Flux Parallel Assets Deep Dive- The Secret Sauce of Flux Defi
An integral piece to the Flux ecosystem is the Flux parallel assets. The parallel assets are what make Flux a great platform for engaging in Defi trading. It creates opportunities for making the most of your crypto investments and expands the Flux ecosystem to cover ten blockchains. Here is a breakdown of what parallel assets are, why they’re awesome and how you can earn and claim them.
Flux is always striving to bring new ideas to the blockchain by creating innovative features. One such feature is the Flux parallel assets.
Flux started three years ago as Zelcash but has undergone many changes since the initial launch. One of the most significant changes happened on March 17th of 2021 as Zelcash was hard forked into Flux.
When the fork to Flux was executed ten parallel assets were integrated into the Flux ecosystem making it possible to establish Flux tokens on ten blockchains outside of Flux. The Flux ecosystem is now able to interact with ten other blockchains and access Defi trading and features on multiple large decentralized exchanges. This not only brings versatility and great trading opportunities for Flux but also paves the way for future developments and more innovation.
This article is an in-depth guide to all aspects of Flux parallel assets. You can read the whole thing or just dive into the specific topics that interest you. Even though the article is long, there is still more information to be gained about parallel assets depending on how deep you want to go. If you still have unanswered questions or need more information, then please visit the official Flux Discord server where you will find helpful community members as well as the Flux team. Here are the topics covered in the article:
- What are parallel assets and how do they work?
- How does the Flux economic model work in relation to the parallel assets?
- What opportunities do parallel assets create for Flux holders and the Flux ecosystem?
- A short introduction to Flux Defi.
- How to earn and claim Flux parallel assets?
- A short guide to using Fusion.
What are parallel assets and how do they work?
Flux parallel assets are Flux tokens on other blockchains. There will be ten in total and thus far three of them have been launched:
- Flux-Kadena.
- Flux-Binance Smart Chain.
- Flux-Ethereum.
In October 2021 two more parallel assets will be launched, Flux-Solana and Flux-Tron. In the first quarter of 2022, the next pair of parallel assets will follow.
Native Flux can be swapped to and from any of the parallel assets available. No matter what assets are swapped, native Flux and flux parallel asset swaps always happen at a 1:1 ratio (though some fees are involved). Swapping is done in the official Flux wallet called Zelcore using the Fusion app. Using fusion to swap is very simple and is done with a few clicks.
You can compare the parallel assets to expatriate citizens. They are native to Flux but are living abroad. They have all the benefits of the foreign ‘country’ they reside in, but can always return home, it’s like they’re holding two passports.
An example:
A Flux-ETH token lives on the Ethereum blockchain and is no different from any other token on that chain. It can partake in trading on Uniswap, earn fees by being locked in a liquidity pool, and so on, it also abides by all the rules on that blockchain such as the fee structure or any other inherent mechanics. However, unlike other tokens on Ethereum, this one can be swapped back to native Flux at any time using a 1:1 swap ratio.
The value of the Flux parallel assets follows the market on the Defi marketplaces for their specific blockchains and can fluctuate when compared to the value of native Flux or other Flux parallel assets on different marketplaces. This creates arbitrage trading opportunities for vigilant traders and market makers.
The cross-chain Fusion swaps are possible because Flux has locked swap supplies on all parallel chains as well as on the native chain. When swaps are made the assets are locked in the swap supply on one chain and then released on another. The system ensures that this always happens 1:1 so the total supply of Flux and parallel assets combined can never be more than the maximum circulating supply. So even though Flux can travel the total supply will always be the same, but it can be distributed at any ratio across native Flux and the parallel assets.
How does the Flux economic model work in relation to the parallel assets?
In the economic model introduced at the Flux hard fork, the maximum supply of Flux was increased. This was necessary to support the continued incentivization of miners and node operators as well as enabling the distribution of the new parallel assets.
At the time of the hard fork from ZEL to Flux the circulating ZEL supply of 123 million was converted 1:1 to Flux and the new maximum circulating supply for Flux was set at 440 million Flux. Over time the Flux circulating supply will thus grow from 123 million to 440 million.
The maximum circulating supply for native Flux and parallel assets combined can be no more than 440 million. However, the distribution across native Flux and parallel assets can vary as holders swap the assets back and forth. In theory, you could have 440 million all on one of the parallel assets and no native Flux in circulation or vice versa, although this is unlikely.
The parallel assets in the circulating supply are distributed in two ways; Airdrops and parallel mining.
Airdrops are being used to distribute the parallel assets for the 123 million Flux in circulation at the time of the hard fork. The 10 parallel assets were accounted for at the time of the Flux fork, so every time a new parallel asset is launched approximately 12.3 million of that parallel asset is distributed to current Flux holders. Each Flux holder receives their share of tokens based on how much of the total circulating supply they hold.
