Puffer just announced the latest Chapter of their mainnet launch campaign, where all roads appear to be leading to the highly anticipated Token Generation Event (TGE). I’ve read through the blog posts, reviewed recent partnerships, and written down some observations. Let’s get into it….

Quick Chapter 3 recap!

Before we dive into the latest updates, I want to quickly recap Chapter 3. It went live on February 26th, with the team introducing a new Curve liquidity pool to bolster pufETH’s liquidity. Users who decided to participate by adding to liquidity received hourly puffer points—crvPufETH holders (pufETH/wstETH) earned the most accruing 60 Puffer points per hour.

The 10,000 points per stETH deposit from Chapter 2 was sunset; instead, deposits received only 1000 per stETH, although, for each 1 pufETH held, a user earned an additional 30 points per hour.

Unsurprisingly the above led to a surge in liquidity on Curve, currently at $212,723,626 with 87.58% as 49,780 PufETH and 12.42% as 6005 wstETH (as of this post)—one of the deepest LRT liquidity pools in the market.

The Vampire Attack

If you’ve not really been paying attention since the end of February, Puffer has been making significant strides to decentralize Ethereum:

This started with a vampire attack on Lido, launched on May 9th. The team initiated their stETH conversion operation, starting to take stETH deposits and redeem them back into ETH.

This has been confirmed as 5% of the total stETH supply, which is not an insignificant number, especially given the current staked ETH distribution chart of the Ethereum network:

Now that the conversion is underway, the team will undoubtedly start trying to incentivize more users to switch to Puffer. What will that look like? Well, aside from the status quo of Puffer’s points, there appear to be potential opportunities for pufETH holders in the works.

One interesting note is the Puffer Hub for Actively Validated Services (AVS) referenced on the protocols roadmap. This will likely include integrations, which align with the recent surge of partnerships that have been announced—there were an additional 3 referenced in Chapter 4 alone.

Onward with Chapter 4

Chapter 4 went live on May 28th and is packed with benefits for pufETH stakers.

Straight away, we want to mention the 5x boost for new deposits, which means you’re getting a juicy 5000 points per ETH—up from 1000 in Chapter 3—whilst still accruing the 30 points per hour/per pufETH held.

This alone will likely spark more deposit interest, but what about the new partners?

Rivalz

Well, firstly, let’s discuss Rivals—building an AI-driven DePIN RollApp for programmatic trust and privacy—partnered with Puffer on the 15th. By taking part in Chapter 4 and depositing one of ETH, stETH, or wstETH, you’ll earn an additional 20,000 Rival points. By default, you’ll accrue 25 Rivalz pts per hour, per pufETH, too. These points will be utilized in their token generation event (TGE) at a later date.

0xOlive

While we’re on the subject of airdrops, let’s continue on with 0xOlive—a new Ethereum Layer 3 protocol, which has a developer-friendly focus and is built around native ETH staking and restaking—who will be allocating 1% of their total supply to the Puffer Community:

• 20% (of the 1%) will be distributed to pufETH holders

• 80% (of the 1%) for new PufETH restakers on Olive.

Now finally, let’s talk Pendle.

I’ve covered Pendle Finance’s fixed yield in a previous thread. When I last checked, the fixed yields for pufETH were offering near 30%+ APY. That yield alone would be worth capitalizing on if you had spare LRT tokens sitting dormant in a wallet.

But as part of Chapter 4, Puffer launched a new PufETH pool on Pendle. This pool has a maturity of 26th September 2024—with a slightly lower fixed yield of 22.38% APY, but you earn an additional 0.75x Puffer Multiplier over the existing pool.

A fantastic and juicy yield to capture whilst stacking points.

The ideal strategy?

Deposit on Puffer, restake on Olive, or utilize Pendle? There are quite a few options and they’re all pretty solid; personally speaking, I’ll be depositing more into Puffer, then locking in that fixed pufETH yield on Pendle. You’ll be earning the Puffer multiplier, and get the 0xOlive and Rivalz airdrops in the process.

That’s all for now, catch you in the next one!

All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice.