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DefiHarmony

VenomDAO 2022 Plans and Roadmap

Building liquidity infrastructure for a multi-chain world

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It’s hard to believe that we’re coming close to the 1-year anniversary of VenomDAO.


What initially started as an experiment and a proof of concept has now turned into one of Harmony’s leading native DeFi projects.


2021 was a journey into the unknown, on an unproven blockchain with exciting possibilities. Back when ViperSwap launched, there wasn’t even $1,000,000 of TVL on Harmony; now we’re at $1,200,000,000 — absolutely mind blowing when you think about it!


2021 was also the year that many new users were introduced to DeFi, particularly on Harmony.


We’re proud to have played a leading role in introducing DeFi to users on Harmony:

  • 🐍 March 2021: Launch of ViperSwap — the first AMM/DEX offering incentives for providing liquidity and popularizing yield farming on Harmony. This was the very first popular DeFi protocol on Harmony, which introduced a large percentage of the Harmony community to DeFi. Introduced the novel lockup/unlock system on Harmony which was later adapted by a countless number of forks.
  • 🪙 April 2021: The introduction of DeFi Week — an opportunity for users to bridge DeFi tokens from Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, to yield farm with on ViperSwap.
  • 🗓️ June 2021: Snake Month — A return to the legendary 128x rewards multiplier which brought new awareness of the protocol to new Harmony users.
  • 🐍 July 2021: The introduction of the ‘ViperNest’ — a single token staking platform inspired by PancakeSwap’s Syrup pools.
  • 🪙 July 2021: The introduction of CobraSwap on BSC — our first multi-chain expansion.
  • 💙 August 2021: The introduction of ‘Community Pools’. The community pools allow other DeFi protocols to build liquidity for their tokens by incentivizing users to stake their LPs and/or tokens. A few memorable projects:
  • - $XYA (Freyala)
  • - $VINCI (DaVinci)
  • - $HPLAY (Harmony Play)
  • - $GAME (Game Token)
  • - $KURO (Kuro Shiba)
  • 🤝 November 2021: The launch of Euphoria — an algorithmic reserve currency on Harmony, based around the $WAGMI token. Euphoria has built up a treasury of $40m, mostly in stablecoins, which will be used to generate further yield for its users as well as incubate new and exciting projects on Harmony.
  • ⛓️December 2021: One of the first protocols to integrate Chainlink price feeds when they went live on Harmony Mainnet. Exchange listings: $VIPER and $WAGMI were listed on MEXC.

What happens next?

While Metaverse, GameFi, and gaming were the leading narratives of 2021, we’re still 100% committed to DeFi and advancing it on Harmony and additional blockchains.


Even though DeFi wasn’t the hottest narrative of 2021, the entire sector saw a ~12x increase in TVL throughout the year.


With looming interest rate hikes and a market seemingly looking to risk-off — where are yields to be had?


Sticking the cash in a 0.01% APR bank account and getting rekt by inflation? Or as an institution — sticking the cash in bonds or equivalent instruments meanwhile there’s 8–20% yield to be had on stablecoins in crypto?


2021 also clearly demonstrated that the big hedge fund boys on Wall Street massively underperformed. In aggregate, TradFi hedge funds returned just 10% — massively underperforming the S&P 500 index’s returns of 26.9% and getting absolutely smoked by crypto hedge funds which returned 214%.


It is no surprise, then, that institutions are eyeing DeFi — and it’s likely 2022 could be the year we see them and regular TradFi investors starting to deploy some serious capital into the space.


We firmly believe that DeFi is the sector that will bring blockchain to the masses and that fast and low-cost chains like Harmony will enable everyone to participate in the true DeFi revolution.


Liquidity infrastructure

Our core objective for 2022 is to build the liquidity infrastructure of Harmony.


Our goal is to become a complete solution for all aspects of DeFi: swapping, lending, borrowing, earning yield, yield optimization, and leverage trading.


