Editorial
We were all treated to a pleasant surprise this week as Gemini listed the BarnBridge governance token for trading. While we usually don’t address exchange listings, the Gemini listing represents a significant milestone for the DAO-first approach that was taken by the team, and so I’m making an exception to highlight its implications.
For those not familiar, Gemini is a New York-based cryptocurrency exchange and is considered to be one of the US leaders, among the likes of Coinbase and Kraken. Launched in 2016, it set out to be the go-to solution for traditional finance looking to trade digital assets, as evidenced by their undergoing of rigorous processes like earning a BitLicense, undergoing third-party SOC assessments, and getting insurance coverage for deposits through Aon. This approach precluded them from listing a larger universe of assets, but has led to them serving as a custodian for over $25 billion in assets across many traditional financial entities. And ever since last summer’s update to BitLicense regulations by the New York Department of Financial Services, Gemini has been able to self-certify whether it deems a given digital asset as compliant with its understanding of regulatory requirements.
All of this is to say, Gemini takes a very real risk with each of its listings. Were it to list, and facilitate the exchange of, an asset that later was deemed to have been an unregistered security, for example, its BitLicense would undoubtedly be in jeopardy, undermining the majority of its business. While we can only speculate, this suggests that the nature of the BOND token’s instantiation met key thresholds for their in-house counsel. Couple that with recent legislation out of Wyoming recognizing DAOs as legal entities, and it bodes well for the future of Ethereum-based organizations.
With that said, I wanted to wrap up this week’s editorial with a short, informal roadmap for what you can expect through the end of Q2. I’m not providing specific dates as I’d prefer not to upset our developer team. 😃
C.R.E.A.M. Finance Integration: As a fork of Compound Finance, C.R.E.A.M is a relatively straightforward integration. We’re excited to see how users respond to the unique yield profiles that exist on the platform, given that the rates there are more idiosyncratic than those found on either Compound or AAVE. And if you’re a CREAM holder, don’t forget to participate in the ongoing governance vote to enable a collateral factor for BOND on their platform.
AAVE on Both Ethereum and Polygon/Matic: While our AAVE rollout has been delayed by the introduction of liquidity mining rewards on the platform, it’s proven to be a productive development, insofar as its sped up our work on Layer 2 deployment. BarnBridge users will be able to deposit and redeem juniors and seniors for fractions of a cent on the AAVE Polygon deployment, and we’re excited to be able to address this long-standing request from the community. Plus, earning extra AAVE and MATIC stands to benefit available rates. You can expect USDC, DAI, USDT, and GUSD to be available originators.
SMART Exposure Deployment: I’m not allowed to share much at all about our SMART Exposure application, sorry! Just know that audits are underway and that the UI is looking superb.
SMART Alpha Development: Once things are up and running with the aforementioned SMART Yield integrations, the majority of bandwidth will be directed to developing SMART Alpha. Again, can’t share much.👇
While not on the roadmap, we have also been thinking more critically about how we can make BarnBridge tranches more amenable to the formation of secondary markets. BarnBridge itself would not be facilitating such exchange, and so it behooves us to make sure that both the implementation of tranches and the way we structure BOND subsidies results in it being economically compelling for other market participants to bootstrap such markets. I think we might have made progress on this for both juniors and seniors, and pending feasibility discussions, I look forward to sharing these ideas in the coming weeks.
Thanks as always for reading, and for our Orthodox friends, enjoy your Easter weekend!
Until next week,
- Max
Governance
Things are a bit quiet on this front as we await the launch of the AAVE integration to roll out the next DAO vote. That DAO vote will include the followings topics we’ve voted on over the past two months via SnapShot, namely:
Backdated BOND payments for the Integrations Team and Leo, our China Community Manager
BOND subsidy pools for new SMART Yield originators (expect a forum post with the proposed distribution next week)
Creation of a DAO multi-sig for participating in activities like providing BOND liquidity to Bancor
I also recommend you check out the ongoing conversations in the forum:
Plus, if you haven’t yet, watch this past week’s Project Management call below:
Key Metrics
Shout out to the whale that deposited $30M into the junior side of the cUSDC SMART Yield pool this week. 🐳
Now let’s see if we can cross the 1,000 staker threshold for the DAO by next week…
On SMART Yield:
On Uniswap Liquidity and the DAO:
Disclaimer: BarnBurner is not an official BarnBridge publication and is not meant to reflect the shared views of its core team or BOND token holders. BarnBurner is an educational weekly newsletter meant to share updates on technical and governance-related happenings that occur within the BarnBridge ecosystem. The content herein is not financial advice and readers should not base any investment decisions off of it.
Thanks to Zach Owens for his branding work, and 0xBoxer for their dashboards 🤝