Transcript of the Alchemist/Geyser v2 AMA on 21.07.2021 — Round 2
Question 1:
Can anyone elaborate on the plan to have Ledger/HW wallet support for minting crucibles & staking in aludels/geyser? Is it fairly simple, or more involved? And can we expect HW support for both aludels & geysers?
Joeh:
This is certainly an important feature that’s currently being experimented with at the moment. Once we’ve reached a stage where we’re comfortable with this then we’ll certainly be looking to implement something across both platforms.
Brandon:
Yes, we definitely want to support Ledger/HW wallets as soon as we can. (I’m guessing that most devs are HW wallet users already.) I /think/ it’s a plugin/api issue we had to wait on?
Question 2:
I’m fairly new to crucibles & minting. if we want to move funds from wallet to wallet, it sounds like you’d need to move your original LP token in addition to your NFT ERC-721 if I understand correctly. Is there any impact/implication to moving just one or the other?
Joeh:
If your LP tokens are within your Crucible, including any other ERC20 tokens, just moving your ERC721 (Crucible/UniversalVault) will move the contents with it, maintaining all subscriptions and tokens.
Question 3:
I read the Gosteps post about DeFi summer.. interesting.. Have a question about how it is possible to subscribe to 2 liquidity mining programs at once. If Liquidity mining should help spread a token to buyers.. how does it help the token if you’re getting 2x reward?
Brandon:
Here’s that post, for those who haven’t read it: https://medium.com/ampleforth/5-lessons-learned-in-liquidity-mining-f905c4842387
The original geyser program had two main goals (which is also the same for v2). The first was to stimulate liquidity to create a healthier ecosystem for AMPL. More liquidity for a monetary token makes that a more valuable money. The seconds was to create a fair & rules-based distribution mechanism to those who support the health of the network — similar to Bitcoin’s proof-of-work. Since Ampleforth isn’t it’s own blockchain, the equivalent of proof-of-work mining for us is providing liquidity.
Question 4:
Will we see an elastic alchemy token someday?
aalavandhan:
Yeah. We know some folks at the https://button.foundation/ who are working on creating elastic primitives from which you can build pretty much all of DeFi on top of. Anyone could pretty easily build lending applications, derivative products and such just with a few simple contracts. Do MIST holders want to borrow against their MIST? or hold a derivative which is 2x long MIST? Or build an entire derivatives platform governed by MIST? If you do .. I’m pretty sure theres a lot of scope for collaboration.
Question 5:
Do we know what the rewards will be for participating in the geysers?
Simon:
You can check out the AMPL rewards in the four live AMPL Geysers here: https://geyser.ampleforth.org/. Balancer has an automated system and therefore dual rewards in AMPL and Balancer are available in the Trinity and Smart Pool geysers.
To see the rewards just drill down on any of the four and you can see total reward amounts on the right hand side of the screen and you can see how much participation each Geyser has. The amount of participants in each Geyser will affect your share of rewards, but total rewards will stay the same..
Until there is a rebase! Negative rebases decrease the total pool of rewards and as you’ll notice positive rebases will increase the total rewards in each pool. If the 24 VWAP is in the threshold, there will be no supply change for AMPL that day.
This is because all wallets are affected equally by the rebase. The rebase happens everyday at 2am UTC.
Question 6:
Know alchemy doesn’t have a roadmap, but what communities are alchemists looking forward to integrate with?
ethen:
We’ve launched 4 products in 5 months. We are maturing as a team. We are looking at other products to launch, but nothing set in stone yet. What I can tell you is that Copper, Crucible, and mistX will only get better. Progression is our Obsession.
Also, rit our lead designer is coming on full-time starting August 1st. You know what that means. Can’t stop…won’t stop.
Question 7:
I assume you’re super excited about finally getting the AAVE vote moved to public voting. Assuming that it resolves positively (which it should, right?), what are your next steps to promote borrowing/lending on AAVE for AMPL, and how is Alchemist going to fit into all of this vision wise?
Brandon:
We’d like to create a geyser for incentivizing deposits into Aave (aAMPL). Before we do that though, we want a chance to see how the market develops organically.
Question 8:
Will all geyser v2 programs be compatible with crucibles?
Brandon:
Yes! Geyser v2 programs will show up on aludel and Geyser will whitelist alchemist crucibles. No reason for this to change unless the contract interfaces changed somehow.
Question 9:
“There must be a better way” — thought thegostep as he deposited his life savings to farm some yams.
aalavandhan:
As a spectator watching DeFi summer unfold last year, I was pretty disappointed by adversarial nature of growth strategies especially with regards to liquidity mining. We saw 2 major ‘vampire’ liquidity takeover ‘attacks’ worth tens of millions of dollars (YAM and SUSHI). This played out the way it did because of the way staking contracts at the time were designed. Non-custodial LM avoids this. Existence of on-chain liquidity can be mutually beneficial to multiple projects/platforms. Through universal vaults/crucibles, we can create more capital efficient and harmonious LM
Follow-up question:
I keep seeing it implied here and there that YAM made a vampire attack. Yam didn’t vampire attack anyone except maybe AMPL, and even that would be a stretch.
aalavandhan:
The 7 day farming initiative they started, they made LPs pick which reward program they want to subscribe to (ie Geyser or YAM). The point I was making was LPs didn’t have the make this choice if LM was designed more openly to begin with.