Parallel Mining is the distribution of parallel assets for the circulating supply that is being added with new blocks after the hard fork. Around every two minutes, a new block is created on the Flux blockchain. The block reward for every block is 75 Flux, this is split 50/50 between Flux GPU miners and Flux node operators, so 37.5 to each. For every native Flux block reward, a tenth of that is distributed as parallel assets to miners and node operators.
This highly incentivizes miners and node operators essentially doubling their block rewards once all ten parallel assets are in play. While all parallel assets aren’t launched they are still accounted for, so miners and node operators will receive rewards retroactively once launched.
The Flux economic model and distribution plan ensure that everyone involved with Flux receives their fair share of Flux through airdrops, block rewards, and parallel mining.
What opportunities do parallel assets create for Flux holders and the Flux ecosystem?
The native Flux coin itself has many uses within the Flux ecosystem, which you can use for launching and managing applications running on the Flux network, to collateralize and run Flux nodes on the network, for governance in the Flux XDAO, staking (currently exclusive to CoinMetro) and even for an additional decentralized security layer for your Zelcore wallet account known as d2FA.
However, the native Flux coin does have limitations similar to any other blockchain coin out there. It exists only on its own blockchain and can only operate within the set bounds of that blockchain. In that regard, blockchains are like islands. While bridges between blockchains exist in various forms they usually operate in technically complicated ways and also incur high fees.
Parallel assets aim to overcome these limitations and create vast utility for the Flux ecosystem. Parallel assets bring with them the following benefits:
- Enables Flux to conveniently travel between blockchains utilizing the Flux Fusion bridge. All done with a few clicks using the Fusion app in the official Zelcore wallet.
- Enables Flux holders to partake in Defi on major platforms such as Uniswap (on Ethereum), PancakeSwap (on Binance smart chain), and KADDEX (on Kadena).
- Provides many opportunities for arbitrage trading as Flux is now being traded on many Defi Platforms.
- Establishes a more stable market for Flux with much greater liquidity and less slippage when trading, also balances the market against any actors trying to control the market.
- Enables the Flux computational network to integrate parallel assets with decentralized applications and Infinity Contracts.
- The combination of the Flux parallel assets, the Flux computational network, Fusion, and the Zelcore wallet create a powerful platform for trade by combining the best of centralized and decentralized exchanges in one complete package.
All these benefits put the Flux ecosystem in a unique position when matched against other similar projects in the blockchain. The Flux and Zelcore ecosystems are now poised to become the premier alternative to centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. All thanks to parallel assets.
A short introduction to Flux Defi
If you hold Flux parallel assets you can utilize them on their native blockchains using your favorite decentralized exchanges. You just need to add the Flux parallel asset contracts and off you go. Zelcore is able to conveniently connect to the various Defi exchanges through the Wallet Connect Feature.
On Defi exchanges, you can trade between various assets as well as earning additional money by providing liquidity in liquidity pools. If you want to learn more about Defi trading please visit the official Flux Discord where you can find helpful community members as well as community-developed guides to Defi.
The Flux parallel assets operate in Defi similar to any other token on a given blockchain. Liquidity pairs have been established on all three Defi exchanges currently available enabling everyone to trade as well as supplying liquidity and earning a share of trading fees.
Warning: When interacting with Defi be vigilant! There have been several cases of scams trying to bank on the recent success of Flux by creating fake tokens that imitate Flux. Usually, they try to get users to interact with their token contracts by promising false airdrops and the like. Always check that you’re interacting with the correct Flux contract. If in doubt, you can find help by visiting the official Flux Discord.
Here are the contracts needed to add the Flux parallel assets:
- Flux token on Ethereum: 0x720cd16b011b987da3518fbf38c3071d4f0d1495
- Flux token on Binance Smart Chain: 0xaff9084f2374585879e8b434c399e29e80cce635
- Flux token on KADDEX
Flux is launched as the first asset on KADDEX besides Kadena, so a contract address is not needed.
Here are some resources relating to Defi.
For Binance Smart Chain:
- Community made a guide on adding liquidity to a Flux liquidity pool on Binance Smart Chain
- Pancakeswap info on Flux parallel asset token
For Ethereum:
- Community made a guide on adding liquidity to the Flux/ETH liquidity pool
- Uniswap info on Flux parallel asset token
For Kadena:
How to earn and claim Flux parallel assets?
You can earn Flux parallel assets in three ways:
- Airdrops for Flux holders.
- Parallel mining rewards for GPU miners.
- Parallel mining rewards for Flux node operators.
