Moderator: Troy Murray
Scribe: Rayne L.
Attendees: Troy Murray, Mark Ward, Akin Sawyerr, Pavlo Bendus, Vitalik Cherniak, Milad Mostavi, EJ Rogers, Dragos Rizescu, Bogdan Gheorghe, Tyler Ward
Intro [00:00]
Troy: Welcome to Project call 012! We will jump into the Tech/Dev update. Who wants to take it, Dragos or Bogdan?
Dragos: I'll take it then pass it off to Bogdan.
Tech/Dev [00:09]
Bogdan: I'm taking Dragos hot potato. Apologies for the double glasses– swag. 😎😎
I'm sick, and it's a struggle to put on contacts.
All right now, starting with the Agenda.
Yield Farming [00:40]
Bogdan: No major updates here. Other than when the smart yield launches, we might debut the Junior Tranche incentive pools.
Junior Tranche Incentive Pools [00:55]
Bogdan: Junior token holders can deposit their tokens into a pool and receive BOND rewards. These operate continuously. Similar to the DAO rewards but without the one-week epochs and the multipliers of the current farming pools.
The reason we are incentivizing the Junior token holders– they buy the risk from the markets. They carry more risk than the Senior token holders. Liquidity providers will have fungible tokens and proof of liquidity. Therefore they can stake them and receive Junior side BOND rewards as a sweetener for taking more risk.
BBDAO [02:00]
Bogdan: When we launch Smart Yield, the hybrid pool (Yield farming / DAO rewards) for the Juniors that I just talked about is not available initially because the DAO still needs to vote it through. We will set up a forum discussion for that. After that, a snapshot before it hits the DAO vote.
Troy: It will be retroactive too, right? That was what we all agreed on, right?
Milad: It could work like that, yeah.
Bogdan: Yeah, but it will take 12 days for it to go through the DAO. At least 12 because that is the minimum period for a proposal to pass. After that, maybe we have a snapshot to gauge the community's interest. Regarding the length and the rewards. This debate will be on Discord, the forums and elsewhere.
Smart Yield [03:20]
Bogdan: Smart Yield! The primary product we are awaiting.
Bogdan: We have both audits the Hacken and the OpenZeppelin came in this week. We are working on the changes suggested, so everything is spotless. It's pretty much a clean bill of health in terms of product functionality. Nothing is exploitable, and no attack vectors or anything concerning user funds. It was mainly bookkeeping issues.
However small, this is also partially why we delayed the launch from the first week to the second. We finally settled on the 15th of March, and this is a good thing because we have never had this type of luxurious timeline. We can think of all the things to add and get as much right as possible.
Development [04:30]
Bogdan: The front end for the Smart Yield app is 99% done. It's currently in testing, and there are some UI polishes– down to the finite details. We've test deployed contracts already. We want to keep adding stuff, so that meant some minor backend changes. That's part of the added benefit of a longer timeline.
Tyler: I want to interrupt for one second...
Bogdan: 1 Tyler second.
Tyler: Not to deserve a special shoutout. But I don't think many people in the community or the industry realize that no product has been audited this rigorously or passed an audit, and at the end of the day when major institutions start moving into DeFi. The game of shipping unaudited smart contracts will not work out in the long run– in my opinion.
I have certainly pushed the team to ship faster and faster– as a result of the industry. So, I think that you guys get proper kudos for pushing back on me and sticking to yall's guns and shipping this properly and making sure that users' funds are safe.
Troy: So are you saying they don't listen to you? 🤔
Tyler: Nah, I'm just saying in all the craziness in this industry, the dev team deserves a special shoutout. I think it's pretty incredible that the audits came back with flying colours. Because nothing like this product has ever seen an audit– so it's never passed. I think waiting a week is prudent.
Bogdan: Yes, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. By the way, nice hat, Tyler! 🧢🌉
Tyler: My wife got it!
Bogdan: Nice, nice, nice. We should all get those...not wives, hats. 🥁
Everyone: 😂😂😂😂
Bogdan: Let us move past this...😁
Docs [06:55]
Bogdan: In terms of docs and specs, Pavlo and Vitalik have done an awesome job working on those. We will have an article and more technical specs. There will be some documents that explain both the story of Smart Yield and some more technical aspects explained– there will also be demo videos.
Hopefully, by the time this video is up, the documents and specs are up as well.
Smart Alpha [07:28]
Bogdan: Not a lot of updates. We are hoping by the next community call– so in the next couple of weeks– we should have a full smart contract implementation. That's where we are at with Smart Alpha.
Troy: Okay, great, let's move on to operations.
Operations [07:52]
Troy: Do you have any updates from the DeFi alliance and what is going on there?
Tyler: Or Open DeFi.
Troy: Yeah, or Open DeFi, anything?
Akin: I have some bits on both.
DeFi Alliance [07:52]
Akin: The Alliance is still progressing, continuing to engage liquidity providers. These conversations are great from an institutional side– the kinds of folks providing feedback from our senior pools. We had a partner demo day yesterday, where lots of DeFi service providers and some partners and what I would term distribution channels for us were pitching their ideas.
A growing number of interfaces have designs to bring institutions to DeFi. People have built more secure wallets and infrastructure or specific tools that onboard regulated entities and then settle transactions on DeFi protocols. Having conversations with those types of people is cool. Understanding their growth can potentially lead to more avenues for us and potential partnership discussions as we launch products. That's a newer channel that is opening up.
