Transcript of the Ampleforth office hours on 25.08.2021
Brandon:
Quick update on the SUSHI distribution for the Pescadero v1 geyser. I’m told the SUSHI tokens are on their way, but we don’t know a specific date. Distribution to past geyser participants will happen as soon as that happens using the exact same process as before. As far as I know, their delay since last April is a result of a pause for all liquidity aggregators while they examined activity in the space.
(I’ve seen some people asking about a query in a particular github repo in the Sushiswap project. The geyser went through a different process on their side, so that never had any bearing on us. If you don’t know what this is, no need to worry about it.)
Simon:
We are currently looking for a front end leaning full stack engineer — if any of you have someone good in mind, send them our way/let them know!
Question 1:
Wen updated roadmap?
I think you guys should give yourselves some credit and update the current one since lending and cross chain is done(they still show as incomplete on the site)
Brandon:
Thanks! Yeah the site can use a lot more work, since the AMPL ecosystem has changed so much since this version went live. I’m guessing we’ll see a big change ab it later rather than lots of small incremental changes. It’s being worked on.
Question 2:
Any cool partnerships in the works?
Richy:
There’s always a lot of things under discussion, for example our community NFT effort which we are hoping to transition into more of a community-led thing.
Also there are a few irons in the fire on the multi-chain side. As you are all probably aware Avalanche is making some significant moves in supporting a booming defi ecoystem (with amms + lending/borrowing), and others will be following suit quickly (like Polkadot).
We typically try to be more conservative in these answers to avoid false hype.
Question 3:
Can you provide any updates on the prometheus project?
Aalavandhan:
I think we need to wait for PRL team for updates :/
I’m intentionally leaving details vague as I don’t want to give away their secret sauce.
We are working with them to build a fixed rate ‘borrowing’ application which will let you borrow against your AMPL collateral. It’s going to be built on top of non-extractive “primitives” which are intended to be launched as public utilities, and eventually all DeFi projects can use.
In terms of development the contracts are going through their 2nd audit and we’re working on the UI, some router contracts and sourcing liquidity.
Borrowing/Lending is one application of these primitives. They can be combined in multiple ways to create an entire suite of protocols going up the fin-stack.
Mark (from PRL):
I’m here, but couldn’t have said it much better than this. We are looking to have something ready sometime in September.
Question 4:
Hi guys. Any updates on the Aave “Update AMPL interest rate curve to account for over-approximation in compounded interest”?
Brandon:
I think the best way to follow the Aave conversation is in the forum thread itself. I think everyone’s happy to see such good debate and engagement taking place, though! Naguib is working on some of what @air_tahini is asking about. I don’t want to jump his content before it’s ready though.
Question 5:
What is the team most excited about for AMPL looking forward going into the fall and beginning of 2022?
Richy:
I think the Prometheus team’s project is very exciting for expanding the Ampleforth ecosystem.
There might also be a truly cross-chain lending/borrowing platform that would be deployed later this year that AMPL should have a front-row seat for, this would be exciting in it’s truly cross-chain (cross-chain fungible collateral) versus currently we are seeing separate ‘islands’ of Aave deployments on different chains.
Question 6:
Do you guys think that Coinbase will invest some of that 500 million fund into AMPL?
Richy:
Haha anything is possible in theory… but if I had to guess — they will start with the majors like BTC/ETH. Likely AMPL would need to be listed on CB first before they can have serious internal considerations around this. But you’re right it would certainly be a very sensitive topic to discuss publicly.
Question 7:
Can we expect Balancer rewards from the Balancer geysers?
Brandon:
Not right now, no. I think Fiddlekins gave a good explanation here.
This could possibly be changed, but it will mean engaging with their project governance.
Question 8:
What conclusions have you formed with AMPL on Aave for the last month? Or is it still too early?
Aalavandhan:
My personal feeling is it’s still early. The liquidity still isn’t high enough to draw any conclusions.
But I think we can start, post Naguib current AIP and when liquidity grows and it graduates to being a mid-tier pool (10M — 25M).
Question 9:
Is Sam Lessin, Niall Ferguson, Noah Jessop or any of the other advisory board members apart from Manny still playing any sort of active role within Ampleforth? Or perhaps you still theorise with any of them?
Aalavandhan:
Noah has been surprisingly active. I think he’s turning degen. He can be seen posting on Aave governance forums.
Brandon:
We don’t typically like to comment on private relationships too much. They’re still involved regularly to semi-regularly. Some, like what Aalavandhan are more publicly visible than others.
Question 10:
What are the plan on Matic ,when do we get a geyser on Matic?
Richy:
We have made good progress here thanks to Aalavandhan. Ball is now in Polygon’s (Matic) court because of a UI change they need to make to enable AMPLs on the bridge. To be fully transparent, we are in a holding pattern as they have been slow to make progress on those changes.
We are still excited by the potential of that bridge as Aave exists on Polygon too. In the meantime there are other chains knocking on the door as well.
Follow up thoughts by Aalavandhan:
Once we are satisfied with the state of the Aave pool on Ethereum we can just follow Aave to all the chains they go on to.
Question 11:
Will Evan turn his drawings into NFT’s?
Richy:
Yes there is a surprise Evan NFT dropping for those who submitted a design to the community NFT initiative.
Question 12:
Are there any plans for an Avalanche integration?
Brandon:
It seems like that platform is gaining traction, and it also seems like the timing of that uptake is pretty predictable given their program incentives. So it seems like a solid opportunity to grow with a new ecosystem.
We’re thinking about this very seriously, but it’s still early enough that technical unexpected difficulties can still come up.
Question 13:
About governance, I know it’s a complicated process and I agree with the better take it slow and make it right approach. Could you tell us the vision you have for long term governance of AMPL through FORTH? (I really enjoyed seeing quadratic calculation on the NFT vote btw!).
Aalavandhan:
Yeah. We are using the NFT voting to iron out the kinks with the governance process.
Question 14:
Is there an official on-chain governance system setup somewhere?
Brandon:
I think this page gives a good breakdown of the governance pipeline: https://www.ampleforth.org/governance/
But I think it’s also important to look at governance holistically, rather than just the last on-chain step. It’s a series of sequential steps, each representing increasing levels of consensus from the community.
Everything is pretty much live, except we’re still in the process of handing over actual control to the governance contracts. This will happen over the course of the year, but is mostly just a turnkey action. Ideally, the first on-chain governance action can be proven out with a replaceable module to prove out the full pipeline (like the orchestrator). Then we can hand over control of the rest.
