Liquidity Mining Proposal #3: Incentives for UST Adoption on Avalanche, Fantom, and Moonbeam

Proposer: Jimmy Le, Intern @ GT Capital

Disclaimer: I am unemployed. I spend all day on Twitter, Telegram, and Discord DMs chatting and scheming with degens, gigabrains, frogs, wizards, ex-TFL and LUNAtics. I’ve gathered the best of these ideas and worked closely with TFL on the following proposal.

Overview

“It’s Over Anakin! We’ve Got The High Ground!”

This is a continuation of @TheIntern’s liquidity mining framework and the previous proposal to expand utility and liquidity of UST on Solana, Oasis, and Near.

As anticipated in my recent previous proposal, the various forks are propping up to mimic the success of the Terra Luna ecosystem via our minting and burning mechanism.

No matter, we will continue our cross chain domination by expanding the liquidity, utility, and demand for UST.

As it stands, there is no liquidity for UST on any of the leading dexes on the following major layer one ecosystems.

In this proposal, I detail the protocols, incentives, and collaborations to expand UST’s adoption across the Avalanche, Fantom, and Moonbeam ecosystems.

All necessary channels of communication for the following collaborations have been established and awaiting governance feedback and voting for implementation.

Incentives Plan

“Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.”

1. Pangolin (Avalanche)

Pangolin is the 2nd largest traditional decentralized exchange by total value locked on Avalanche. This proposal seeks to incentivize both the AVAX/UST and the USDC/UST pairs with $255k each in LUNA rewards over 3 months.

The Pangolin team has also committed the maximum amount of rewards for both pairs, equating to roughly $450K in PNG rewards per month.

Ava Labs has also expressed that they will support these pairs on Pangolin with AVAX incentives in the near future.

The Pangolin team also plans to make UST the routing asset for all pairs on their platform.

2. Trader Joe (Avalanche)

Trader Joe is currently the largest decentralized exchange on the Avalanche ecosystem by total value locked.

This proposal seeks to accompany MIM as another leading decentralized stablecoin on Avalanche by incentivizing the AVAX/UST pair with $255k in LUNA rewards over 3 months.

3. Spookyswap (Fantom)

With over $6b TVL in the Fantom Ecosystem,

Spookyswap is currently the largest decentralized exchange on the Fantom ecosystem by total value locked.

Since Spookyswap does not support dual incentives at this time, this proposal seeks to incentivize xBOO stakers with $170k in LUNA rewards over 2 months. In exchange, pairs such as FTM/UST and FTM/LUNA will be incentivized with BOO rewards.

These rewards may be migrated to direct pair rewards when dual incentives become available.

4. Spiritswap (Fantom)

Spiritswap is the second largest traditional decentralized exchange on the Fantom ecosystem by total value locked.

Spiritswap will soon support dual incentives on their platform. This proposal seeks $255k in LUNA rewards over 3 months to make UST one of the first pairs to receive dual incentives in the Fantom ecosystem.

5. Solarbeam (Moonbeam)

Moonbeam is currently being launched on Polkadot and invites the opportunity for UST to become the dominant decentralized stablecoin and routing asset for the entire Polkadot ecosystem.

Solarbeam is currently the second largest decentralized exchange on the Canary Moonriver network and will be deploying on Moonbeam soon.

This proposal seeks to incentivize the GLMR/UST pair with $255K in LUNA rewards over 3 months.

The Solarbeam team will be matching with incentives from their treasury.

Total amount of incentives: $1.44M in LUNA

Axelar Network

Update: Axelar’s Mainnet has now launched!

More details can be found here: https://twitter.com/axelarcore/status/1480903535105560577

For this proposal, we’ll be utilizing the Axelar network to deploy the cross chain liquidity mining incentives. By utilizing the Axelar network, we’ll be able to expand the set of layer one ecosystems that support Terra assets.

The Multi-chain world will include a number of cross-chain liquidity networks. Our thesis is that multiple liquidity networks (Wormhole, Axelar, Allbridge, etc.) will persist in a multi-chain world. By utilizing multiple networks, we can quickly broaden the number of Layer 1 + 2 ecosystems that Terra assets can live on, be among the first stablecoins on Layer 1s as they launch, while also decreasing dependence on any single liquidity network.

For those who are unfamiliar, Axelar is a decentralized interoperability network connecting all major blockchain ecosystems. Secured by the battle-tested Cosmos SDK, the network is fully permissionless and allows anyone to join and validate cross-chain transactions.

The network supports integrations with PoW chains like Bitcoin, EVM-based L1s/L2s, Cosmos chains such as Terra. Furthermore, built as an open platform, anyone can deploy its building blocks and SDK to make connections to other ecosystems.

The Axelar network will allow UST distribution across many different ecosystems in a decentralized way while simultaneously bringing more assets that could act as additional layers of stability for UST’s peg and scalability for aUST.

You can find more information about the Axelar network, team, and technology at https://axelar.network.

