Moderator: Troy Murray
Scribe: Rayne L.
Attendees: Keegan Selby, Troy Murray, Mark Ward, Akin Sawyerr, Pavlo Bendus, Vitalik Cherniak, Milad Mostavi, EJ Rogers, Dragos Rizescu, Bogdan Gheorghe, Tyler Ward, Max Fiege
Intro [00:00]
Troy: Welcome to BarnBridge project call– 014!
We have a new addition, so I want to turn it over to Max. He can give a quick intro about himself.
New Team Member (Max Fiege) [0:10]
Max: Hey, everyone! 👋
My name is Max Fiege. I'm joining the operations team– going forward. My background is mainly being a research analyst for the crypto space. I'm a proud bagholder from the top of 2017– through the bear market.
I spent the past year doing finance and advisory work. I did some investing on the NFT side and advisory work for the Web3 Foundation.
I'm looking forward to joining the BarnBridge team & this is a great first call!
Troy: Awesome, thank you, Max.
Tech/Dev [01:02]
Troy: So one of the big things that happened this week. Our Smart Yield got turned on fully, and we had the launch of the Smart Yield pool.
I'm going to let Bogdan give a quick rundown about all of that.
Smart Yield Pool [01:20]
Bogdan: What we launched a couple of weeks ago for Smart Yield was more of a soft launch. A test for people to start using the product and see how it works. Now we are in the bootstrapping phase. This situation is not a long-term solution for BOND rewards. However, it will help. It has already brought in a few million dollars in TVL overnight. So, it's working as intended.
This pool is for USDC Junior tranches. The rewards are 10,000 BOND– each week. It works similarly to the DAO and runs continuously. You can stay in for 5 minutes, and there are no Epochs. It runs for 25 weeks. It currently has large APYs, so get it while you can.
We, as in the community, voted in a new proposal through the DAO. The submission changed the maturity date parameters for the Smart Yield Senior Bonds. This meaning that you can now purchase Senior Bonds that last 365 days. Which has already happened, and now we have a Senior Bond with a year-long maturity date. It has about an 8% guaranteed rate. That sounds pretty attractive. An 8% yield gets guaranteed for one year at this point of call. It's working as intended.
App Updates [02:51]
There are some new features added to the app. The notification system is currently for the DAO governance proposals. We are adding more notifications for Yield Farming, Smart Yield, the DAO and the other apps and integrations.
Probably, sometime next week, we will launch the DAO treasury page. Now that Smart Yield is gaining traction, and we have some high TVL locked. The fees are already starting to accrue– we have over 80K already accrued in fees. We will add a treasury page so that everyone will know what is going on. What the protocol fees are and what they are worth.
There will be more stats for the Smart Yield product. The community is frequently asking for this. Including vital things about the lockup and the forfeited liquidity. The Juniors will have constant insights into the state of the pool. They will know how long they must wait to withdraw, how much users will have to forfeit– if they want to withdraw instantly. All of that good stuff. Some minor UX improvements. We will tweak the deposit flow a bit.
Pool 1 is going to end as well– so everyone be prepared to move to Smart Yield.
I feel like I'm missing something– oh yeah, we are also going to...
I'm not going to spoil it. 🤪
It's probably best left for tomorrow.
That's it. I'm not going to say anything. ✌😎
Troy: Awesome, thank you, Bogdan.
Operations [05:02]
Troy: So, recently Akin, has been working in the DeFi alliance program. That wrapped up yesterday.
So, Akin, do you want to give a quick rundown of the program, how that went and how it went yesterday?
DeFi Alliance (Ending) [05:02]
Akin: Yeah, it was the fourth round of the DeFi Alliance cohort. This time we segmented into three different groups. There was an early entrepreneur/project track. They were beginning to figure out what they wanted to do. Then the third track was for projects that were close to launching and getting their projects out there.
It was good for us overall. We established a lot of relationships with liquidity providers, various funding sources and users of products. It was a good networking event for us. Also, it was great to get more insights into the world of crypto from different angles. There were insights into DeFi and the traditional world and how they mix. Aspects of the traditional sides of things highlighted what users would be interested in– when considering this space. We worked on how to get access to legacy onramps and building relationships there.
I think it was productive. We established a lot of valuable & helpful relationships for the project early on.
Yesterday was demo day. So, there were quick pitches from cohort in the third group– more matured groups. I expect we will get some inquiries from a few folks who attended. I already got a few that want to know more about the product. They could potentially be a good partner for distribution. Long-term– it's great. We will always be a part of a network because I believe once you are in, you're in, and I think we'll always be able to tap into this network for things we need as time goes on.
I think it was a good eight weeks. And we've wrapped up at this point.
Troy: Very nice. Yeah, it seemed to turn out pretty well for everything.
I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of everyone recognizing the power of fixed yield in Web3.
So, the next thing is the Bounties. Mark, do you want to give an update on the Bounties?
