increases. Project tokens that are reverse swapped back to UST will be burned to reward long-term token holders.

Future Crowdfunding Options

Based on each project team’s preferences for crowdfunding, Pylon Gateway may later accommodate other highly flexible funding options for projects, including dutch auctions, blind auctions, and batch auctions. Beyond token launches, future projects may provide investor rewards in the form of NFTs, participatory rights, and exclusive memberships.

Later versions of Pylon Gateway will introduce for project teams instant loans that pay themselves off via future yields from investor deposits, which will support project teams that may need upfront capital for early bootstrapping. For investors, Pylon Gateway eventually aims to accept deposits in other Terra-native currencies including LUNA and MINE, redirecting staking rewards to project teams.

$MINE Token Launch

MINE is the native governance and value accrual token for Pylon Protocol, a suite of DeFi savings and payments products powered by yield redirection on the Terra blockchain.

MINE is designed to capture a percentage of yields and transactions generated across all Pylon platforms such that MINE holders directly benefit from the success of the protocol and products built on top of it.

MINE tokens will be debuting on Pylon Gateway via three Pylon Pools, where investors can stake UST to receive MINE rewards in vesting pools of 6 months, 12 months, and 18 months. While MINE tokens will be distributed linearly throughout the vesting period, investors can claim MINE rewards starting half the duration into each vesting period (e.g. starting 3 months into the 6 month vesting period, investors can claim accumulated MINE rewards). This clause will allow investors to start claiming MINE rewards earlier than their pledged UST deposit withdrawal date.

Pool 1: MINE vesting over 18 months in total. Investors can withdraw MINE rewards beginning 9 months from the start of the vesting period.

Pool 2: MINE vesting over 12 months in total. Investors can withdraw MINE rewards beginning 6 months from the start of the vesting period.

Pool 3: MINE vesting over 6 months in total. Investors can withdraw MINE rewards beginning 3 months from the start of the vesting period.

There are no upper limits for maximum TerraUSD deposit subscriptions to each Pylon Pool. Investors can deposit into a Pylon Pool at any time before vesting period expiry, although early investors are rewarded as MINE is linearly distributed throughout the vesting period.

Pylon Swap: Limited MINE tokens will also be available for swap from UST to MINE at a fixed rate with a lockup period of 1 month.