Mars is a credit protocol for the future: non-custodial, open-sourced, transparent, algorithmic, and community-governed.
Mars has three primary components:
1.
The Red Bank: Where users can lend and borrow assets (this is also known as collateralized borrowing).
2.
The Fields of Mars: Where users can interact with applications built on top of the Red Bank such as leveraged yield farming (this is also known as contract-based borrowing).
3.
The Martian Council: Where users with staked MARS (xMARS) can propose and vote on changes to the protocol.
Mars Protocol consists of various participants:
Lenders: Deposit assets into Mars liquidity pools, earning an interest rate
Borrowers (collateralized): Borrow assets from Mars liquidity pools using their deposited assets as collateral. These borrowers must therefore also be depositors (lenders)
Borrowers (contract-based): Smart contracts that borrow assets from Mars liquidity pools without posting collateral. Each smart contract credit line must be approved by governance and will include a credit limit to mitigate the protocol’s risk exposure
Martian Council: Stake MARS in order to earn protocol fees, participate in governance and backstop certain kinds of protocol risk
The motivation behind Mars is simple:
To become the leading DeFi credit protocol; becoming the lender of choice for both consumers and dApps.
Mars puts an emphasis on security and usability and composability -- not just for crypto natives but for the industry’s next 1 billion users.