Building Taiko-native lending protocol creates a big opportunity both for Carmine and for Taiko.
The idea is pretty simple, we want to build a community that governs and creates a lending protocol. Environment where the community comes together and shines. A protocol that is designed by the community for the community!
We got inspired by an AMM protocol called JediSwap on StarkNet. They are community centric, the community developers built it and the community financed it (more than $200k on Gitcoin), one of the most successful DeFi projects on StarkNet, if not the most successful one.
Category
Surprise Us 🤫
Timeline
Stage 1 - community building
Since Taiko will be releasing mainnet in Q1 2024, we would like to start ASAP.
Timeline (timeline is assuming we would start very early)
Day 0: Get a few people from the community to lead the project in early stages. Filip is already working on this.
Day 0: Basic frontend - landing page.
September: “get a few thousand people in" in discord and twitter.
Early on help from Taiko would be massively appreciated. Few tweets about the initiative and introductions to other protocols (to their leads).
Getting community in, means not only users but also protocols.
We will organize AMAs/spaces/community calls and start discussing what would be the best protocol design in terms of “protocol features”.
October: Deploy ambassador program and galaxy.
“Deploy” ambassador would mean that within October we would onboard ambassadors and start working with them. They would start taking care of content, twitter, AMAs (most likely just partially from the early days).
Galaxy campaign, since it can nicely gamify feedback collection and growth of community.
As part of the Galaxy campaign (maybe outside of it - we would have to discuss), we would organize a cross-protocol campaign. These would continue in a periodic manner forever.
November: In November we would like to finish the idea collection and have a proposal ready (and voted on by the community) to start building. Ie we would like to know what features are the most important ones.
November: Gitcoin grant. We have not found info, when the next grant will be open, but we will apply to to help finance the development.
Stage 2 - development
December: Have defined features and development timeline. Focus will be given on upgradability, so that we could deploy early on testnet and very early on mainnet.
December: Start developing "stuff" - start developing app frontend and smart contracts. The development will most likely start by forking existing project, to be able to develop quickly. This fork will be then adjusted and likely rewriten so that it corresponds to the community requested design/features
January-February: Testnet is running. This very hard to estimate since we want to build it based on the community requirements (below see what we will be proposing/pushing). We want to deploy as fast as possible to testnet, so that we can go to mainnet also quite quickly, but these are hard to estimate.
Not adding mainnet deployment since, the span of the grant is 6 months and the mainnet is planned for Q1, which might not fit into the 6 months (in case it is deployed in March).
** There is major problem in DeFi in terms of capital efficiency and cost of capital and would like to solve it through this lending protocol. Imagine providing collateral and getting lp token (or other token) that describes this stake. This token has significant value but is not liquid,
Stage 3 - mainnet and scaling
We don’t know how things will look like in half a year, but it would be amazing to deploy during the early days of Taiko. Limits might be security, audit and the fact that the protocol might end up quite complex. This stage spans outside of the 6 months period for the grants, so its not part of "what we will deliver". Mentioning it here, so that it is obvious that we are thinking about this.
Q2-Q3 2024: Raise capital for the protocol!
Project Plan
Community building
Community building has to be done with the community. When someone steps up and offers help, they should be allowed to help!
Things to be done very early on:
1) Get a few people in to set everything (mods, first ambassadors,...)
2) Onboard protocols - community is not only people, but other protocols. Agree on AMAs/spaces about the new lending protocol. Do this potentially before discord/twitter.
3) Get name for the protocol - We suggest having a vote in taiko discord/twitter
4) Start onboarding discord/twitter
5) Get retweets, etc from Taiko and Taiko protocols... "meet this new Taiko native lending protocol"
6) When there are a few thousand people... Prepare ambassador program and onboard ambassadors. They will do articles, memes, posts, whatever, discord,...
7) When there is few thousand people... prepare galaxy and other campaigns
FE development
We will build standard FE for the lending protocol. In React, allowing for most of the relevant wallets. Everything will be open sources from day one on github.
BE development
Backend will be build partially in Rust and partially in Python. Runnning on GCP. Everything will be open sources from day one on github. Backend will serve mainly as a base for BI.
We will need connection to indexer, to collect relevant data.
Smart contract development
We assume we will fork existing protocol that we will adjust to be able to deploy to testnet and mainnet quickly. The protocol will be upgradable through a proxy contract which will later replace "owner" with "governance vote". This will result in governance being the only entity able to upgrade/change the protocol. It will then a governance decision on how to upgrade, if through entire token holders vote, delegate voting or other possibilities.
Since we want to build the protocol on top community idea(s), it is hard to provide more details. But we want to follow standard development process to guarantee the quality and security.
We want to have the community also build the codebase with us. This potentially allows for new developers to experience and join Taiko ecosystem, since project like ours is great introduction.
Project Impact
First and foremost Taiko would have a native lending protocol that would be fully governed by its community.
DeFi has a major problem of capital efficiency and we believe that lending protocols will solve this problem. We will push on tackling this problem very early on, so that Taiko’s protocols are more capital efficient, hence more competitive, than protocols on other chains.
We are thinking of allowing LP tokens and protocol tokens to be used as collateral, giving users the freedom to have “working” capital and at the same moment have the upside of these tokens. We are also thinking about allowing real estate to be used as collateral. But all of this is dependent on the community decision, since the protocol will be community governed.
Team Information
Filip: Project Lead
Community builder, youtuber and big advocate for crypto and DeFi
Marek: Project Co-lead
CEO of Carmine Finance s.r.o., experienced in DeFi, MEV, HFT, AI/ML and community building.
