How to Use the Fortress Protocol. Lending, Borrowing, and Collecting FTS Rewards

7 min readApr 28, 2021

Supplying Assets to the Fortress Protocol

Fortress Protocol is an exciting new credit and lending platform that is like a mixture of Compound and MakerDAO on Binance Smart Chain. With over $25,000,000 in TVL 3 days, usage has been exploding!

Fortress Lending allows users to effortlessly supply assets to the protocol and begin to earn compounded interest for doing so. This also means you can take out a credit line against the collateral you provided.

This guide will show you how to supply assets to Fortress to earn compound interest and FTS tokens, borrow against the assets to earn FTS tokens, and mint the stablecoin FAI to earn even more FTS tokens.

Step 1 — Visit the Fortress dApp

To begin, you must navigate to the Fortress Protocol dApp by going to fortress.loans in your favorite web3 enabled browser. One you get to the Fortress website, click on the “Enter App” button to enter the dApp.

Step 2 — Providing Assets to Fortress

You begin by choosing an asset to supply to the Fortress Protocol. For example lets decide to provide BUSD to the Protocol. We will begin by click on the “BUSD” row to open the BUSD supply and withdraw popup window. The BUSD must first be enabled before it can be supplied to Fortress. Press the “Enable” button and approve the transaction request.

All assets must be enabled before they can be supplied to Fortress

You may begin to supply as soon as the “Enable” transaction is confirmed. Users can supply up to the maximum amount of the asset they have in their wallet by clicking MAX. They may also manually type in any amount less than the MAX.

The popup window will disclose:

Supply APY: The yearly interest paid to the supplier in the deposited asset
Distribution APY: The yearly return from the FTS rewards
Available FAI Limit: The amount of FAI currently available to mint.
Borrow Limit: The current and updated borrow limits after the supplied asset is deposited.
Borrow Limit Used: The percentage currently borrowed against the collateral and the new limits after the asset is deposited.
Supply: This is the button to press to deposit the asset to Fortress.
Wallet Balance: The users current wallet balance of the asset.

You can now click the supply button after you have determined how much you would like to supply to Fortress. A confirmation window will appear to approve the transaction. Once the transaction clears your assets are deposited and you’re earning interest on your deposited asset and FTS tokens!

Step 3 — The Overview Section

The Overview section show you a breakdown of information regarding the asset you are suppling as collateral. From the Overview section you can see your current and historical interest rate, collateral value, the money market liquidity for the asset you supplied, the number of suppliers and borrowers, the reserves and the reserve factor, total supply/borrow, and the exchange rate.

Congratulations, you are now supplying assets to the Fortress Protocol, and earning compound interest in both the asset you supplied as well as Fortress FTS tokens!

How Do I See My Rewards?

In the screenshot above, on the “Vote” page, you can see where it says “Voting Wallet”, and below that, your FTS balance and FTS earned from the platform that you have available to harvest. By clicking on “Collect” you will be presented a wallet prompt, and can then claim your tokens.

Borrowing Assets on the Fortress Protocol and Minting FAI

Fortress Protocol enables its users to effortlessly supply assets to the protocol and begin to earn compounded interest for doing so. This also means you can take out a credit line against the collateral you provided, paying interest and earning FTS tokens.

First off, to borrow assets on the Fortress Protocol, you must first supply assets to the platform.

For this tutorial, 0.1 BNB is supplied to the platform as an example. The .1 BNB was worth $53.36, and was provided $32.01 in available credit.

Step 1 — Navigate to the Borrow Market Page

Starting from the Fortress Protocol Dashboard page, you will see an area on the bottom right hand side that says “Borrow Market”.

On the “Borrow Market” page, you will see all the available money markets that Fortress offers, and their corresponding APY (compound interest). From this page, you are able to choose as asset, and borrow up to your available credit amount.

In the screenshot above, you can see the BUSD money market, and information regarding the interest rates and borrow limit ratio. In the image, it shows that you can borrow BUSD at a 4.76% APY, and you’ll earn Fortress FTS tokens at 59.35% APY. As you can see, the incentive to supply and borrow assets is pretty impressive.

The “borrow limit” area shows you what your borrow limit would be if you borrowed the amount that you input. Generally, the lower the borrow limit percentage is, the safer you are from any potential liquidations in the future.

In this screenshot above, we can see the Bitcoin BTCB money market, and it is currently charging borrowers 3.25% APY, while rewarding borrowers with Fortress FTS at 65.75% APY. In this screenshot, I clicked on “safe max” which will automatically set a safe amount (very low risk of liquidation) to borrow.

Step 2 — Borrowing an Asset

For this step $25 in BUSD is used as an example. Once you have input your desired borrow amount, click on “borrow” and confirm the wallet prompt.

In this screenshot above, you can see that $25 of BUSD has been borrowed, which is 78% of the collateral borrow limit, and because FTS tokens are earning at a greater APY than paid in APY interest for borrowing BUSD, 54.59% APY is technically EARNED to borrow money.

In the screenshot, you may notice the “APY” for all the money markets is in green, and has an up arrow… That indicates you “net” EARN money from borrowing from these money markets.

Step 3 — Minting FAI Stablecoins

There is another option when borrowing assets from the Fortress Protocol, and that’s minting (creating) Fortress FAI stablecoins. FAI is a synthetic stablecoin created by the Fortress Protocol team, that uses an algorithm and is backed by a “basket” of cryptocurrencies to maintain stability.

Because the platform is dynamic, and the interest rates are always moving, the incentives to borrow or supply for each asset change, and FAI is another option borrowers on Fortress Protocol have to grow their assets. Fortress Protocol has also created the FAI Vault, to allow holders of FAI to stake their tokens for rewards.

To mint FAI you will need to go down the bottom right hand section that says “Mint / Repay FAI”.

For this example, the BUSD loan has been paid back, and 25 FAI stablecoins will be minted. FAI must be approved the first time interacting with FAI.

Once the wallet prompt is confirmed and the transaction has completed, the page will look like the screenshot above. In the example above, 25 FAI has been minted and the option to repay the 25 fair is available at any point thee FAI is in the wallet. The best part about FAI? The massive APY offered in the FAI Vault.