Here are some of the changes and new products we’ll introduce throughout the year:

  • AMM/DEX: ViperSwap — new UI, pivot to veVIPER and decentralized reward allocation via gauges, gamification and NFT:s that unlock unique functionality.
  • Money market: new upcoming product aimed at capturing additional TVL for Harmony, providing deeper liquidity within the VenomDAO ecosystem and providing additional use cases for the VIPER and WAGMI tokens.
  • Protocol Owned Liquidity (PoL): WAGMI — new bonds that enable auto-staking and flexible vesting. Wagmi Pro — bonds as a service for existing Harmony projects that want to own their own liquidity. Deeper integration with ViperSwap and integration with a re-imagined version of our upcoming launchpad:
  • Launchpad: a new and re-imagined version incorporating a brand new launchpad concept where projects will be able to bootstrap and own their own liquidity (using Wagmi PRO) the moment they launch. A complete turnkey solution from project inception to fully accessible and openly traded protocol.
  • Stableswap platform: new product entirely dedicated to stablecoin swaps, largely inspired by Curve.finance and Platypus.finance.
  • Perpetual/leverage platform: new product that will utilize ViperSwap and our upcoming money market for leveraged trading or leveraged yield farming.
  • Liquid ONE: Comfy — an algorithmic token pegged to $ONE via seigniorage. We aim for this to become a liquid alternative to $ONE, which can be used across all Harmony DeFi protocols, allowing more $ONE to remain staked with validators to secure the blockchain.
Let’s explore these in more detail.


AMM/DEX: ViperSwap and the path towards veVIPER and community governed gauges

One of the leading DeFi narratives during 2021 was the Curve wars.



Curve’s novel vote locking and gauge system has created a fully decentralized mechanism where the community fully controls in what proportion certain pools/gauges receive CRV rewards.


The CRV reward mechanism has become a very powerful tool and a more optimal way for certain protocols to reward their users. This has resulted in protocols competing with other protocols via the usage of bribes and other incentives to acquire as high emissions as possible for their pools/gauges.


veVIPER? What does this mean for ViperSwap?

By adopting this model and a new veVIPER token (voting escrow VIPER) the control of pool allocations will be 100% controlled by participants that lock VIPER as veVIPER. veVIPER won’t replace VIPER, but will be an additional token in the ViperSwap ecosystem.


Acquiring it

  • To get veVIPER, users must lock VIPER tokens for any timeframe between 1 week to 4 years. The longer VIPER is locked, the more veVIPER (and thus, voting power) the user will receive.
  • The amount of veVIPER slowly decreases in the user’s wallet until it reaches 0. This signifies that the lock period has ended and the user can withdraw their $VIPER.
  • veVIPER is a non-transferable token. Once you lock your VIPER, your veVIPER voting power remains attached to your wallet.

Using it

  • veVIPER holders will be able to decide how pool/gauges are rewarded on ViperSwap.
  • New project launching on Harmony? Get your community to vote for your project’s gauge using veVIPER and increase the rewards.
  • Humble yield farmer? Put your earned VIPER to use and ensure you’re earning even more.
  • veVIPER will eventually also control the allocation of the VIPER acquired by the DEX VIPER buyback mechanism (1/3rd of all earned trading fees).
  • veVIPER will also boost farming yields for its holders, potentially to a maximum of 250% / 2.5x. A pool that normally yields 100% APR would potentially yield up to 250% APR for veVIPER holders.

Why is it good for ViperSwap?

  • Decreasing sell pressure — Locked VIPER tokens can’t be sold, will counteract inflation, and potentially stabilize the price of the token.
  • Increasing buy pressure — Owning veVIPER results in a significant yield boost for farmers. Farmers will be incentivized to buy more VIPER -> lock as veVIPER -> earn even more VIPER.
  • Decreasing the circulating supply — Locking VIPER as veVIPER will effectively decrease the circulating supply, making the token more scarce and desirable.
  • Decentralization — veVIPER and the gauge factory will allow for the community to 100% control which pools/gauges are incentivized on ViperSwap and to what degree they are incentivized.

New UI, gamification and NFT:s

It’s no secret that the stock Uniswap V2 UI ViperSwap utilizes is kinda… boring. We know. It has served us well but it’s time to create something unique.