Point of Contact
tg: @Marek314 | email: marek@carmine.finance
Previous Work
We did mainly non-public "stuff". But in the last one and a half years we have been working Carmine Options AMM (https://app.carmine.finance, https://github.com/CarmineOptions/) and we are looking into extending what we do into a lending protocol to solve some of the issues we found in DeFi (as described above).
Additional Information
We know someone has to deal with the capital efficiency in DeFi and we would like to do this. We don't know if the community will feel the same and push towards this, but that is the risk that we are willing to take. Whatever the community wants to do, we will there with the community, because we believe that being community run is the way to success.
We are more then happy to discuss this further on telegram/call.
We will aim for self financing through gitcoin, VC investment, but it is possible we will apply for additional grant after this one.
Agreement
[X] I agree to comply with the terms and conditions of the grants program
Project Description
Building Taiko-native lending protocol creates a big opportunity both for Carmine and for Taiko.
The idea is pretty simple, we want to build a community that governs and creates a lending protocol. Environment where the community comes together and shines. A protocol that is designed by the community for the community!
We got inspired by an AMM protocol called JediSwap on StarkNet. They are community centric, the community developers built it and the community financed it (more than $200k on Gitcoin), one of the most successful DeFi projects on StarkNet, if not the most successful one.
Category
Surprise Us 🤫
Timeline
Stage 1 - community building
Since Taiko will be releasing mainnet in Q1 2024, we would like to start ASAP.
Timeline (timeline is assuming we would start very early)
Day 0: Get a few people from the community to lead the project in early stages. Filip is already working on this.
Day 0: Basic frontend - landing page.
September: “get a few thousand people in" in discord and twitter.
October: Deploy ambassador program and galaxy.
November: In November we would like to finish the idea collection and have a proposal ready (and voted on by the community) to start building. Ie we would like to know what features are the most important ones.
November: Gitcoin grant. We have not found info, when the next grant will be open, but we will apply to to help finance the development.
Stage 2 - development
December: Have defined features and development timeline. Focus will be given on upgradability, so that we could deploy early on testnet and very early on mainnet.
December: Start developing "stuff" - start developing app frontend and smart contracts. The development will most likely start by forking existing project, to be able to develop quickly. This fork will be then adjusted and likely rewriten so that it corresponds to the community requested design/features
January-February: Testnet is running. This very hard to estimate since we want to build it based on the community requirements (below see what we will be proposing/pushing). We want to deploy as fast as possible to testnet, so that we can go to mainnet also quite quickly, but these are hard to estimate.
** There is major problem in DeFi in terms of capital efficiency and cost of capital and would like to solve it through this lending protocol. Imagine providing collateral and getting lp token (or other token) that describes this stake. This token has significant value but is not liquid,
Stage 3 - mainnet and scaling
We don’t know how things will look like in half a year, but it would be amazing to deploy during the early days of Taiko. Limits might be security, audit and the fact that the protocol might end up quite complex. This stage spans outside of the 6 months period for the grants, so its not part of "what we will deliver". Mentioning it here, so that it is obvious that we are thinking about this.
Q2-Q3 2024: Raise capital for the protocol!
Project Plan
Community building
Community building has to be done with the community. When someone steps up and offers help, they should be allowed to help!
Things to be done very early on: 1) Get a few people in to set everything (mods, first ambassadors,...) 2) Onboard protocols - community is not only people, but other protocols. Agree on AMAs/spaces about the new lending protocol. Do this potentially before discord/twitter. 3) Get name for the protocol - We suggest having a vote in taiko discord/twitter 4) Start onboarding discord/twitter 5) Get retweets, etc from Taiko and Taiko protocols... "meet this new Taiko native lending protocol" 6) When there are a few thousand people... Prepare ambassador program and onboard ambassadors. They will do articles, memes, posts, whatever, discord,... 7) When there is few thousand people... prepare galaxy and other campaigns
FE development
We will build standard FE for the lending protocol. In React, allowing for most of the relevant wallets. Everything will be open sources from day one on github.
BE development
Backend will be build partially in Rust and partially in Python. Runnning on GCP. Everything will be open sources from day one on github. Backend will serve mainly as a base for BI.
We will need connection to indexer, to collect relevant data.
Smart contract development
We assume we will fork existing protocol that we will adjust to be able to deploy to testnet and mainnet quickly. The protocol will be upgradable through a proxy contract which will later replace "owner" with "governance vote". This will result in governance being the only entity able to upgrade/change the protocol. It will then a governance decision on how to upgrade, if through entire token holders vote, delegate voting or other possibilities.
Since we want to build the protocol on top community idea(s), it is hard to provide more details. But we want to follow standard development process to guarantee the quality and security.
We want to have the community also build the codebase with us. This potentially allows for new developers to experience and join Taiko ecosystem, since project like ours is great introduction.
Project Impact
Team Information
Filip: Project Lead
Point of Contact
tg: @Marek314 | email: marek@carmine.finance
Previous Work
We did mainly non-public "stuff". But in the last one and a half years we have been working Carmine Options AMM (https://app.carmine.finance, https://github.com/CarmineOptions/) and we are looking into extending what we do into a lending protocol to solve some of the issues we found in DeFi (as described above).
Additional Information
We know someone has to deal with the capital efficiency in DeFi and we would like to do this. We don't know if the community will feel the same and push towards this, but that is the risk that we are willing to take. Whatever the community wants to do, we will there with the community, because we believe that being community run is the way to success.
We are more then happy to discuss this further on telegram/call.
We will aim for self financing through gitcoin, VC investment, but it is possible we will apply for additional grant after this one.
Agreement