Thena Exchange Review

Thena helps both new and established projects on BSC to unlock their full potential by reducing the costs of incentivising liquidity provision. In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into Thena and uncover all of its features, products, and investment opportunities.

What is Thena (THE)

Thena is a leading decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) and the first liquidity layer on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) powered by its native token, THE. The platform allows you to trade various BEP-20 tokens and earn from multiple investment opportunities. According to the anonymous team behind Thena, the project is not just any ordinary DEX. It’s a composable liquidity layer that combines the best features of leading  DeFi protocols into one. Its main value proposition is the ability to offer deep liquidity pools with lower slippage trades, as well as an agile and composable infrastructure that allows you to build on top of their existing framework So, whether you’re a trader, liquidity provider, or long-term token holder, Thena is designed to provide you with real benefits from the value it generates.

Thena DEX Features and products

1. Swap

Thena is basically a DEX that allows you to swap various BEP-20 tokens for one another on the BSC network.

1.1 Thena DEX swap fees

Thena has two distinct pools with different fees structure, which are:

1. Stablecoin pools
2. Volatile assets pools

The exchange charges a 0.01% trading fee in the stablecoin pools and 0.20% in the volatile pools. Thus making it one of the lowest fee DEXs on BSC.

For those that stake their LP token to earn THE emissions, 20% of their fees will go to theNFT stakers and 80% to the veTHE voters.

NOTE: The fee distribution structure will change from 20/80 to 15/85 between the 3rd and 6th months. And then finally to 10/90 from the 6th month onwards.

But if you don’t stake your LP token to earn from THE inflation, you earn 100% of all fees in proportion to your share of the pool.

2. Liquidity

3. Locking: Lock THE to get veTHE

You can lock your THE tokens for 2 weeks, 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years and receive the corresponding veTHE tokens.

veTHE enable you to vote and earn various rewards on Thena. For example, 30% of all THE weekly emissions go to veTHE holders regardless of whether you voted for a gauge or not.

However, to earn from trading fees and bribes, you need to vote for a gauge every epoch (week).

4. Voting

On Thena, farming incentives are determined through gauge weight votes which occur in weekly epochs.

During each epoch, individuals who have converted their THE tokens to veTHE tokens can vote on emission levels.

The emissions allocated to a gauge is proportionate to the share of the total votes it gets at the end of a given epoch.

Furthermore, Thena’s Gauge weight voting mechanism consists of a bribing marketplace where protocols can deposit bribes to acquire more users to vote for their gauges.

And at the end of the epoch (week), the holders who voted in favour of a gauge can claim the associated bribes.

5. Thena Gauges

Guages on Thena are pools where you can stake your LP tokens or vote to earn THE emissions or bribes.

Users can vote gauges every week using their veTHE tokens and these votes determine how much of THE emission the gauge gets for that week.

The more votes a gauge gets, the more THE allocation it receives and vice versa.

Basically, anyone can create a gauge on Thena as long as the token you want to create it for is whitelisted on the platform.

6. theNFT

The Thenian NFTs (theNFT) are a limited collection of only 1,734 gods, each of which grants you access to multiple revenue streams, exclusive delta-neutral strategies, and a dedicated role within the Thena community.

Some of the benefits of holding and staking theNFT include:

Note that your veTHE voting power decreases linearly after each epoch. So, you have to relock or extend your lock term to just before the end of an epoch to ensure you have the most voting power you can.

7. Thena Referral program

Thena offers an on-chain referral program that rewards you with 5% to 12% of your referees’ trading fees.

The referral rate you get depends on your own trading volume on the platform as broken down below.

• Tier 1: $0 to $30,000 =5%
• Tier 2: $30,000 to $150,000 =6.5%
• Tier 3: $150,000 to $1,000,000 =8%
• Tier 4: $1,000,000 to $10,000,000 =10%
• Tier 5: $10,000,000 to ∞ =12%

That’s not all. Your referees also benefit from their own trading volume on Thena as they earn lottery tickets that will entitle them to weekly participation in a lottery.