In 2022, ViperSwap, CobraSwap, and any potential other DEX we launch will get a much needed face lift. During this process we will also introduce gamification elements and NFT:s as a part of the DEX experience. ViperSwap will not turn into a yet another GameFi product — the DEX will remain the core product and the gamification/NFT features will be more similar to e.g. Zapper’s gamification features rather than a complete GameFi franchise.


The gamification module would allow users to complete special quests, earn XP, level up, and claim VenomDAO NFTs, similar to Zapper’s Quest system. Users will be able to combine their NFTs to upgrade their rarity level, with some limited edition NFTs being reserved only for owners of certain rarity levels. We aim to introduce ongoing seasons, each of which will unlock new quests, new NFTs, and new rewards.


Limit orders

ViperSwap and CobraSwap will finally also receive a much requested feature: limit orders.


CobraSwap

All AMM/DEX changes mentioned above for ViperSwap will also make their way to CobraSwap.


Money market

You can’t build an overall liquidity infrastructure without a money market.


While there are existing money markets on Harmony, and AAVE might be launching during Q1, we still firmly believe that we need our own money market.


Having our own money market will allow us to deeply integrate it with other products and initiatives we’re planning for this year, e.g. leveraged trading/perpetuals and leveraged yield farming. It would also allow us to collateralize certain assets, e.g. VIPER and


WAGMI, that existing money markets on Harmony might not be interested in offering on their platforms.


Combining one of Harmony’s leading native DEX:es with its own money market would allow us to create deep liquidity within our ecosystem.


Protocol owned liquidity: WAGMI Pro, auto-staking bonds and flexible vesting

Euphoria will be upgraded to use OHM v2 style bonds that will offer auto-staking and the possibility of flexible vesting schedules.


We will also launch WAGMI Pro which will enable protocols on Harmony to run their own bond programs and own their own liquidity.


The WAGMI token will also play a crucial role in the revamped version of our launchpad product:


Launchpad

While a launchpad was included in last year’s rough guideline of the projects we might implement, we never went ahead and implemented it — primarily because of the lack of projects launching on Harmony at the time.


Now that Harmony has experienced exponential growth and massive exposure to both new users as well as developers at the end of 2021, we believe that it’ll be a lot more beneficial to deploy a launchpad product this year.


We’re also not just deploying yet another launchpad — we’re going to integrate it with Wagmi PRO, meaning that incubating projects can be offered a full range of solutions for their needs:

  • IDO/presale mechanism
  • Seamless integration with ViperSwap
  • Protocol owned liquidity of their liquidity on ViperSwap

The WAGMI token will also play a leading role — holding WAGMI will give you access to exclusive launchpad pools with discounts and/or more attractive perks. VIPER will also similarly give access to similar pools.


Stableswap platform

We intend to build a new product/platform that is solely focused on stablecoin swaps. This platform will be largely inspired by Curve.finance, the newly released Platypus.finance platform on Avalanche and Andre & Daniele’s new ve(3,3) product on Fantom. This

product will aim to become the native stablecoin swap for Harmony.


A native stableswap platform would allow for even more stablecoin liquidity to flow to Harmony. Similar to Platypus.finance we’d be able to provide a higher APY compared to e.g. Curve.finance which could entice even more participants to bridge assets over to Harmony.


Perpetual/leverage platform

We’re intending to build a leverage/perpetuals trading platform that will allow users to trade tokens on Harmony directly on-chain with leverage.


This protocol will have deep integration with both ViperSwap and our upcoming money market.


VIPER holders will be able to utilize the token to get discounts on trading and margin fees.


Liquid ONE

We’ll launch Comfy — an algorithmic token pegged to $ONE via seigniorage, largely inspired by Tomb.finance.


We aim for this to become a liquid alternative to $ONE, which can be used across all Harmony DeFi protocols, allowing more $ONE to remain staked with validators to secure the blockchain.


Multi-chain and ZK scaling solutions

With the rising amount of new and interesting L1 alternatives and the excitement around new L2 ZK scaling solutions, we are actively looking at VenomDAO and its position in a multi-chain, L1 & L2 world.


