Transcript of the Alchemist/Geyser v2 AMA on 20.07.2021
Simon:
Thanks for joining today’s AMA with Senior Alchemists! Alchemist is a project is a friendly project in the space that has done some impressive work, and there are quite a few people who are members of both communities.
Question 1:
With there be a Mist/Ample/Eth tripool or something of thie like
Sal_ash:
We haven’t discussed it but it’s a cool idea
Question 2:
How do the geyser v2 vaults differ from alchemist crucibles?
sal_ash:
They are pretty similar contracts, but the sources of rewards are different.
Brandon:
Geyser V2 Universal Vaults and Alchemist crucibles are all built on the same underlying code. We’ve whitelisted crucibles in our geyser program, so if you’ve already created a crucible, you can use that on the geyser too.
Follow-up question:
Whitelist v.1 aludel or v.1.5 aludel?
Brandon:
We’re whitelisting the “crucible”, which is the universal vault part. The “aludel” is the reward program (like the geyser program), and separate. So current crucibles are fine.
Question 3:
how does the Ampleforth and Alchemist partnership work?
thegostep:
The way the best partnerships work — interoperable smart contracts.
Question 4:
What does this partnership look like from a user perspective?
thegostep:
Basically, crucibles are compatible with geysers and universal vaults are compatible with aludel — it’s exciting to build an ecosystem of interoperable liquidity mining.
Question 5:
Can I use the Crucible to subscribe to Geyser v2?
Brandon:
You don’t need a crucible to interact with GeyserV2, though. When you first deposit into the geyser, if you don’t have a vault it will create one for you automatically.
thegostep:
Yes you can use a crucible if you have one already, which will save you some sweet sweet gas
aalavandhan:
Yeah. If you already hold a crucible and goto https://geyser.ampleforth.org/; the app should pick it up and let you interact through it.
Question 6:
Alchemist is a cool protocol! But I think a lot of people don’t really understand what it does, would be interested to see what the alchemist guys have to say about their project!
sal_ash:
We’re a DAO focused on building anything and everything, We have three products for now:
- mistX
- Crucible
- Copper
Question 7:
Will the MIST inflation change or stay at 1%?
sal_ash:
For now mist inflation isn’t going to change, it may be changed in the future.
Question 8:
So we can use crucible OR use a universal vault created when you attempt to deposit into geyser V2, is that right?
thegostep:
Correct.
Question 9:
Will the “crucibles” be able to participate in any GAMEIFICATION. Say if @forgottenrunes wizards want to battle over them; is this possible?
sal_ash:
At this point they won’t be, maybe a cool future feature though.
Question 10:
Wen Geyser V2 officially live with rewards?
aalavandhan:
It should most likely go live later today.
Question 11:
so.. if I’ve got a crucible with mist in it..and i have some ample.. what is the procedures i go through.. and for what purpose.?.. is this to stake in multiple pools?
thegostep:
Go to https://geyser.ampleforth.org/ and your crucibles should show up! I think the geyser programs will also appear on https://crucible.alchemist.wtf/
Question 12:
So as a Crucible owner I still earn my Mist/ETH pool rewards but can simultaneously earn ampl with geyser v2?
Brandon:
A Universal Vault is kind of like a virtual wallet onchain that can hold many different types of LP tokens. The cool thing about the geyser v2 reward programs is that they don’t require moving these LP tokens out of your vault. They’re non-custodial and instead you just lock them in place in the vault. So this means that that same LP tokens can also participate in multiple programs simultaneously.
Question 13:
Are there plans to open up geysers across chains and l2s? There’s not much liquidity on BSC/Polygon rn, and multichain geyser could help to increase liquidity.
aalavandhan:
This is something we’ve thought a lot about. We should save this for our office hours for a deeper discussion.
Question 14:
For someone who has never used geysers, what are the differences between the old ones and the new ones that might attract someone like me to start using them?
thegostep:
The new ones will use geyser v2 smart contracts! It should make it easier to subscribe to all compatible reward programs going forward.
Question 15:
So my crucible is my private geyser. Are there some other differences aside from it being a NFT controlled by me?
joeh:
Your Crucible is the equivalent of a UniversalVault, a GeyserV2 is the equivalent of an Aludel
Follow-up question:
It means I need to unsubscribe Aludel for staking crucible in the geyser V2..right?
joeh:
Not at all
Question 16:
Do we need to load ampl on to a crucible in order to profit from program?
Brandon:
The first geyser v2 programs will target the same platforms that the current crop of geysers do. These are:
- AMPL / ETH on Uniswap v2
- AMPL / ETH on SushiSwap
- AMPL / USDC Smart Pool on Balancer that reduces impermanent loss, and
- AMPL / ETH / BTC “Trinity” Pool on Balancer
Question 17:
Will Alchemist be opening up new Aludel reward programs to pair with the V2 geysers available such that users can begin to benefit from participating in simultaneous reward programs?
sal_ash:
We haven’t discussed this yet buuuuuuuut… the only plan is there is no plan!
Question 18:
Can we subscribe our MIST/ETH LP to a GeyserV2?
thegostep:
Not on this round of geysers since geysers are focused on creating liquidity for AMPL pairs it could be fun to have a MIST/AMPL pair in the future.
Question 19:
Does the crucible multiplier affect the geyser at all?
Brandon:
Each reward program is independent, with its own multiplier.