The higher their trading volume, the more tickets they get and the higher their chance of winning the weekly lottery as shown below.

• Tier 1: $300 to $3,000 = 2 Lottery tickets
• Tier 2: $3,000 to $30,000 = 5 Lottery tickets
• Tier 3: $30,000 to $150,000 = 10 Lottery tickets
• Tier 4: $150,000 to $1,000,000 = 15 Lottery tickets

Judging from the way the referral rewards are structured, the platform rewards its most loyal and active users.

In fact, the entire Thena reward system is structured to benefit mostly active users of the platform which is good for sustainability.

Thena (THE) tokenomics and use cases

THE is the native token that powers the Thena ecosystem. The token had an initial supply of 50,000,000 distributed as follows:

• veTHE Airdrop to Protocol: 9, 500,000 (19%)
• Initial Liquidity: 2,000,000 (4%)
• THE/veTHE Airdrop to Users: 12,500,000 (25%)
• Team: 9,000,000 (18%)
• THE/veTHE Airdrop for theNFT Minters: 4,500,000 (9%)
• Ecosystem Grant: 12,5000,000 (25%)

Initial emission started at 2,600,000 tokens per week and reduces by 1% every week in what is referred to as “emission decay”.

So, what is the maximum supply?

Technically, THE is said to have no maximum supply. But based on the scheduled emission, the maximum supply is projected to not exceed  315 million.

Though mathematically, the token supply may not exceed 315 million,  I take it that its supply is infinite and will consider that fact in my investment decision.

This is because, in reality, the emission will continue to decrease but will never reach zero.

It starts at 2.6 million tokens and reduces by 1% the next week continuously.

Week 1: 2.6 million

Week 2: 2.6 million – 1% = 2.574M

Week 3: 2.574 million  – 1% =?

…until forever.

Weekly Thena (THE) emissions distribution

67.5% of the weekly THE emissions go to farmers (those who stake their LP), 30% go to veTHE holders who have locked their THE tokens, and 2.5% go to the development team.

Thena Token (THE) use case

THE is mostly used for governance of the Thena protocol. Holders of the token vote for pools where they wish to receive trading fees and external bribes, while these pools receive THE emissions with respect to their share of votes.

Frequently asked questions about Thena DEX

1. Is Thena DEX secure?

Thena is open source; is a fork of already audited codes; currently runs bug bounties on Immunefi; and has never had any security incidents.

Also, on March 27, 2023, the project announced the full platform audit by Peckshield, thus further assuring investors and users of its security.

The fact that it’s open source and a fork of already audited codes suggests that Thena has a solid foundation.

Also, the bug bounties on Immunefi are a good way to incentivise ethical hackers to find and report any vulnerabilities. And having had no reported security incidents is also a positive sign.

And to top all that, the platform has been fully audited by Peckshield, one of the leading blockchain audit firms in the space.

So, yes, we can say that Thena is secure until a hack or exploit proves otherwise.

2. What are bribes on Thena?

Bribes are gifts to people who voted for a particular gauge every week. You’re rewarding voters for a particular gauge with a certain token.

Anyone can create a  bribe for any of the gauges using any whitelisted token on Thena and the bribe token will be distributed among voters proportionally for that week.

For example, if you bribe voters of the BNB-CST gauge with CST, you get CST as a reward in addition to THE emissions for the gauge.

These bribe rewards can be claimed after 2 epochs. For example, your epoch 9 rewards will be available to claim in epoch 11.

3. What is the Thena rebase mechanism?

The rebase mechanism is a partial anti-dilution method from Thena where a maximum of 30% of THE weekly emissions are distributed among veTHE holders and automatically added to their locked position when claimed.

Your rebase rewards will go to your veTHE lock as veTHEs which will increase your veTHE position.

To earn from the rebase, you must have your veTHE locked for an entire epoch (1 week).

And similar to bribes, you can claim your rebase rewards 2 epochs after. For example, epoch 10 rebase rewards are claimable in epoch 12.

Conclusion