Question 10:
From what I understand, if you already have a universal vault, you can use it in lieu of a crucible to provide liquidity on Alchemist.
Joeh:
This isn’t actually supported yet, Crucibles only work with the site for the moment.
Question 11:
Is the AMA specifically for just integration with AMPL or do we get to ask anything?
Brandon:
My favorite foods are burritos
Question 12:
How do I use the geyser?
Joeh:
Get one of the Geyser staking tokens, There is a SLP, LP, BPT and a more special BPT which combats IL. Once you’ve got them, subscribe or stake to the relevant program. We’ve got links to the required tokens on the Crucible site if it makes it easier. Just chose the program and you’ll see the link further down the page.
Question 13:
It’s not just about holding AMPL by itself? AMPL must be paired as an LP right? Also, do you have to transfer AMPL inside the Crucible first beforehand?
Joeh:
There are different options, BPTs for example allow you to do single sided staking and they auto-buy the other tokens required.
Question 14:
Any updates on upcoming forth voting?
Brandon:
There are two AIPs in process, that I’d expect to go to vote in the not too distant future
- https://aips.ampleforth.org/ACCP/accp-4
- https://aips.ampleforth.org/AIPs/aip-5
But snapshot temp checks are also already live and open. They use delegated power as well.
Question 15:
Are there any examples of how it would be beneficial for projects to allow you to sub to multipule reward programs?
aalavandhan:
For example, existence of on-chain AMPL-ETH liquidity on sushiswap is beneficial for both the AMPL network and the Sushiswap platform. You can imagine a structure, where you have 2 geysers which giving out AMPL and SUSHI respectively, and users can stake their AMPL-ETH SLP tokens in both geysers (not saying this can/will happen, this is just an example).
Joeh:
thegostep covered this a little bit yesterday, but great partnerships come from interoperable contracts. The benefits for the community, apart from these reward programs will be our efforts in shared development. The idea is not just to better our own products but also being entirely open source, we allow the cryptosphere to adopt and use these benefits to make a better environment for you all.
Question 16:
Question for AMPL. When can we use our AMPL or liquidity provided with it as collateral for borrowing?
Brandon:
There is a forum proposal to add the Balancer “Trinity” pool LP tokens to the Aave AMM market. https://governance.aave.com/t/proposal-balancer-trinity-liquidity-pool-tokens-as-collateral/3173
I like this idea a lot, but think we should focus on getting borrow/lend unlocked or native AMPL first.
Follow-up question:
I agree native AMPL to be used as collateral should be first. Why is the proposal only for trinity pool? Why not add the other USDC balancer pool in too at least?
Brandon:
This was done by a community member. If you’d like to see the USDC smart pool (my favourite one), you can submit a new proposal or add on to the Trinity one to include both perhaps.
Question 17:
With AMPL’s rebasing mechanism occurring at a fixed time daily, has the community noticed any MEV trends around that time as a result of the predictable trading volume?
aalavandhan:
Nothing significant yet. But I’m pretty sure we’ll see a lot when AMPL is on a lending platform.
Question 18:
What is the Ampleforth view on other chains besides Ethereum?
Brandon:
We view multichain as being core to the DNA of Ample. Our first post on the topic was way back in Feb 2019: https://medium.com/ampleforth/independent-currency-in-a-multi-chain-world-67032dce8296
At the beginning of the project we made the (at the time) controversial decision to not build our own blockchain. Instead of building our own silo and asking people to come to us, we decided we’d rather go to where everyone is already storing value and making transactions. L2s are just an extension of this.
We’re currently on BSC, and working on Polygon (contracts are live and rebasing but no easy UI for transferring tokens over yet). We’re excited for L2s next.
Question 19:
If there is to be a MIST-AMPL pair, it is possible to realise the multiple reward program for same LP by rewarding MIST via aludel, and rewarding AMPL via geyser?
Joeh:
This is an interesting idea.
Question 20:
Do you foresee a future in which the Alchemist Crucibles can become a new DeFi primitive to streamline and consolidate efforts to cooperate between liquidity mining rewards more easily, and sort of create a go-to-implementation in which no new development is required to give out double/triple/quadruple rewards simply for being in your own Crucible? Historically this has always been a huge effort to make this happen between protocols on a smart contract level.
Brandon:
I can see a future where Universal Vaults get standardized into something like an EIP and then built into wallets like Argent. Whether this happens we’ll just have to wait and see, I think.
Question 21:
Will using crucible/universal vault as collateral for loan be possible / a trend in the future?
