Beginner’s Guide to the Pylon Money

Launched in January 2018, the Terra ecosystem has seen a monumental rise. With more products coming up in the ecosystem, it is feeling more and more complete and independent. And with the recent Columbus-5 mainnet upgrade, there’s nothing to stop the ecosystem’s rise to the top.

Amongst the many products enabling the Terra ecosystem to be as great as it is right now is the Pylon protocol. The protocol is a cluster of payments and savings services that the users can benefit from while they’re a part of the ecosystem.

Being backed by Terraform Labs (the team behind Terra), and having a strong partnership with the Anchor protocol, the Pylon protocol is as promising as it gets. Now, it does not have as many tools under its belt as you might be thinking. But the ones it does have are simply amazing and do the job pretty well. So well, in fact, that you can see an APR of 86.53% in certain parts of the platform.

I don’t know if that intrigues you or not, but you can’t deny that this isn’t something rather unheard of. And that isn’t all. There is much to be said about the amazing Pylon protocol, so let’s start with it without any delay!

What is the Pylon Protocol?

Pylon protocol is an amalgamation of various savings and payments DeFi products that rely on the user deposits for powering the services they offer. Amongst the products making up the Pylon protocol is the Anchor Protocol known for providing a stable yield.

The protocol is an excellent choice for those looking to provide long value for a long time. It helps such providers have sustainable exchanges with consumers of their products by making use of customizable deposit contracts and the yield redirection Anchor enables.

One of the best things the protocol brings to the table is the new paradigm it uses for aligning incentives between creators and consumers, lenders and borrowers, payees and payers, entrepreneurs and investors, artists and patrons, and a lot more. 

The Pylon protocol aims to be the gold standard for programmable payments much like Anchor protocol aims to be the gold standard for passive income on the blockchain.

For governance, we have the MINE token as the native governance token. Holders of this token help steer the project while the responsibility of maintaining the protocol lies on a lot of independent platforms.

How to use the Pylon Protocol?

There aren’t many things to do on the Pylon platform. But you have four options: trading $MINE, staking $MINE, providing liquidity to the MINE-UST pool, and staking your LP tokens.

But before you do any of this, you need to head over to the Pylon Webapp and connect your TerraStation wallet.

Now, I understand that many of you might not have a TerraStation wallet yet. Don’t worry, you can create one right now. We’ve written an entire article about it. Feel free to check that out! We have also covered how you can send some UST tokens to your account in the article. Make sure that you do that before you move further.

Now that you have your TerraStation wallet set up nicely and properly, it is time for us to earn some crypto. Let’s start with trading $MINE!

How to Trade $MINE on the Pylon Webapp?

Once you’re on the Pylon Webapp and have connected your wallet, you’ll see a screen similar to the screenshot you’ve seen earlier. On the top right-hand corner, you would see your wallet and the amount of UST tokens you have in it.

To the left of the screen, you would be able to see the price of the MINE token against the UST token. Right below it, is the total MINE that has been staked on the platform. But that’s not what we’re interested in, regardless of how impressive that number is. 

What we’re interested in is the section you would find in the middle of the screen saying “Pylon Protocol ($MINE)”. In addition to telling you the amount of MINE token you’re holding, it gives you the option to trade MINE tokens and even to stake or unstake MINE tokens. We’ll get to the latter in a bit, but first, click on the button that says “Trade $MINE”. You should be able to see something like the screenshot below on your screen.

Now, since you’re reading this article, I think it’s safe to assume that you don’t have any MINE tokens with you at the moment. But if you’ve followed my instructions from earlier, you would have some UST tokens in your TerraStation wallet right now.

The next step is to enter the number of UST tokens you wish to exchange in return for MINE tokens. It is advisable to not exchange all of your UST tokens at once as they will come in handy in the future. But take your call on this and enter a number next to “UST” under “You Pay”.