Open DeFi [9:28]
Akin: We had a call early on today. That's progressing well. There are a lot of conversations around security in the DeFi space from an audit standpoint. There is a new committee they are putting together. I think QuantStamp, mStable and a third group are trying to build standards from a technical viewpoint or frameworks for a ranking mechanism– and a bunch of other things. It will be cool to see how that develops, and I think we should be involved. And anyone else who is interested in the technical side who wants to volunteer. At least to observe and provide input, I think that would be good and helpful.
It seems like projects more and more– to Tyler's point, are talking and valuing security first. More projects are auditing their code and thinking about standards in this space. Because like us, they see the value. Particularly as more institutions enter the ecosystem, that matters.
Also, regarding standards and disclosures, I did a short pitch to Open DeFi today. We are trying to pull together a handful of teams that want to work on this idea further. The point is to create a framework on the disclosure side that helps projects and teams begin building their standards and disclosures. It's a level up for us from our standards because we have our own. It's more of what do we think is relevant as an industry? What do we make visible– as much as possible– for investors? Ideally, building a framework that helps teams craft their standards easier. That's the core project that I will be working on with the Open DeFi Alliance. Pulling together a project team and try and build out something like this.
That's pretty much it. That's everything else up until this point. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be talking to as many liquidity providers as possible and pitching Barn Bridge and getting them excited about the launch. And hopefully, after launch, that continues to grow as people see the working products and understand the value we are creating.
So that's it!
Troy: Cool! Mark, can you give a little update on the Bounties. I know there is probably not much of an update right now.
Bounties [12:09]
Mark: Just a quick update. I put a permanent bounty on our Github– just FYI. Because gas fees got a little crazy, and until it chills out and gets >100 gwei on average, it will stay that way.
I posted a permanent Meme Competition bounty, and I'll pay you out directly to your wallet– Metamask or Coinbase or whatever you use. It doesn't make much sense to pay someone $50 when it costs $70 to send it with Gitcoin. So there will be a permanent bounty up for it.
We also added a few more translation bounties up on Gitcoin! So please check out Gitcoin if you're interested! There are three.
Check them out if you're interested.
Website/Discord Community Update [13:24]
Troy: That's a good segway into Ser Pavlo because we have an update on the Discord and specifically the SquadDAO.
So, Pavlo, can you give a quick rundown on that?
SquadDAO [13:40]
Incase you missed it: SquadDAO medium article
Pavlo: SquadDAO was originally an idea by Troy and Mark. We have been thinking about that, along with bounties and grant programs that are running through BarnBridge. On the one side, we have DeFi projects that run Bounties and grants then we have community members that complete the tasks. We then realized there were no tools available for team organization, and there was no way to manage capital efficiently.
So that's why we worked with the Bot Grandmaster Danijel. SquadDAO uses Discord as a reputation system, it's permissionless, and it's easy to integrate. Members of a Discord server can easily create squads, organize themselves into teams, add new members, set wallet addresses and then create a Gnosis Safe through the Discord. However, it does not allow direct management of the Safe with Discord.
Because Gnosis has already developed a great tool with a complimentary UI– the SquadDAO Discord bot allows you to organize, communicate and create the safe from within a server.
The communication will happen on the Discord side through the Squad channels. It will be available for anyone to view, and the fund management happens via the Gnosis Safe app.
The project is completely open sourced so anyone can take this and use it. It already has a website.
There is a big black button already available for you to easily add to your server. Go ahead and use it. We also have some ideas already for improvements and updates, so, look forward to that!
Troy: Cool! I think we all look forward to the space using SquadDAO– and the BarnBridge community.
So, check it out! It's running.
We don't have any Round Table discussions today. There were no comments because I was late with the Agenda. So, I think we are going to sign off.
Mark: Can I add one thing about the SquadDAO?
Troy: Yes! Go for it.
Mark: One thing that is really cool about the SquadDAO is we made it with intentions to run bounties and teams to control funds. But realistically, you don't have to use it for a bounty program. Say you and a group want to start a project, but you don't have the time. You could easily collaborate as devs and team members, seed the capital and give the project to a community team. When the team needs money, they can ask, and the funds are released.
This bot is a very versatile tool, and it's not strictly for bounties. That's why we open it up to the community to use. While we made it with one intention, the bot has plenty of other possibilities, and it's a very versatile product to be used for many other things.
When it comes to controlling funds, you can do anything with this– but you need to use crypto to do it. But you can use this as a safe to transfer & manage money for building anything. Say you want to create a road racer for a downhill race, and you needed to fundraise with your community. The SquadDAO lets you do that. It's endless, and we may have built it for bounties, but please use it however you want.
And please let us know how you use it– we would love to hear how you have used it!
Troy: Yes, definitely reach out!
Tyler: Also, Gitcoin reached out recently when we finished everything. They said they'll look into the code and see how to build integrated bridges. So, I'd say stay tuned on that. But yeah, anyone can use it– it's open source. And don't ask me to start anything. I'm on a starting thing hiatus for a very long time. Everyone is going to kill me if I do anything with that SquadDAO.
Troy: Alright, with that. Oh, a few more words on the docs. Go ahead, Pavlo.
Pavlo: Just a few more words about the Smart Yield Docs. We have been planning to release the documentation this week. Someone from the community suggested we do this somewhere around the project call– I'll notify you now that the documentation is live.
We also published the updates for the Discord FAQ bot. So you can check that out as well. We are still recording some how-to-videos, but they are almost done and should be published asap. We will also likely publish an article about Smart Yield today or tomorrow.
So, stay updated!
Troy: Alright, I think that's it. We can sign off and see everyone in the Discord.
Everyone: 👋👋👋👋
Round Table [20:37]
There were no comments this week. 😶😶😶