About Airdrops:
The Flux parallel asset airdrops ensure the initial distribution of a parallel asset to Flux holders based on the circulating supply of Flux at the time of the hard fork (at block height 825000). This is the distribution of the genesis supply for a given Flux parallel asset.
When a new parallel asset is introduced a snapshot is taken to capture all the Flux and parallel assets in circulation at that time. The new parallel assets are then distributed evenly to Flux holders based on their individual holdings at the time of the snapshot.
The origin supply of a new Flux parallel asset will always be 12,313,786. As these tokens will be evenly distributed to holders of the current circulating supply at the airdrop time, then the airdrop amount received per Flux will decrease as the circulating supply of Flux increases. This is offset by counting both the native Flux and the parallel assets you hold towards the airdropped amount you receive. There will be ten airdrops in total, one for each of the ten planned parallel assets.
If you hold Flux in the Zelcore wallet, on the Coinmetro exchange, or locked as node collateral at the time of a snapshot, then you will be eligible for the initial Airdrop distribution of a new parallel asset.
- The snapshot for Flux-Kadena happened on march 27th 2021.
- The double snapshot for Flux-Ethereum and Flux-Binance smart chain happened on June 15th, 2021.
If you held Flux in the Zelcore wallet, locked in Flux node collaterals, or on the CoinMetro exchange on those dates, you may be eligible to claim Flux parallel assets.
In a matter of days after the snapshot has been captured, the new assets will be claimable using the Fusion app in the Zelcore wallet. To claim an airdrop you need to supply the address for where your Flux was held at the snapshot as well as the private key for it.
If you hold your Flux on the Coinmetro exchange, they have confirmed that they will support the snapshots. In this case, Coinmetro will handle the distribution to their holders.
Calculating airdrop amounts
The formula to calculate the ratio of Flux held to airdrop received is a bit complicated. Here is a simplified formula that isn’t completely accurate, but provides a good estimate of the rewards received.
Here’s how the formula is built:
(Circulating supply at Flux hard fork including 10 million added for Flux foundation+(Number of parallel assets to be distributed*(Number of parallel assets previously launched))+((Snapshot block number-Flux hard fork block number)*Flux Block Reward)/Number of parallel assets to be distributed = Ratio of Flux held to parallel assets received.
Here it is with the constants added in:
(133,137,759+(12,313,776*(Number of parallel assets previously launched))+((Snapshot block number-825,000)*75)/12,313,776 = Ratio of Flux held to parallel assets received.
And here is an example of the formula in use:
The next airdrop will be FLUX-SOL and FLUX TRX, airdrops number 4 and 5. The announced snapshot date is October 15th, 2021 at Flux block number 969,500.
Since the airdrops happen simultaneously the ‘Number of parallel assets previously launched’ to be used in the formula is ‘3’ as there are 3 parallel assets previously launched.
With this information I can fill out the formula:
(133,137,759+(12,313,776*(3))+((969,500–825,000)*75))/12,313,776 = 14.6922.
So in this case for every 14.7 Flux, you will receive 1 Flux-Sol and 1 Flux-TRX. Or about 6.8% of your Flux holdings for each parallel asset. Note that this is a simplified estimation and can be off by about 0,3%.
If you want to estimate an airdrop, but don’t know the exact snapshot block number, then you can estimate a block number. You do this by taking the current Flux block number and adding 720 to it per day until your estimated snapshot date, as there is an average of 720 new Flux blocks created per day.
Parallel mining for GPU miners and Flux node operators
Parallel Mining is the system that ensures the distribution of Flux parallel assets for the supply created after the Flux hard fork.
For every Flux block reward since the hard fork on March 27th, 2021 there is an additional parallel asset reward added on top of the standard 75 native Flux block rewards. The Flux block reward of 75 Flux is split 50/50 between miners and node operators, so 37.5 for each. The parallel asset block reward is split across the ten planned parallel assets, one-tenth for each. So a Flux block reward distributes 37.5 native Flux and 3.75 for each of the ten parallel assets to miners and the same for node operators.
Flux GPU miners and node operators earn these parallel assets exactly similar to the native Flux block rewards, it is simply 10% added for each parallel asset. Once all ten parallel assets are in play it is effectively doubling the Flux block rewards for miners and node operators.
This has been tracked for all block rewards since the hard fork and is also earned retroactively. So once the tenth parallel asset is introduced miners and node operators will already be eligible to claim block rewards earned going all the way back to March 27th of 2021.
An example:
If you receive a 5.625 reward for your Cumulus node on native Flux, you will also receive 0.5625 Flux-KDA, 0.5625 Flux-ETH, and 0.5625 Flux-BSC on their respective blockchains. It is also registered that you’re eligible for 0.5625 of each of the coming parallel assets once they’re launched. This applies to both GPU mining and node rewards.
