ropl-btc commented 1 year ago

APPLICANT

Type: Direct Application

Email: robin@obermaier.de

Discord: ropl.btc#7091

Twitter: ropl_btc

Stacks Forum: ropl.btc

GRANT BASICS

Grant Name: Liquidium - P2Pool & sBTC

Total Budget: 50,000

Total Duration: 2,000

Grant Type: Open Source Dev Repeat Grantees

Grant Track: Bitcoin Utility via Stacks

Grant Goal: Create New Technology

Grant Audience: End Users (Consumer)

Specific Audience: Users leveraging their holdings to borrow as well as users who want yield.

Grant Team: petehodl, jayjaybtc, ropl-btc, shrimpo-btc

Previous Grants: NFT2Loan - lending protocol #653

Ecosystem Programs: We have already completed the Web3 Startup Lab and were amongst the first teams to complete our journey there. Now we are about to be in the Stacks Accelerator.

GRANT MISSION, IMPACT, RISKS & REFERENCE

Grant Mission: This grant will build the contracts and UI for a fully-fledged P2Pool NFT lending protocol like BendDAO on Ethereum. This means there will be a liquidity pool funded by lenders which will be used to lend money to borrowers against their NFTs. Lenders can provide liquidity to the pool and will earn interest for it. This unlocks new ways to earn yield on the Stacks blockchain. It also allows the interest rate for borrowers to get significantly lower since it's decentralized and therefore also decentralized risk. Also this will allow us to list more collections so even more collections can be borrowed against.

The second milestone in our grant is to add integration for cryptocurrencies as collateral and to enable more currencies to borrow. This will essentially be AAVE on Stacks. Borrowers can deposit xBTC (and later sBTC) for example as collateral and could borrow STX or xUSD. Exactly the same works the other way around -> Borrowers can deposit xUSD or STX as collateral and get xBTC as a loan. We will create different liquidity pools for each cryptocurrency to offer all major cryptos on Stacks.

Creating BendDAO and AAVE on Stacks will have a huge impact on liquidity by making many more investments liquid without them having to sell. Also having liquidity pools offer attractive ways to earn interest on a variety of cryptocurrencies and will naturally draw more people to Stacks.

Thanks a lot for making it possible to develop Liquidium! <3

Grant Impact: - Social Media Engagement

Volume of NFT Collections we're offering
Liquidium Stats
- Total loans
- Avg. loan size "
- Interest Rate
- Total Collections listed
- Size of Liquidity Pool

Grant Risks: The most significant risk for this grant is the floor price of NFT collections. If the whole market crashes a lot, we might be unable to repay lenders. This is why we diversify risk by offering different collections and fungible tokens. Also we're continuously improving our liquidation mechanism.

Support Link: In this Notion page you can find all of our important links and documents as well as Twitter Social Proof.

GRANT ROADMAP & DELIVERABLES

MILESTONE 1:

Deliverable: Getting the P2Pool mechanism done for loans against NFTs (Megapont & Guests)

MILESTONE 2:

Deliverable: Adding borrowing functionality against different cryptocurrencies (incl. xBTC)

FINAL DELIVERABLE

Deliverable: A P2Pool mechanism for borrowing/lending w/ crypto as collateral

stacks-foundation commented 1 year ago

👋 @ropl-btc
Thanks for your application! We will do a pre-review and let you know if we have any immediate questions. In the mean time please refer to our review schedule here for a detailed timeline and response dates.
Best, Will

will-corcoran commented 1 year ago

Hi @ropl-btc -

Thanks for the proposal, I was just about to deny this application, but would like to leave it open for now if that is OK.

Realistically, we will likely need to deny it since we are laser focused on conserving funding for efforts that have clear alignment with the current priorities of the grants program noted here - specifically sBTC - and since you recently already received a grant. All that being said, I know you are building a fantastic protocol that adds new and novel use cases to Stacks, so I think its worth deeper consideration.

Last caveat: All of the Q1 funds have been disbursed already and we are working on several open sBTC related bounties we hope to post in Q2. After all of that is said and done, I don't know how much funding will be left over, but I would like to keep your application open in the event funds are still available.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best, Will

ropl-btc commented 1 year ago

Hey @will-at-stacks I respect your honesty and appreciate your belief in our work.

Our grand goal is to become the ultimate place for lending & borrowing on Stacks & Bitcoin. The first step towards this goal was to launch the first NFT lending protocol on Stacks which we did with your help. On top of looking for more ways to connect borrowers and lenders, we are also seeing how some of these methods would work really well for fungible tokens. With the upcoming release of sBTC, we feel like there is great opportunity for a p2pool lending model. We see it accepting sBTC as collateral, and providing a stablecoin in return or vice versa or with any combo of coins.

With the recent hype in ordinals, we have been working towards launching the first P2P Ordinal lending protocol where users can borrow & lend BTC with Ordinals as collateral. We also see this as a step to providing services for earning yield on native BTC, which the market desperately lacks.

This grant would go towards freeing our founders from their obligations to go full time realizing these new features for sBTC and native Bitcoin by the time sBTC launches. In summary, Liquidium will not only enable borrowing sBTC against NFTs but also become the AAVE equivalent on Bitcoin/Stacks. With your help we can realize this vision and our ecosystem will continue to expand.

PS: If you are interested to learn more about any of our plans feel free to ask.