Sustainability

“If [they can] be turned, [they] would become a powerful ally.”

The liquidity mining incentives program for each protocol will last for approximately 3 months. After 3 months, additional incentives may be considered after evaluating the liquidity, utility, and trading volumes of each pair.

Multisig

“I want to know what happened to the plans they sent you.”

The funds will be withdrawn from the Community Pool and distributed to a multisig that is controlled by several members from the TFL Finance team and elected community members.

LUNA will be withdrawn to the same multisig wallet as proposal 143.

What’s next?

“You do not yet realize your importance.”

I invite you to share your thoughts and look forward to hearing the community’s feedback on this round of incentives and what future incentive programs you’d like to support below.

You can find me on Twitter @lejimmy if you have any ideas you’d like to discuss privately.

9 Likes

Expansion continues. I’ll be voting yes.

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I will support this proposal. Please anyone from terra TFL fix the governance voting with a hardware wallet( Ledger)! You cannot vote on governance due to the new terra station!!! Thanks

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Strongly Agree, I rate 8/8

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Strongly approve this - where can I vote?

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Are you unemployed or an intern? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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That is no sustainability actually…

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Up for community discussion at the moment, proposal will go live for voting soon :slight_smile:

Unpaid intern :frowning:

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@lejimmy back at it again - when will the intern be hired full-time?

This seems like a reasonable proposal and is a continuation of UST’s ambition to become widely adopted.

It is interesting to see the differences between protocols on top of Avalanche - seems Pangolin has more institutional support and capital despite Trader Joe having a larger TVL.

What were your criteria for choosing protocols on top of FTM? Strictly by TVL?

Also, would love some clarity on the number below:

Is this the total cost of the LM program? It is a bit confusing through the formatting and rounding.

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Hmm, okay, thinking about the fragmentation of UST across networks and the potential for liquidity and peg issues because of this.

For example, we already have UST on Fantom through Anyswap. By using Axelar instead of Anyswap, we would be creating a second legitimate version of UST on Fantom. Given how confusing folks find wUST vs USTw on networks like Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, and Solana, does it make sense to use Axelar for Fantom? From a peg and liquidity standpoint this is a nightmare to manage.

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Hi everyone, Georgios from Axelar here. We collaborated with TFL on the outreach to Avalanche/Moonbeam/Fantom.

For each chain, the proposal covers the native DEXs with significant traction. These applications are deeply integrated into their respective DeFi ecosystems. The list was determined through discussions with Foundations and community members from each L1, as well as the projects themselves.

Given UST demand, teams will launch multiple wrapped UST versions, and it’s up to the communities and devs to standardize for each L1. The DEXs are integrating Axelar into their frontends, so there shouldn’t be any UX confusion on the 3 L1s from the proposal. On Fantom in particular, anyswapUST has no traction.

Long-term alignment comes from Axelar’s permissionless nature. Decentralized money needs decentralized infrastructure.

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Not just communities and devs, but also providers of bridges. Fragmentation of liquidity is a huge issue and should be taken seriously by all participants as it can have gross effects on the peg of UST, which is of the most importance to this group but perhaps its not something you are used to considering from your usual interaction with other assets.

Crypto moves fast, integration with a DEX’s does not mean that its guaranteed, what’s to stop these DEXs from integrating other bridges as well or discontinuing Axelar support? Based on my experience as a moderator in Terra discord, I can assure you, I will be answering questions by confused folks unless this is made dumb easy for end users.

With no promotion, launched about 30 days ago, I’m seeing 1.89M trading volume average on a no name DEX over the last 7 days: Beethoven X Analytics. It seems to me that there is already a natural demand there. I don’t see why Terra can’t benefit with the same incentives provided to DEX while using the Anyswap bridge assets.

I 100% agree. Based on some quick research I can see that Anyswap is running on 33 nodes at the moment, not exactly the most decentralized but certainly not fully centralized either. I don’t see any information on how to join their validator network however. Not awesome, not loving this option.
I see that Axelar has yet to launch a full product and is currently hosting an incentivized testnet that appears to be permissioned as it seems to require registration in order to access certain parts of the developer discord and other resources that I assume are critical for success. I’m confused, is Axelar even live right now? All signs point to no, given the December 2021 update makes no mention of a mainnet.

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Axelar codebase is open source: axelarnetwork · GitHub

The testnet

  • has been operating for the past 6 months,
  • with over 70 active nodes, including multiple Terra mainnet validators,
  • and more than 1000 participants stress testing the cross-chain functionality

Axelar is based on the Cosmos SDK, same as Terra. Anyone can run a validator on mainnet, which is crucial for decentralization. The network is rolled out and is currently in the process of migrating validators from testnet to mainnet. [The testnet was more closed due to limited internal moderator support avaliable. Happy to add anyone - if you’re interested in playing with it, feel free to dm]

For more info on the decentralization/security aspect: https://axelar.network/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/axelar_whitepaper.pdf

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If the community is going to back Axelar’s wrapped UST with incentives on multiple DEXs, it would be appreciated if you would acknowledge that as a bridge provider for UST, you understand that maintaining the peg of UST is important. If you can’t, then I’m not sure this relationship will work.