Based on the price of $MINE at the time you decide to carry out the trade, the platform would show you how many MINE tokens you would receive against your UST tokens. If you’re satisfied with it, hit the “Buy $MINE” button and you’ve bought yourself some MINE tokens.

Now, let’s say that you received the MINE tokens, invested them to get some yield, and are now ready to trade them to get some UST tokens. How do you do that?

The process of trading MINE tokens to receive UST tokens is quite similar to the process of trading UST tokens to receive MINE tokens. The only difference is that you would now have to end up carrying out the trade on the “Sell” tab. Clicking on “Sell”, you would be able to see something like the following on your screen.

Much like you did while buying MINE tokens, you would need to enter the number of MINE tokens you wish to trade. Based on the exchange rates at the time of the trade, you would be shown how many UST tokens you would receive against your MINE tokens. If you’re good to go with that, hit the “Sell $MINE” button and you’ve got yourself some UST tokens.

Let us now move on to the activities you can do on Pylon to make money.

How to Stake $MINE on the Pylon Webapp?

Staking and unstaking MINE tokens on the Pylon Webapp are both pretty simple tasks. To stake $MINE, you need to head over to the staking section. 

Remember on the home screen where you found the button that took you to the screen where you could trade MINE tokens? Right below that button lies a button that says “Stake or Unstake”. Clicking on that button would take you to the staking page. Look a the screenshot below. Your screen should look similar to this.

Notice how the Annual Percentage Yield (or APY) is 20.45 percent? That is the beauty of the Terra ecosystem. Not many platforms can provide yield this high with the stability that Terra can provide. You can see now why people are increasingly turning to the Terra ecosystem with their money. It just is that good!

Now that you’re on this screen, you need to enter the number of MINE tokens you wish to stake and hit the “Stake $MINE” button. It is as simple as that.

Let’s say that you’ve staked some MINE tokens and now want them back. Not an issue. All you need to do is head over to the other tab on this screen. You’ll be greeted with something on the lines of what you can see in the screenshot below.

Out here, you need to enter the number of MINE tokens you wish to unstake and then hit the “unstake $MINE” button and you’re good to go.

How to add liquidity to the MINE-UST liquidity pool on the Pylon Webapp?

Back on the home screen, right next to the section that says “Pylon Protocol ($MINE)” (which is the section you used for trading and staking), there’s a section that says “MINE-UST LP”. That’s the section we need to visit. So click on the button that says “Provide or Withdraw”.

You should be able to see something like the screenshot above on your screen now. All of the important information can be found on the left side. But we’re concerned about what’s on the right side as this is where you would need to enter the number of tokens you wish to provide the liquidity pool. Once you’ve entered the number of tokens, hit the “Add Liquidity” button and you’ve added liquidity to the MINE-UST liquidity pool.

For getting your MINE and UST tokens back once you’ve provided them for adding liquidity to the MINE-UST liquidity pool, you need to head over to the next tab, “Withdraw”. 

Out here, you need to let the platform know how much liquidity you wish to remove from the pool. Once you’ve entered a number lower than or equal to what you provided, hit the “Remove Liquidity” button and you’re good to go.

How to Stake or Unstake MINE-UST LP tokens on the Pylon Webapp?

Right next to the text that says “Pool”, you’ll find a text that says “Staking”. Click on it and you’ll be able to see the section in which you’ll be able to stake (and unstake) MINE-UST LP tokens.

Once here, you know the drill. For staking, enter the number of MINE-UST LP tokens you need to stake and hit the “Stake MINE-UST LP” button. For unstaking, hit the next tab and do the same.

Before You Go…

The Pylon protocol is amazing the way it is right now. The kind of APY and APR it can provide is not something just about any product DeFi space can try to match. And that is the reason why the protocol and the Terra ecosystem, on the whole, have so many die-hard fans despite being just 3 years old.

While the Pylon protocol has seen an impressive rise in the time it has been active, whether the protocol would be able to keep the growth up or not is something only time can tell. But by the looks of it, the future does look pretty bright for the protocol.