MEXC Research: Smart Contract Platform in the Polkadot Ecosystem, Clover Finance（CLV）

4 min readJul 18, 2021

I. Project Introduction

Clover is a smart contract platform based on the Polkadot Ecosystem’s Substrate. It provides an easy-to-use and interoperable blockchain-based infrastructure by being compatible with Ethereum’s EVM-based applications and various development tools, thereby reducing developers’ development threshold and cost.

Clover’s Core Features:

1. EVM compatibility. Based on Substrate’s EVM implementation, existing smart contracts can migrate to Clover with only simple changes. Developers on Ethereum only need to copy the original DApp and use familiar tools for migration.

2. Cross-chain SPV technology (interoperability). Clover uses its built-in SVP Simulation Technology to check Bitcoin or Ethernet transactions locally without needing to store them or check the external history of the entire blockchain, allowing trustless two-ways pegs between Bitcoin and Ethereum.

3. Frictionless trading. Clover allows the relayers to trade on behalf of the sender and can use any other asset as the base asset to pay gas. In other words, in Clover’s system, a trader can pay gas directly using the assets that are being traded.

4. Incentive mechanism. Clover’s unique incentive mechanism creates passive income for contract developers. Clover sets the gas distribution model parameters to send the gas fee directly to the network maintainers and DApp builders. This is conducive to promoting the development of external DApps, ultimately promoting Clover and Polkadot’s DeFi ecosystem.

Clover Finance is essentially a blockchain-based smart contract operating system, including a storage layer, smart contract layer, DeFi protocol layer, and eApp layer. The system architecture is as follows:

Storage layer: The storage protocol layer supports distributed storage of DApp data. Currently, the supported protocols are IPFS, AR, and CRUST.

Smart Contract Layer: Supports one-stop cross-chain deployment and DApp calls. Clover provides a Web3-compatible API, while existing Web3 DApps can migrate to Clover without making any changes.

DeFi protocol layer: Supports various basic DeFi protocols such as swapping, lending, insurance and provides a platform on which developers can build their own DeFi protocols. Clover also provides a drag-drop smart contract compiler that is easy to use, faultless and compiles into WASM.

eApp layer: Supports the evolution from DApp to eApp. Developers can build and deploy their eApps on Clover without requiring machines, domain names, or network bandwidth.

Clover Wallet

1. Clover wallets connect multiple public chains simultaneously without switching between multi-chain networks to view multi-chain assets.

2. DeFi users can connect to blockchains such as Ethereum, Polkadot, Kusama, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Fantom and seamlessly transact with the Clover Wallet Extension Interface.

3. The Clover CLV token is cross-chain compatible because of its unique account binding mechanism, which binds the EVM-based Clover address and Polkadot-based Clover address together. This allows users to interact with both Ethereum DApps and Polkadot DApps using the same account and use both chains simultaneously.

II. Tokenomics

The total supply of CLV is 1 billion tokens, with 120 million tokens in circulation.

15% for public sale, split into three sales

2.5% for private sale, 18-month vesting

10% allocated to early backers, 36-months vesting

10% assigned to the team, 36-months vesting

7.5% for marketing, 36-months vesting

40% for Ecosystem and Parachain offering, 36-months vesting

12% allocated to the Foundation, 36-months vesting

3% for contributor grant, 36-month vesting

III. Financing Situation

Seed Round

Clover Finance completed a $3 million seed round in February with investors such as Polychain, Hypersphere, Bithumb Global, and Divergence Ventures.

Public Sale

From April 21 to 23, Clover Finance completed a $38.85 million USD public sale on CoinList, selling 150 million CLVs, of which:

For the first phase, a total of 75 million tokens were sold at the unit price of $0.2 USD per token. The lock-up period was 12 months. The tokens will be released in six months from April 24, 2021;

For the second phase, 40 million tokens were sold at the unit price of $0.29 USD per token, and the lock-up period was six months. The tokens will be released in six months from October 24, 2021;

For the third phase, a total of 35 million pieces were sold at the unit price of $0.35 USD per token, and the lock-up period was 40 days. All of them have been released.

According to the CoinList, before the public sale, the average price that Clover’s early backers paid for was $0.06 USD per token which raised a total of $6 million USD in funding; CLV’s price in the private sale was $0.2 USD per token, which raised a total of $5 million USD in funding.