And of the 70 active nodes, how many are part of the limited closed testnet validator club? I can see from the discord that some validators were asking to be let in but were told they needed to be invited.

How many of the limited closed testnet validator club will be part of the active validator set when Axelar launches its mainnet? Anyone can run a validator yes, but will there be limits on who can be in the active set at launch? Its sounds like it. Its okay if that’s the case but lets not call it permissionless and decentralized when its not yet.

Why is this information is so limited? Based on what your moderators are saying in the discord chat, the development team is heads down focused on testnet. The communication simply isn’t adding up for me here, it seems some information is not being shared. Gatekeeping this information from your own community is not something I would not expect from a project that appears to pride itself on being decentralized and for everyone. This gives me pause.

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Sounds like earlier you were expecting answers to a generic fragmentation problem. I can’t guess what you are thinking if there’s no clear questions. I of course agree with your high level statements - peg/UX/decentralization are important.

Axelar moves assets across chains at roughly IBC speed (with the exception of Ethereum/Bitcoin for obvious reasons). That makes the UST versions on different chains interchangeable with UST on Terra, holders can easily arbitrage to maintain the peg with native UST.

Censorship resistant money is a human right, we are all here to make it universally accessible. Don’t just assume otherwise.

There is a validator chat on Discord, everyone sufficiently technical who asked the team to join was included (most of the 70 groups, if not all). There is a bar for entry in order to maintain high quality of discussions without requiring constant moderation. Notably, some folks managed to spin up testnet nodes before being invited, because the testnet is permissionless on a technical level.

It’s a gradual rollout, as is typical for PoS chains. There is no magic moment when a switch flips the mainnet to live and decentralized (despite what you typically see from a PR perspective). Goal is to keep adding from those 70 validators over the coming weeks, and public delegations will be enabled soon after.

Many announcements are shared on the validator chats first, where top tier Cosmos/Terra validators are participants. I already offered to add you to the validators chat to take a look at the recent progress, no idea why you didn’t.

Please do proper research, both on Axelar itself and Cosmos network rollouts in general, before making stretched claims.

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Earlier you said:

It seemed to me you were saying here that you did not believe that fragmentation and peg issues were a concern for bridge providers and that it was entirely in the hands of communities and devs to manage. Which is why I’m asking you if you understand that this is important to the Terra community. I expect a better response than what was given above, hand waving away my concerns and saying there isn’t any reason to support an already established version of the same product because it has no traction without offering any true analysis. When met with data, you offered no response.

You didn’t actually answer my question, how many of the 70 validators are in the private discord channel?

Taken directly from your discord:

Why are your own team members saying otherwise?

Again, where is this information public? I’ve looked through your website, docs, discord, and medium and see no mention of a gradual roll out. Again, all official communication points to Axelar as still in testnet and nowhere near launch.

I did not take your offer because I believe information should be free and available to all participants. If asking you hard questions is the only way to get access, then simply put, I don’t want it, all other Terra voters should also have equal access. Free the information for all, not just for me, that is true decentralization, trustless, and permission-less .

I don’t appreciate the false accusation of poor research and stretched claims. If I am not able to find this information easily on your website, medium, discord, forums, and docs, then the fault is with you for not having the relevant information available for those who seek it, especially as your own team members give contrary information.

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Here are a few other references that might be useful for the community:

Axelar Github

Docs website, including instructions for how to spin up a node and register as a validator (currently testnet but will be updated for mainnet).

Medium post on network upgrade including some public stats.

We have begun the rollout of the mainnet. Multiple ecosystem builders are migrating to mainnet. More announcements and information will be available early next week on the rollout. We are big supporters of UST, its decentralized nature and stability, and plan on maintaining and improving its usability and accessibility for the entire blockchain ecosystem.

@somethingelse You make some good points on the communication side. We’re rolling out a communication plan that will go live next week, which will include a series of content updates across the site (which we will be diligent about keeping updated), live/recorded community updates and outbound updates via newsletter, twitter and our other channels.

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Hey everyone,

Justin from Pangolin here. Very excited about this proposal.

Just wanted to comment on the fragmentation issue. This is a real concern but I believe it will be determined by the liquidity in the network. This is in large part why Pangolin will be doing everything in our power to support UST. We believe that we can get the TVL up to the Goldilocks number of 60 million. This then allows lending protocols like Benqi to offer this version of UST.

This then further legitimises this version of UST and makes it the de facto standard on Avalanche.

Happy answering any questions about how Pangolin can help

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Hi thanks for this information, none of which I didn’t already look at before I gave my earlier response. As well, not a single one of these resources answers any of my questions nor my concerns about Axelar that I asked of @yorgosv. My disappointment grows with Axelar with each response I receive.

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