Introduction

Burrow is a decentralized, non-custodial, pool-based interest rate market protocol built on NEAR that allows users to supply assets and earn passive interest, and borrow against them to utilize liquidity. Users are also able to deposit a token as collateral and then borrow another one to create a leveraged position. In general, it is similar to other pool-based protocols such as Aave and Compound. The smart contracts of Burrow are written In Rust and run natively on the NEAR blockchain.

The burrow protocol has a native token named BRRR that allows holders to benefit from boosted APY by staking it. Stakeholders will receive xBRRR tokens in exchange that enables extra rewards of more than two to four times the rewards they would have earned without it. They are also able to partake in DAO governance through token-weighted voting.

The analysis of daily transactions over the past 30 days has indicated that while there has been a steady number of transactions, and the platform has had its regular users, the volume of transactions, especially for repays and withdraws had been extremely high in mid-July. After that, the volume drastically dropped to levels way below its high in early July.

Analysis

The analysis of deposits, borrows, repays, and withdraws of Burrow protocol since the start of the year has demonstrated that the platform has seen a negative netflow of around $85M during this period. In other words, the volume of the inflows consisting of deposits and repays had been lower compared to the volume of outflows including borrows and withdraws.

The overall analysis of tokens during the measured period has indicated that two tokens of USDC and USDT have had one-third of the total transaction volume each. While these two tokens, as well as the DAI stablecoin, are among the tokens with the highest number of transactions and users, the native token of NEAR has had the highest number of users on the platform.

Overall, the three stablecoins of USDC, USDT, and DAI, in addition to NEAR have been the dominant tokens utilized by the users of the protocol.

The separate analysis of each action since the beginning of the year has demonstrated that while the number of depositors has been higher compared to the others, the number and volume of borrows have been the highest. This indicates that not all depositors tend to borrow assets from the protocol. Also, the data shows that a small number of users, i.e. borrowers, are responsible for the majority of capital transfers on the platform.

The analysis of inflows and outflows of each token since the start of the year has shown that while the volume of the two has been near each other for AURORA, DAI, LiNEAR, NEAR, USN, and WETH, the inflows of stNEAR and wBTC have been much higher compared to their outflows. On the other hand, the outflows of USDC and USDT have been massively higher compared to their inflows, resulting in a considerable negative netflow for both tokens. The inflows of stNEAR and wBTC, and slightly DAI have brought a positive netflow to the platform and balanced its netflow to some degree.

The separate analysis of deposits, borrows, repays, and withdraws for each token has also demonstrated a trend similar to their overall trend. It is worth mentioning that the analysis of the number of users has shown that while the transferred volume of each action has been substantial for each token, not many users have been using the protocol over the measured period.

The daily analysis of deposits, borrows, repays, and withdraws has shown different outcomes for each action and each token. For the deposits, there has not been any dominant token in terms of the number of transactions and number of users. On the other hand, NEAR has had the highest number of transactions and number of users in borrows and repays, while USN has seen the most number of withdraws during the period. Volume wide, USDC had seen massive volumes for deposits and borrows, especially in mid-July. It also saw a massive volume of withdraws in addition to USDT in the same period. Besides that, NEAR has also been utilized by the users in high volumes for every action, especially in recent days, considering the movements in the whole crypto market.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the deep dive analysis of the Burrow protocol on NEAR has shown massive activity on the platform since the beginning of the year. The protocol has seen an inflow and an outflow of nearly $2B with a negative netflow of below $100M. Stablecoins of USDC and USDT has been the dominant tokens in all four activities of depositing, borrowing, repaying, and withdrawing. In addition to those, DAI as another stablecoin as well as the native token of NEAR has been the next two major tokens utilized by the users of the protocol. While the platform has had a steady activity in terms of the number of transactions and the number of users, the volume flowing in and out of the platform surged in mid-July. Also, it has hugely increased in recent days following the recent crypto market recovery. The analysis of top players of the platform has demonstrated that almost all of them have borrowed much more capital compared to their deposited volume. Also, USDC, USDT, and DAI have been their favorite tokens to deposit to and borrow from the platform. Last but not least, the staking volume of the BRRR token, as the native token of the platform, has indicated that while the number of staking, as well as the number of stakeholders, has decreased during the past 3 months, its volume has seen multiple spikes every once in a while, showing a higher level of activity by a fewer number of players.