Joeh:
So I can say that there have been interest shown externally but it’s not something we’ve considered from our side. Our contracts are permissionless, so if a project wanted to make this happen, I don’t see this being a problem.
aalavandhan:
Yea I think the ability to borrow against your universal vault is a pretty cool Idea. In the real world people do this with their stocks all the time. The nice thing is you don’t have to unstake your positions or stop accruing rewards. You can just pay back the loan and get your vault back.
It would be a game changer if someone builds this. This is pretty easy I can tell you how if anyone’s interested.
Question 22:
Is minting an alchemist crucible required to enter the Geyser V2?
aalavandhan:
No you could go to the geyser page and create a universal vault instead. Universal vaults and crucibles are essentially the same thing and interoperable between the platforms.
Question 23:
What would be the benefits for an AMPL holder to use vaults or alchemist vaults. Multiplier of APY?
Brandon:
Crucible uses the same code from Universal Vaults, so you can use whichever you like!
Question 24:
Aside from the contents of the vaults/crucibles, do you foresee other ways to use these? I can imagine indexes forming around vaults, or even subscribing your assets to projects like ribbon etc. Or perhaps art projects forming around “skinned” vaults/crucibles.
Joeh:
Gamification is certainly one other idea that’s been popping up quite a lot and would be great to see this being used. There are some ideas floating at the moment on how we can expand the use cases by further development(edited)
Question 25:
Will it possible to mine MIST with any of the AMPL geysers with the rewards being so low this time around?
Joeh:
We’re at the beginning of the rewards program for the Aludel v1.5. Also don’t forget we’ve got an inflation event happening later today, although rewards are now distributed differently, you’re not actually losing out in comparison to the previous program.
Question 26:
New geyser rewards seem to be small compared to previous geyser rewards. Any thoughts on that?
Brandon:
I could see that if you only look a raw numbers. It’s healthy though to keep in mind the nature of the rewards as well. A high APY of an inflationary token (or new or high-risk token) is economically different than a similar APY on a non-inflationary token. AMPL is non-dillutive like Bitcoin, so you always know what percentage of the network you own. This has a lot of value.
Question 27:
How do you see $FORTH integrate into the entire ecosystem for $AMPL? I know that you’re taking a very passive community-first stance, but internally you surely must have discussed many outcomes and vectors for slowly but surely putting AMPL into the hands of FORTH holders…do you have any reflections around this?
Brandon:
I wrote a bunch of thoughts down in this medium piece: https://medium.com/ampleforth/the-state-of-discretion-and-governance-forth-ec2f710d2635
Question 28:
Anyway to lower the 1% mist emissions? Seems really high inflation.
ethen:
We’ve had several VC’s reach out to fund us. But that’s not our style. We leave that to other projects.
Brandon:
I see the high inflation as the defining characteristic of MIST, in a way. Can you use inflation to fund an accelerator that outpaces the inflation? Alchemist is trying to answer that question.
Closing thoughts by Joeh and Simon
Joeh:
There are a lot of fantastic ideas in here on how a universalVault and Crucible can be used, and with the launch of #chaos-lab it would be great to pitch your ideas to other community members in there, gain some interest to your ideas to get others to join in and help make it a reality. We’re very supportive of that and we hope to see this shape over the coming period
Simon:
When the Geysers launched just over 1 year ago, not a lot of people had used AMMs and DEXs. Their ability to use web3 was quite limited on average as well. When the Geysers launched, it was a really fun time — people were really interested in using Uniswap in order to get LP’s for the Geyser programs, and we were rapidly upping the technical game of the community. And at that time a lot of the space was flocking to AMPL — we had over 50% of all of Uniswap’s volume for a couple of days — that would be hard to achieve right now.
Fast forward to Alchemist and the Crucible — it was amazing to see people get minted as Certified Alchemists. Before the interface was up at https://crucible.alchemist.wtf/ the vibe here in the Alchemist chat was incredible — people were helping others use the command line for the first time as the were working to create their crucibles and subscribe to the Aludel. You can see it in the Alchemist community to this day and in the Ampleforth community now that we are live with our Universal Vaults for Geyser v2.
It’s really fun helping people get better at “crypto” and the technical side of things, and it’s amazing to see the community helping each other. I think its generally great for the space as people up their skills on average and can partake in more advanced truly DeFi programs that just don’t exist in traditional finance. I’m excited about this integration as it helps expand peoples capabilities. I like to think Ampleforth and Alchemist by continually innovating and delivering new and interesting products helps push the forefront of whats happening in the space, and the skills that everyone has as they increase them in order to participate
I love how communities can form and stay apprised to what’s coming next. You got to see a bit of this as some Ampleforth community members got interested in Alchemist early. The cross community pollination is really cool. That happens with Ampleforth and Alchemist as new things are launched and other projects spawn out of them. I bet a lot more, new projects spawn out of Ampleforth and Alchemist.
That same kind of thing could happen in a really big way with Copper. Alchemists won’t really even need to connect the dots on whats next if they pay attention to what’s launching on Copper and participate in any events where projects launching on Copper share what they’re up to.
