Compound Grants Program Funds Batch 1, Dharma Integration, Governor Bravo is Live, WBTC Market Upgrade
Compound Digest - April 1, 2021
Highlighting the best of the Compound ecosystem. For more updates, join the Compound community on Discord, Twitter, and Comp.xyz.
Compound Grants Program Funds Batch 1
The Compound Grants Committee kicked off its 6-month pilot program two weeks ago, and recently announced the first batch of funded grants. The committee funded 7 projects, ranging from Gateway integrations to market research reports, for a total of $187.5k. A list of the funded grants is provided below:
Approved Grants
Universal Gas Refunding Contract
Applicant: Tally
Grant Size: $32k
Description: The Universal Gas Refunding Contract can be used by anyone in a decentralized, open way, to securely refund users for paying the gas on desired actions (such as Voting, Delegation, executing proposals, using a multisig).
Applicant: Acala
Grant Size: $35k
Description: Integrate Compound with Polkadot chain, which will include building a bridge (starport) to Polkadot, adding support for DOT and LDOT (staked DOT) as collateral, and making CASH available on Polkadot. You can read more about this integration on the accompanying forum post.
Retroactive Grants to Key Compound Contributors
Applicant: Arr00; Anish Agnihotri; blck; Sam Simons
Grant Size: $30k; $10k; $20k; $5k
Description: Arr00 wrote the core code for comp.vote, Anish Agnihotri built the comp.vote front-end and stat.farm., blck built the bot feed and bot banner, and Sam Simons was the first to propose the grants program.
Design + Brand direction for Compound Grants Program
Applicant: Cole Perkins
Grant Size: $5k
Description: To create a professional design / brand for the Compound Grants Program.
Insights into Compound Governance
Applicant: Leland Lee
Grant Size: $20k
Description: To create an open-source dashboard that provides the Compound community with context on each governance proposal (e.g., displaying relevant tweets / other information alongside the proposal).
Integrating Compound into Casval
Applicant: Casval
Grant Size: $18k
Description: Casval is a DeFi frontend (web/mobile) that targets freelancers in Europe who want higher yields on their assets.
Applicant: Sam Simons
Grant Size: $12.5k
Description: Research into the cComp market to better understand its peculiarities. The final product will be an analysis that's published on comp.xyz.
The grants committee also partnered with Our Network to sponsor up to $15k worth of bounties for the best Compound analytics dashboard. $5k of $COMP will go to the top 3 Dune dashboards, and $250 of $COMP go to all contestants who create a dashboard with at least 6 data points. An example of an outstanding dashboard by Omni Analytics can be seen here. The due date for dashboards is April 2nd, so be sure to submit yours via this form if you’ve been working on one!
The grants program is proving to be a powerful and efficient mechanism for funding improvements to the core protocol and overall ecosystem. If you have an idea that will add value to the Compound community, get started by reading the program overview and consider applying for a grant by filling out this form on the Compound Grants website.
Dharma Integration
Dharma launched a new Ethereum wallet that allows users to deposit up to $25k a week from their bank account and one-click supply assets into the Compound protocol. Included with the new wallet is a Gas-Lite feature that batches transactions across multiple Dharma users, ultimately saving up to 80% on network fees when interacting with Compound. The robust fiat onramps and innovative gas-saving measures of the Dharma wallet extend the functionality of the Compound protocol to power new use cases for everyday users.
Governance Updates
Since the last newsletter, Proposals 41 and 42 passed through the governance system with overwhelming support from the community.
Completed Votes
Proposal 41: Legacy market migration: WBTC
Status: Executed March 19th, 2021
Proposer: blck
Voting Results: 474,890 For and 0 Against
Summary: Proposal 41 began the process of upgrading the immutable cToken contracts to the newer, upgradable cTokens contracts, starting with the WBTC market. There are now two separate WBTC markets on Compound - a legacy market with $1.1B of supplied assets and a new market with $1.8B of supplied assets. Users are free to migrate over to the new market at their own pace but should be aware that COMP is now only being distributed to the new WBTC market, and the legacy market may be deprecated in the future once it is small enough. You can read more about the benefits of the next generation cToken contracts, and the plans to upgrade other markets like BAT, ZRX, USDC, and ETH, on the forum post.
Proposal 42: Migration to Governor Bravo
Status: Executed March 30th, 2021
Proposer: Arr00 (CAP)
Voting Results: 1,438,678 For and 0 Against
Summary: Proposal 42 transferred Compound governance from the Governor Alpha contract to the new Governor Bravo contract. Developed by Compound community members Arr00 and Blurr and discussed at length in the forums, Governor Bravo represents a major step forward in the capabilities of the community to govern the protocol. While Governor Alpha has become the de facto standard governance system for top DeFi protocols like Yearn and Uniswap, Bravo allows for an upgradable implementation and parameter tweaking, as well as new features like adding a voting reason, and an “Abstain” option. Integrated applications should note that this is a breaking change, and all future Compound governance calls should be sent to Governor Bravo. To celebrate the upgrade, Arr00 has also created a limited edition NFT that can be claimed by anyone who voted meaningfully on Governor Alpha. You can follow the steps on this guide or use this interface to claim the NFT, but be sure to do so quickly as it will expire in the next 24 hours!
Ongoing Discussions
See below for highlights from the Compound Community Forum, and join in the discussion:
Proposal: Appoint stakefish as one of Compound Chain’s validators - @jk_stakefish introduces Stakefish and asks the community to consider supporting their firm in a future vote to appoint Gateway validators.
Facilitate Trading Using Pooled Assets - @cryptocraig proposes that the protocol enables trading for supplied assets that are not yet borrowed out.
CP039: Avoiding liquidations - @TylerEther suggests three improvements to the current liquidation process, in order to better protect borrowers from accidental liquidation.
COMP Staking Collateralization - @Arr00 proposes a COMP staking mechanism and asks for community feedback on whether staked COMP should have a collateral factor.
Oracle Infrastructure: Chainlink Proposal - @katherine-rep.link provides additional context for a potential Chainlink price feed solution.
Be sure to either vote on proposals with your COMP, or delegate your COMP voting rights to a representative of your choice.
Developer Community Call Recap
The Compound community held a Developer Community Call last week to discuss ongoing protocol and application development. You can access an audio recording of the call here, or listen to it on your favorite podcast platform.
Markets Update
Current supply on Compound is at $13.3B from 285k unique addresses. 27% of this supply volume is ETH, 21% is USDC, and 20% is DAI. (source).
Open borrowing is at $5.6B from 7.8k unique addresses. 43% of this borrowing volume is USDC, 40% is USDC, and 7% is USDT. (source).
For live figures please refer to our Markets page.
Image Source: IntoTheBlock
Links & Discussions
Compound Labs CEO Robert Leshner will join Naval Ravikant, Anton Bukov, and Haseeb Qureshi on Clubhouse on April 2nd at 5pm PT to discuss the state of Decentralized Finance.
DeFi Saver built a migration tool that allows users to transfer their legacy WBTC positions on Compound to the new WBTC market.
Greenwood launched an interest rate optimizer for borrowers that will automatically borrow between Compound and Aave, depending on which protocol has the lowest borrowing rate.