Arbitrum: How to Bridge Your gOHM and Provide Liquidity to Earn Staking Rewards

Welcome to Arbitrum

Arbitrum is a Layer 2 optimistic rollup that aims to increase efficiency and lower the costs of the Ethereum network. It does so by running unmodified Ethereum smart contracts through different validators that need to approve transactions in order to minimize the risk of scams or fake transactions. This alternative to Ethereum’s current proof of work model increases transaction speed and lowers the cost of gas fees drastically.

To use Arbitrum, users of the Ethereum network must first bridge their ETH to Arbitrum where it will become usable on their chain. Security measures are set in place when you try to bridge back to Mainnet ETH from Arbitrum; that is when validators can hold your funds to check on the validity of your transactions. If a transaction is found to be fake or a double spend, they can call it out as a fraud and void the bridging process.

All of this is in the name of efficiency and security. The expediency and cost of transactions deployed on Arbitrum is much better than that of traditional Layer 1 Ethereum transactions.

What Benefit Does This Have For $OHM?

The primary benefit of opening up Arbitrum to gOHM, our governance token, is that it can allow for individuals to acquire and employ staked OHM in a low-gas fee environment. Users can choose to hold gOHM, add liquidity to trading pools, or explore other powerful use cases we are developing with partners. There is currently a gOHM — ETH liquidity pair for Arbitrum on SushiSwap that is populated with liquidity provided by the Proteus initiative, so anyone wanting to acquire gOHM, pool funds, or arbitrage trade on the Arbitrum network should be able to do so. There should be no noticeable slippage when providing funds to this pool. We will explore the topic of liquidity pools and farming in a later part of this article.

As previously mentioned, expansion to Layer 2 solutions will open up opportunities to get your gOHM into trading or pooling situations with barely any gas fees and quick transaction times. This is a really important point because up to now, buyers of OHM were stuck dealing with Mainnet Ethereum’s increasingly steep gas prices. The seeding of L2 solutions into the Olympus ecosystem allows a whole entire new universe of buyers to enjoy the financial tools we have to offer.

Along with our expanded offerings for consumers, there is increasing benefit for our partners. By interlacing with new chains, there is an increasing opportunity to establish liquidity rails for our partners. Through our initiatives with Proteus, Olympus Pro, and our Incubator program, new partners on chains besides Mainnet Ethereum are more likely than ever to see incredible benefits from Olympus.

How to Bridge ETH to Arbitrum

A first step toward meshing with the Arbitrum ecosystem is making sure you have ETH to use for gas fees when doing transactions. You can bridge ETH from Mainnet to Arbitrum from the Arbitrum One Bridge, the proprietary bridge used to transfer ERC tokens to and from Arbitrum. You should also add the Arbitrum chain to your wallet in order to track transactions and see tokens once they are bridged. We have used MetaMask for this example.

It is fairly simple, as shown below, you must connect your wallet to the bridge and then put in the amount of ETH to wrap. It will cost some gas to do this on Mainnet, so please leave yourself enough ETH to let the transaction go through.

Once you have successfully bridged your ETH over to Arbitrum, you should be able to see the ETH in your Meta Mask under the Arbitrum chain. If you want to take advantage of all that our Proteus initiative has to offer and provide liquidity for a pool, you can now begin the process of bridging gOHM to Arbitrum as well.

How to Bridge gOHM to Arbitrum

To facilitate the bridging of our gOHM tokens to Arbitrum, Olympus has partnered with Synapse who has already integrated gOHM into their bridge for multiple different chains. From our homepage you will be able to bridge gOHM tokens from Mainnet for use on Layer 2 chains such as Arbitrum. This will also cost a gas fee, but it is the last one on Mainnet you will have to make; the rest will be in the much more cost effective Arbitrum fees. All you have to do is approve gOHM for bridging and then bridge gOHM over. Just like that, you are using gOHM cross chain and have the ability to trade on Arbitrum or pair with ETH in liquidity pools!

It will take a minute to process, but you can view the transaction in real-time with their handy-dandy bridge watcher:

Let’s Talk Liquidity

Reader, you might be asking, “Why would I want to put my gOHM cross-chain in a liquidity pool in the first place?” To answer that question, let’s explore a few reasons. First off, you will be supplying liquidity to DEXs who will use it to facilitate trades. Every trade made within your pool will give you a small percentage of the transaction as long as you are a liquidity provider and these transaction benefits can really start to add up over time. Secondly, there is the benefit of being able to realize gains if either of your liquidity pairs increases in value. If you believe in the long term success of either ETH or gOHM, you might be able to make incredible gains if the market, or even traders within your pool, assert enough leverage to influence the price of either asset. For more information on this, please check out explanations of liquidity pools provided by the DEX’s. Lastly, there is a chance that chains will airdrop rewards to early investors in certain pools, so there is an incentive to get in early on a new liquidity pair such as gOHM — ETH on Arbitrum.

How Do I Open a Liquidity Position?

Using a DEX such as Uniswap or SushiSwap, Sushi is what we will use for this example, you can provide liquidity in pairs. This is beneficial for the DEX as they can use the liquidity pools to exchange tokens and you receive a portion of the benefits. On Sushi, navigate to the “Liquidity” section of their app which should be easily viewable after connecting your wallet. Make sure that you connect to Sushi with Arbitrum so they will be able to see your bridged token amounts.

You will have to make sure that you have enough of each token in your Arbitrum wallet to equal a balance in value, as this is the only way you can initialize a pair. Once doing this, and approving both gOHM and ETH for pooling on Arbitrum, you will be able to pool them together and start reaping the benefits!

You can check on your liquidity positions at any time by navigating to the “View Liquidity Positions” section when choosing the Liquidity option on the main app menu.

After following all of these steps and verifying your liquidity position, make sure to generate the most yield out of your investment by staking your liquidity position for Sushi/gOHM rewards. This can be done within the “Farm” section in SushiSwap. Once you have navigated there, look for the WETH/gOHM farm and click on it to open up the Farm menu options. Flip to the “staking” portion of the farm and then you will be able to enter an amount of SLP (Sushi Liquidity Provider) tokens, which represent your liquidity position.

All that is left is to Approve SLP for use in the Farm and then deposit your SLP tokens to start earning rewards! The specific reward amount of this farm can be viewed at the top right as well as a breakdown of token vs. fee rewards. The rewards in this specific pool are in the form of Sushi and gOHM, which you will be able to harvest at any time. After doing so, you will also be able to retrieve your initial deposit back into your wallet if you so choose!

Our expansion to Arbitrum through Proteus includes a plethora of benefits that we are excited to share not only with token buyers, but also with our partners. Lower gas costs, faster transactions, and dense liquidity create an awesome incentive to start moving your gOHM over to Arbitrum. Olympus is proud to make these advancements and is working hard with DEX’s and other Arbitrum partners to expand the possibilities that gOHM unlocks. We hope this article brings you one step closer to “crossing the bridge” — enjoy your rewards Ohmie, you deserve it.

About OlympusDAO

Olympus is a decentralized financial reserve protocol that provides sustainable compounding interest through its community-owned and protected treasury.

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