Bounties [07:39]
Mark: Yes. So, Max took the white paper and slimmed it down to a four-page, digestible version. It's more of a one-pager. It's more than one page, but I want to call it a one-pager. It's a quicker version of the whitepaper. We are going to get those translated. We did this is because Arabic is a little more expensive than we thought. And we want it translated into Arabic. So, we shortened it. I read it and liked it. I figured we get it translated in some other languages with a bit shorter version.
That's getting done, and we are pushing out the Japanese website soon. It's all finished up, minus a few adjustments. We still have a meme competition, and some of the entries are getting really good. I'm enjoying it.
Troy: Very, cool. We still have the meme Bounty going on, right?
Mark: Yeah, so I've made it a permanent bounty. I just leave it up and then payout weekly from my BarnBridge address. I have a bounty address. I've been skipping Gitcoin for the time being. Three transactions require gas to set it up and pay it out. At the end of the day. The gas prices are too crazy to be doing that.
Troy: For sure. That's understandable.
Mark: We can switch back when things are reasonable.
Troy: That stuff is going out with Gitcoin, right?
Mark: Yes, it's on Gitcoin still.
Troy: Can you use xDai to do the Bounties? Because xDai is cheap.
Mark: We can use any Bounty service.
Troy: Ah, yeah, xDai is a sidechain– it's cheap –you can use it from within Gitcoin. However, you have to set it up, and it's a bit of a maneuver.
Mark: Oh, okay. I can look into that.
Troy: Okay, cool! It's just another option.
The next thing is committees. Although, I don't think we are calling it that anymore. I should pass it over to Max because he sort of came up with this framework.
I realize you may not have prepared for this. I don't want to put you on the spot. But, if you want, then take it away.
Committee [10:14]
Max: Sure thing. About a week ago, we put out a forum post. It was about an initial foray into what deeper community governance could look like– at that time, we referred to it as the First BarnBridge Council. But, because of the connotations associated with council across other DeFi projects. We took feedback from the community and reworked the terminology, and came up with– integrations team.
We currently have a Snapshot vote going. As to what the composition of the team will be and the mandate going forward. It concludes this weekend. So far, it appears to be a near-unanimous yes vote. The idea of this integrations team is to pull three members from the community. They act as an entity capable of executing successful governance proposals and standing as a liaison for the community and the core team.
At the end of the day. Tyler can only get so many DMs about new ideas. We hope that we will run with this team set up for a quarter or two. And as we analyze and learn how the team interacts with the community and the core. We'll be able to build out a large multi-team decentralized governance infrastructure. That exists around the DAO and becomes the end game for BarnBridge protocol development.
That Snapshot vote concludes this weekend. The community should expect us to be opening up some of the Google forms and process sheets over the coming weeks. These will outline how to engage with this new entity in the BarnBridge landscape.
Troy: Yeah, very cool. If you have not had a chance to look at the Snapshot, make sure you check it out. It appears it will pass. We abstained from voting and left it entirely up to the community. There seems to be a lot of support regardless.
Tyler, do you want to give an update?
I know there is a ton of stuff going on behind the scenes with Layer 2 and a few other things.
Maybe we should not get into the weeds on that. But, Tyler, if you want to give an update on that, go ahead.
L2 Solutions [13:14]
Tyler: Some of it we can't tell the community– especially surrounding exchanges. A lot of people have been mentioning it in Discord, and we cannot comment on it. Yes, we are talking to them. I've spent a lot of my time over the last thirty days doing that. But, yeah, we can't say anything about it. That's all I can say.
The layer two stuff, Troy, has been working a ton on with Optimism. But, if you look at what Aave recently launched with Polygon (formerly Matic) Milad, and I discussed this– even Pooltogether has recently launched with Polygon(Matic). I reached out to Layton to see if we could get on a call. One thing that I learned recently. A lot of the funds aiming for maximized USDC returns will use PoolTogether for different functions. If they cannot find legitimate yields, then they will ape into a maybe. They have financial models for this.
If we already have Bond.Bet built into PoolTogether, and we have an awesome relationship. If they are on an L2 like Polygon and Aave has integrated it as well. Then I believe there are legitimate opportunities for Smart Yield. We will need to talk to Milad about the functionality. It doesn't work the same way as Compound and Aave directly.
But, thinking about aggregation, I thought Optimism would be where we build first for L2. However, as of now, it seems different. If Compound is integrated it doesn't help us if they are not on Optimism, and we decided to build on it. Because to get on and off Optimism, you will be depositing and switching between layer one. (There will still be a gas fee somewhere)
It's interesting with BarnBridge because there are a lot of complaints about gas fees. And in this unique scenario– with money legos– we can't move over to Layer 2 without the other projects that we integrate, have done so. And in fact, we can't even build anything until we see how the architecture works. We're going to be in a 'limbo' state over the next 30-90 days while we wait for the industry to develop and port over to these layer two solutions.
We are researching the hell out of it. However, it's not our decision where things go in the short term. I would say, stay tuned. We are doing everything we can do to alleviate gas fees for users. But, it's not our battle alone, and it's not a single timeline.