Methodology

The required data for this analysis were collected by combining the data on the fact_transactions and fact_actions_events_function_call tables of the core schema of the near database. The contract address related to different operations on the platform and their subsequent method name on the tables were determined by directly interacting with the protocol. Links to sample transactions for a deposit, borrow, repay, and withdraw are provided below. The beginning of the year up to the current date was selected as the time frequency of the overall analysis of the platform. For the daily analysis, the past 30 days were considered as the selected time-frequency due to the lack of adequate computational power to query higher time frames. The information of each sample transaction, as well as other transactions that were registered on the platform, was evaluated using both the tables and the Near Blockchain Explorer. The symbol and USD price of tokens available for depositing and borrowing on the protocol were selected using the fact_prices table. It is worth mentioning that due to the absence of token prices during the measured period, their price was averaged for the whole period. Although it might seem inaccurate, because of the price fluctuations since the beginning of the year, and the existence of precise price data in recent time frames, the analysis was conducted using the overall average to have a near-reality estimate of liquidity for each of the tokens.

> This dashboard has tried to provide a deep dive into the lending market of Burrow protocol.

Data

Each action, namely deposit, borrow, repay, and withdraw, registers a different type of transaction with a different set of method names and arguments. For each action, three indicators of the number of transactions, number of users, and transaction volume were calculated. The first two were measured using the tx_hash and the tx_signer columns. For the calculation of the volume, different approaches had to be made for each action. A major challenge in the calculation of the volume was the proper decimals of each token. In NEAR tables, the transferred amount of each transaction registers in its raw form. Surprisingly, the decimals of some of the tokens differed in different actions, i.e. deposits vs borrows. As a result, the decimals of tokens had to be hardcoded for each action.

For a more overall evaluation, the inflow and outflow, and consequently, the netflow of the protocol were measured by considering the deposits and repays as inflows, and borrows and withdraws as outflows.

> Further detail could be found in the SQL queries.

Sample Transactions

> Deposit: 2yasiTbVECwUP3g8cpiJ2mJHFyg8A5NgDEzDfgxa5UYT > > Deposit: FLCUTNq73Ncn2J5jSe5AKbYbZMxZXL9kUEYecsSvDvWV > > Borrow: 4LUbBJRQJw95toGnMxZY7w3MaBXhyLmbcGiVWXwsngAy > > Repay: 3iUyMdYXYi2mEqD84xFPktYeE3gR7VSehn2LZ7JRgDz8 > > Withdraw: 8EKNiX5TJUyiyjiwk4grxt7KFfuzLnG44cbZ1KDzsWb5 > > Stake: 5DzQ7GnWaxr4hWxWXrrvFUTTgPezttSDWicdWDNaFxf4

Addresses

> Burrow: contract.main.burrow.near > > Author’s NEAR Wallet: d68df097c47510fd4a4aa32c7cc11f908546e8add69153efabc0ac3324cf9516

The analysis of top active depositors and borrowers of the protocol, defined as those who have had more than one transaction and more than $5M transferred volume, has indicated that the wallets with the highest deposited volume are almost wallets with the highest borrowed volume as well. While the list contains multiple addresses with dozen million dollars in deposited and borrowed volume, only a few of those has deposited or borrowed an enormous. The wallet address nbiv.near has deposited nearly $130M and borrowed around 2.5 times higher than that amount since the beginning of the year. The wallet addresses senlinear.near as well as another address without a human-readable account name have also had a huge borrowed volume in the same period. Interestingly, the borrowed volume of the majority of top borrowers has been extremely higher than their deposited volume. Token-wise, USDC and USDC have been the favorite picks for these top players of the platform with more than two-thirds of the total share. After these, DAI and NEAR have had the highest share of deposited and borrowed volume.

The analysis of BRRR token staking over the past 3 months has demonstrated that around 1.3K addresses have staked nearly 14M of this token into the platform to earn more interest. The daily analysis of staking has also shown that the number of transactions and stakeholders had been much higher at the beginning of the period and has had a downward trend since then. The staked volume though has not had an obvious trend and saw periodic spikes in its daily chart. Considering the decreasing number of stakers, it can be concluded that a fewer number of addresses has been responsible for a higher staked volume.