There are a few differences between parallel mining for GPU miners and Flux node operators though.
For miners:
- While all blocks mined generate parallel asset rewards, it is up to the individual mining pool whether they will support parallel mining and how they will distribute the rewards.
- Mining pools won’t be able to claim the parallel asset rewards until they are white-listed by the Flux team. This is to prevent mining pools from claiming the rewards for themselves.
- So far five mining pools have implemented parallel mining on Flux.
- In the current implementations, the mining pools have decided to convert the earned parallel assets to native Flux before distributing it to miners, so the parallel assets are paid out in native Flux and a fee (usually 2%) is taken by the pool for the conversion and administration related to the payouts. Usually, these payouts happen weekly or bi-weekly directly to your mining address.
For node operators:
- When a Flux node earns a block reward the native Flux is paid out immediately to the node’s collateral address. The parallel asset reward eligibility for all parallel assets is also registered immediately but needs to be claimed in the Fusion app to initiate a payout.
- A node operator can claim parallel assets using Fusion at any time as long as the balance due is higher than the claiming fees. The current balance and fees are shown in the ‘Coinbase’ claim section of the Fusion app.
- The parallel assets claimed for node block rewards are always paid out in parallel asset tokens and are initially placed on the parallel chain. For example, If you claim Flux-BSC then that balance will be added to your wallet on Binance Smart Chain.
- You can then choose to keep your assets as parallel tokens and trade or provide liquidity on Defi or use the Fusion app to swap the assets into native Flux.
- Claiming and Fusion swap fees vary for each parallel asset, keep this in mind when planning claims. Often it will pay off to accumulate some parallel assets before claiming as you will save on fees.
- Unclaimed parallel assets are not eligible for snapshot amounts though, so plan on claiming your parallel assets before an airdrop snapshot is taken.
A short guide to using Fusion
The Fusion app is found inside the app section of the Zelcore self-custodial wallet, which is the official Flux wallet.
The Fusion app has four different modes, selectable from a dropdown in the top-right corner of the app:
- Fusion Swap — Making swaps between native Flux and parallel assets.
- Coinbase Claim — For claiming parallel asset block rewards for node operators.
- Snapshot Claim — For claiming parallel assets from airdrops.
- Orders — Shows Fusion order history.
Using Fusion swap is very simple. You simply select the assets you want to swap from and to, enter the amounts, review the transaction, and hit the swap button.
You can see Fusion demoed on this video.
Just be aware that you need to have your assets in the Zelcore wallet and also have the assets required for fees in order for the swap to be possible. The fees associated with Fusion swaps will vary based on a number of variables, such as the price of the ‘gas’ asset (be it ETH, BNB, KDA), the price of flux itself, and current network demands.
When swapping Flux to parallel assets the fee is taken from the parallel assets received.
For example, by Swapping 100 Flux to Flux-KDA a fee is taken from the Flux-KDA received.
When swapping a parallel asset to Flux you will need both Flux and the asset used to pay fees on the parallel chain you are interacting with, as you are crossing two chains.
For example, Swapping 100 Flux-KDA to Flux requires KDA in the wallet to pay the fee, there is also a fee in Flux deducted from the amount received.
When swapping from one parallel asset to another you will need the asset used to pay fees on the parallel chain you are swapping from.
For example, Swapping 100 Flux-BSC to Flux-KDA requires BNB (BEP20) in the wallet to pay the fee, there is also a fee in Flux-KDA deducted from the amount received.
When using Fusion for claiming an airdrop or node reward a fee will be charged. The fee is paid by converting Flux to the asset needed to pay the fee on the blockchain native to the parallel asset. These fees vary over time depending on the fee structure on the parallel chain as well as the difference in value between native Flux and the asset needed to pay fees.
An example:
When doing a coinbase claim for Flux-KDA a fee will need to be paid in KDA. This is handled by Fusion on the backend by converting Flux to KDA in order to pay the fee. The fee comes out of the parallel asset amount being claimed or swapped. All fees are clearly displayed on the Fusion interface so the user can preview them.
Wrapping up.
We hope you enjoyed this guide on parallel assets and have learned more about them. As you can see the parallel assets bring great utility and value to the Flux ecosystem, however, this is just one piece of the Flux pie. Flux continues to strive for innovation and will keep on building the solutions needed for Web 3.0.
To see what else is happening in the Flux ecosystem check out the Flux roadmap, many exciting things are on the way.
Feel free to drop by the Flux discord to meet the Flux team and community. And also make sure to visit the official Flux website hosted on the Flux decentralized network.