Troy: Yeah. Like I've always said, we are yield maximalists. We go where the yield goes. We have to watch, anticipate and make our moves accordingly. Polygon is killing it right now.
Tyler: Since it's April fools, we can say we are forking BarnBridge and moving it to BSC. We are moving to that project. It's called BineBridge now.
Troy: It's gotta be food. 😂🍣🥒🍠
Tyler: We're kidding. We will move to BSC if they survive. Milad has been looking at it. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with it. I believe it's a stop-gap for proper layer two solutions. If that's where everyone goes, we will move there. We have said this from the beginning– we're yield maximalists, not Ethereum maximalists. I think ETH will be the base settlement layer for the internet. We are even looking at Dfinity for the interface layers. I don't think anyone should view us as Ethereum maximalists. Ultimately, we need to let these things play out and keep our heads down developing Smart Alpha and integrating with Aave.
Troy: Well, that's a good segway. Bogdan pinged me and said that he remembered what he wanted to say earlier.
So, I'll let him mention that.
Aave Integration & cDAI for Smart Yield (Bogdan Forgot) [18:40]
Bogdan: I almost forgot what I forgot.
Troy: You forgot your cool glasses. 🕶
Bogdan: Are these not cool enough? 🤓
These actually help me see.
Troy: Yeah, that's true.
Bogdan: I didn't want to put contacts in today.
Quick, before I forget again, we are working on releasing cDAI for Smart Yield. It should be available– soonish –probably around two or three weeks. The same goes for the Aave integration. It is a big one, and I've seen this one a few times. People on Discord want Aave because it has awesome rates for DAI and USDC. We aim to add this for the middle of April. And that's about it. That's what I forgot to say.
Troy: That's good. That's a pretty big update. I'm glad you remembered.
Now, Pavlo wanted to give an update to the community.
Did he just drop?
Dragos: He did.
Troy: Wow. That was right on queue.
Tyler: He doesn't have the best internet where he is. It cuts out sometimes. Give it a few seconds, and he will come back. Drops happen on internal calls too.
Troy: While we wait, Akin, would you like to give an update on Bancor?
Bancor Update [20:05]
Akin: I think most people are aware. Last Friday, we got whitelisted on Bancor. It was an interesting voting process, and we learned a lot.
Getting whitelisted on Bancor is the first step. The next step is increasing the liquidity. Then putting in a proposal for rewards and incentivize participants with Bancor tokens. It attracts TVL to new pools on Bancor. When that goes well, it prepares the stage for a liquid market for Jtokens. The idea being at some point over the next few months, when things are humming along, you can take Jtokens and establish pools and create more liquid markets. People wanting to enter and exit Jtoken positions can do so via the Bancor pools instead of on the BarnBridge app.
Ideally, there will be active liquid markets on Bancor to exchange your Jtokens, and these pools get incentivized. That's sort of the view going forward. There are a few things we think can be done there. We continue to engage their core team. Keep your eyes open for the next few months for future proposals involving the Bancor network.
Troy: Cool, and now that we have Pavlo back. We can try again. Let's hope your internet holds up.
Website/Discord Community Update– DeFi Pulse Integrations [22:08]
Pavlo: Hello, everyone! I hope you can see and hear me. My internet has been terrible for a while. I already changed the router. I'll probably get a new provider.
Anyways. Since we have launched the Smart Yield, a few weeks have gone by & we have already created some real product TVL. Also, we have started working on a DeFi pulse integration. We have seen a lot of community requests for that over the last month. Bogdan and the developer team have already created the adapter. We are just waiting on their side– they need to list us. There will be an announcement about that soon.
I'm personally excited about this!
Troy: Right on. And with that, I don't think there is anything more to cover.
If anyone wants to say anything, feel free.
We do have a roundtable. However, there were no questions this week.
Tyler: Everyone is too busy aping into the high yield.
Troy: That's right!
Tyler: Maybe we should say this for our other followers who may not be in the Discord, or they get their information from Twitter or the email list.
Two things. As a quick heads up. Everyone should make sure to follow Max's BarnBurner to keep up with what's going on in the forums with governance– If you are not in the Discord every day.
It's well done. Good job, Max.
Also, for the people who are not banging out in the Discord all day, make sure that you port your Pool 1 liquidity into Smart Yield, even if you are halfway through the Epoch. You will make more money this week if you do it today instead of waiting.
Pavlo: Also, one small note, guys. When you enter the Junior Pool, your tokens are not imported automatically into the staking pool. You have to add them manually. When depositing your tokens like USDC– for Junior tokens –you have to stake them in the incentivization pool, manually.
Troy: That's good to know! It's not like the DAO. It is continuous, but it's not like the DAO.
So, I think with that. We don't have anything else to cover for this meeting. Everyone can go back, and we'll call it 25 minutes.
We will see you guys in two weeks!
Everyone: Adios! 👋👋👋👋👋