How much are you charged when opening/closing a position and borrowing assets?
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In this article, I will take Rabbit Finance and Alpaca Finance for reference, calculate and analyze fees charged and slippage occurred when farmers open and close positions with stablecoin (BUSD, USDT as example) leveraged farm, and cost of borrowing assets.
In the case below I will use 200 USDT as principal and borrow 1000 USDT. Thus, the total position value is 1200 USDT, to do 6x leverage farm USDT/BUSD LP on Ellipsis and PancakeSwap.
Trading hash:
Rabbit Finance open position 0xc1f04d5c623bc9ac981f59723eb054e253dfe555eb92885df168711c41de4df8
Rabbit Finance close position
0xa84ffd6a3ac76dee3f6ef958a73d2f6f6441386ac55a416d2b2f97ec2aa3c08c
Alpaca Finance open position 0xf16eed6275bc25aaa4303c4777d2ac0b262859fb8b5252c82df08f6a323e4622
Alpaca Finance close position 0xe1886344c3decff5d9773f5d74e51921b6850b3bdbc73caf062ec9510bfa7f53
Rabbit Finance Open / Close Position Data Record
Open Position Data
Records of asset transaction
Step 1
You can see the 200 USDT invested in, and the 1000 USDT borrowed from the vault of Rabbit Finance. To synthesize LP we need to exchange some of the USDT borrowed into BUSD, we will do that on Ellipsis for a super low exchange fee and slippage (which is one feature of Rabbit Finance).
Step 2
The record here shows us how the exchange on Ellipsis is done, we can see 600.1188 USDT is exchanged to 599.9543 BUSD.
Step 3
The assets (598.7970 BUSD+599.8811 USDT) are synthesized into LP.
Let’s check the hash below.
Ellipsis would return the 1.157 BUSD to the wallet, so it should be minus from farming position value
The currency at the time is 1.1572 BUSD=1.156589 USDT, so the farming position value is 1200USDT-1.156589USDT=1198.843411USD. The position value synthesized into LP is (598.797BUSD+599.8811USDT).
The process of an open position is finished here.
Close Position Data
Next, let’s analyze how close the position works on Rabbit Finance.
RabbitFinance close position hash
Step 1
After LP is removed, we obtain 599.2866 USDT and 599.412 BUSD
Step 2
Exchange 599.412 BUSD to 599.09 USDT on Ellipsis.
Step 3
The position value when close the position is
599.412BUSD（599.0965USDT）+599.2866USDT=1198.3831USDT
Alpaca Rabbit Finance Open / Close Position Data Record
Open Position Data
With the same method, let’s check the cost of open position on Alpaca Finance
Step 1
Position value at the opening is 1199.924 USDT
Step 2
600.7121 USDT exchanged into 598.125 BUSD on PancakeSwap
Step 3
The position value synthesized into LP is 598.125BUSD+599.21265 USDT
Open position finished
Step 1 Remove LP
Step 2 Exchange BUSD to USDT
Step 3 999.9 return to Vault, 196.3 BUSD to the user
Position value after close position is 999.9689USDT+196.3BUSD（196.196USDT）=1196.16USDT
Data Comparison
The trading fee and slippage are significantly different on Ellipsis and PancakeSwap , which results in a completely different experience for users when farming on stablecoin leveraged farms. The trading fee on PancakeSwap is 0.25%, meanwhile, the trading fee on Ellipsis is 0.04% (There will be minimal slippage when large assets are exchanged). Therefore, Rabbit Finance has obvious advantages in the cost of opening and closing positions compared to Alpaca Finance.
Actual data of 6x leverage farm open/ close position is shown as follow,
RabbitFinance
RabbitFinance position value at opening: 1198.84USDT
RabbitFinance position value at closing: 1198.3831USDT
Loss: 0.46USDT
Loss rate: 0.46/1198.84 = 0.038%
AlpacaFinance
AlpacaFinance position value at openning：1199.92 USDT
AlpacaFinance position value at closing: 1196.16 USDT
Loss: 3.76USDT
Loss rate: 3.76/1199.92=0.3%
Conclusion
In the case above, with the same amount of token supplied and borrowed, the position holding time is similar. Compared to Alpaca, Rabbit Finance saved up to 87.3% cost for the users caused by trading fees and slippage.
Cost of Borrowing
When you do leveraged yield farming, there will be borrowing interest, with the same amount of token supplied and borrowed, position holding time is similar, let’s compare the real cost when holding the position in the case above.
Both of the 2 platforms use a triple-slope interest rate model to determine the borrowing interest, then determine the Utilization with the borrowing interest, or vice versa.
The triple-slope interest rate model is as follow,
Rabbit Finance Interest Rate Model
Alpaca Finance Interest Rate Model
Combined the transaction record of the vault, we get the information below,
Rabbit Finance
USDT Vault Contract:0xc18907269640d11e2a91d7204f33c5115ce3419e
Token Borrowed 1000 USDT
Token Returned 1,000.012707626927500359 USDT
Interest while holding the position: 0.01270762 USDT
Alpaca Finance
USDT Vault Contract: 0x158da805682bdc8ee32d52833ad41e74bb951e59
Token Borrowed 999.92479126062835902 USDT
Token Returned 999.968918488703230413 USDT
Interest while holding the position: 0.04412714 USDT
Conclusion
In the case above, with the same amount of token supplied and borrowed, the position holding time is similar. Compared to Alpaca, Rabbit Finance saved up to 71.2 % of the cost for the users from borrowing interest.