Question 20:
When are we gonna get an AMPL stable coin?
aalavandhan:
A stable coin backed by AMPL isn’t too far off. There are a couple of base primitives we need before we can get there. (Which are very close to going live :))
Question 21:
I always thought that becoming a stable coin was the main focus of Ampleforth?
aalavandhan:
This zombie idea (that AMPL was an intended stable coin) is something we’ve battled with over the last 2 years. I see more and more people “get” it now. Though we started off wanting to build an algorithmic stable coin (called fragments), we soon realized creating an unbreakable unit of account (now AMPL, which is not a stablecoin) is actually far more powerful and seminal. http://thinking.farm/essays/2020-12-29-designing-money.
Question 22:
What would be really cool is if you could stake $MIST for xMIST and stake $AMPL for xAMPL then create an LP of xMIST/xAMPL and be able to subscribe that an aludel/geyser.
thegostep:
Giga-brain.
aalavandhan:
This is how liquidity mining on pancake swap works.
Question 23:
What are some future plans to add to this new geyser / crucible system?
sal_ash:
I think you should join the chaos lab (on the Alchemist Discord) and come up with some stuff, community is the creative engine.
aalavandhan:
I think next steps is making the universal vault/crucible compatible with UniV3’s canonical liquidity mining contract. (I think it should already work because it supports external calls) .. and get as many projects using universal vaults; making LM as seamless as possible.
Question 24:
I think most can relate to this question: I already own a Crucible with MIST/ETH LP Staked. If I want to participate in the Geyser V2 Rewards Program what do I need to do? Buy AMPL?
thegostep:
Yes — you would need to buy the tokens and provide liquidity the integration means you can do so without leaving the safety of your crucible.
Brandon:
Get one of the four supported AMPL LP tokens, place them in your crucible, go to geyser.ampleforth.org, and subscribe to the geyser should do it.
Question 25:
Does this partnership signal the possibility of cross-chain LPs in the future, as well as non-eth transactions for mistX, which can be exchanged for stablecoins to offset the fees, thus eliminating the need for additional ETH.
sal_ash:
It’s possible but don’t think it’s something we’re working on atm.
Question 26:
Do you guys for-see universal vaults/crucibles becoming an average DeFi user’s main wallet?
sal_ash:
That’s the point.
aalavandhan:
It was designed with this intent. However like other standards it’s hard to enforce. Organically, if it gains traction and lot of projects start using it, could be.
Brandon:
I can see universal vaults becoming standardized into something like an EIP, then wallets (like say Argent) adding support for it. That’s all very speculative though. We’ll see where it goes!
Follow-up question:
So if this becomes it’s own wallet what is there to differentiate it from other wallets out there?
sal_ash:
It’s smart and transferable my dude. You can’t sell you’re wallet but you can sell your crucible.
Question 27:
Collaboration with Alchemist and OlympusDAO $OHM possible?
sal_ash:
It’s certainly possible, maybe OHMies should push for this on their side.
thegostep:
If theres a will, theres a way.
Question 28:
Anyway to transact with the crucible inside a hardware in the future?
joeh:
It’s on the todo list for sure.
Question 29:
Why are crucibles considered safe?
thegostep:
Because LP tokens never leave your custody.
Closing thoughts by Simon:
So there is no need to unstake LP tokens from the platforms themselves (i.e. Balancer, Sushi, Uniswap). But participants in v1 Geysers have taken their funds and put them in the Geyser smart contracts — so those v1 Geyser users will need to remove their LP tokens from the v1 Geyser smart contracts and put their LP tokens into the Universal Vault (or Alchemist Crucible).
Once LP tokens are in the Universal Vault (or Alchemist Crucible) users can then subscribe to whatever Geyser program their LP tokens are eligible for — i.e. their AMPL/USDC smart pool LP tokens would be eligible for the Old Faithful v2 program. As mentioned in the AMA, the v2 Geyser allows the user to retain custody. In the v1 Geyser participants had to surrender custody to the Geyser smart contracts. This distinction of who custodies the LP tokens is the reason why v1 participants aren’t automatically in the v2 Geyser programs.
Something else that’s pretty interesting: Every time there was a new Geyser (not a top up) we heard the community. It was really clear that no one liked spending gas to move from Beehive v1 to Beehive v2 etc. especially during times of expensive gas. Solving that was an important item. I think the rest of the space can at times get caught up in an idea without doing the challenging work of trying to think through all the implications or trying to think of a high and powerful utility for something — you can see this with the rebase.
AMPL doesn’t rebase because the rebase is novel as a great many projects have. AMPL rebases to meet a specific objective: A non-collateralize DeFi building block that can be used to denominate contracts and serve as a crypto native unit of account. AMPL needs the rebase and the elasticity of supply in order to hit these lofty and important goals. This comes up again with NFT’s.
NFT’s are data structures, one way to use them is for the collectable nature, but they can have much deeper utility as well. The team took a look at this and put the effort in to say, how can we capture that utility to meet the objectives and goals of the project? Well it turns out using NFT’s in this Geyser v2 fashion helps serve the goals of the project. The Geyser v2 does a great job of mitigating gas costs geyser program to geyser program. The gas burden is less from geyser to geyser. Allowing users to custody their own tokens is another major win.
Look for TheGoStep’s article that comes out later today, it dives into some really cool concepts and considerations. It’s one of my favourite macro view point pieces to come out lately. It doesn’t exactly discuss what i’ve just said, but it digs into some really cool considerations and observations.