While we’ve previously experimented with multi-chain expansion, our positioning wasn’t optimal.


An important reason for VenomDAO’s success on Harmony was likely related to an early-mover advantage, something we clearly didn’t have on BSC. But that does not mean we can’t start early on additional chains or L2s and get the same advantage there.


We’re monitoring the rise of the new batch of L1s and upcoming L2/ZK solutions. We are actively looking for suitable L1 and L2:s on which to deploy our products, and for now we’ve identified a few potential options where the EVM ecosystem is essentially brand

new and where we could potentially get an early-mover advantage.


Rest assured that new multi-chain expansions will happen differently compared to the BSC expansion.


Whenever an eventual new multi-chain expansion happens, VIPER, COBRA and WAGMI holders will get airdropped a certain amount of the initial supply of the new token.


Rebranding

Some time during the year, VenomDAO, the DAO, will be rebranded.


All products will still have their current names, and tokens will still remain the same.


So why rebrand?


Back when ViperSwap and VenomDAO launched, it was essentially just an experiment and a proof of concept. At that time, Uniswap already existed, and Quickswap and Pangolin were somewhat new, and all of them featured animals or creatures as their logos. A name was needed for the new DEX, and since the animal/creature theme was prevalent at that time, ViperSwap was eventually chosen as the name.


The VenomDAO brand was pretty much an afterthought. When ViperSwap launched, there was a need to come up with an overall brand that would serve as a broader theme for multiple products. Snakes are often venomous, and so are other things in nature; it would also allow for multiple new product names matching the overall brand name. While the name might’ve worked previously, it currently doesn’t really represent what we intend to build in DeFi.


“VenomDAO” unfortunately sounds more like a weird MMORPG or some obscure game rather than something related to DeFi.


We haven’t yet decided on what we’ll rebrand to. We’re also open to community suggestions. All we know is that we need to better align our brand with DeFi and the DeFi primitives we’re building.


GameFi, Gaming, and the Metaverse

GameFi was the first thing you searched for, right, anon?



As we’ve previously stated our main commitment will remain to DeFi and to continue building the liquidity infrastructure of Harmony.


While we have no intentions to create yet another fantasy themed GameFi franchise, we are not 100% ruling out *eventually* creating some kind of metaverse product.


One potential option could be to utilize some of the future Euphoria treasury yields to fund and bootstrap a separate metaverse project where the WAGMI token could be the central component of such a metaverse.


At this stage we are simply considering this idea and we actively invite the community to share their ideas and opinions.


Updates to existing products

  • AMM/DEX: ViperSwap — new UI, pivot to veVIPER and decentralized reward allocation via gauges, gamification and NFT:s that unlock unique functionality.
  • Protocol Owned Liquidity (PoL): WAGMI — new bonds that enable auto-staking and flexible vesting. Wagmi Pro — bonds as a service for existing Harmony projects that want to own their own liquidity. Further integrations with upcoming products.


New products

  • Money market: new upcoming product aimed at capturing additional TVL for Harmony, providing deeper liquidity within the VenomDAO ecosystem and providing additional use cases for the VIPER and WAGMI tokens.
  • Launchpad: a new and re-imagined launchpad concept where projects will be able to bootstrap and own their own liquidity (using Wagmi PRO) the moment they launch. A complete turnkey solution from project inception to fully accessible and openly traded protocol.
  • Stableswap platform: new product entirely dedicated to stablecoin swaps, largely inspired by Curve.finance and Platypus.finance.
  • Perpetual/leverage platform: new product that will utilize ViperSwap and our upcoming money market for leveraged trading or leveraged yield farming.
  • Liquid ONE: Comfy — an algorithmic token pegged to $ONE via seigniorage.


Timeline


Q1

  • AMM/DEX: ViperSwap — new UI, pivot to veVIPER and decentralized reward allocation via gauges.
  • Money market: deployment and improvements of the initial version.
  • Liquid ONE: Comfy — an algorithmic token pegged to $ONE via seigniorage.
  • Protocol Owned Liquidity (PoL): WAGMI — new bonds that enable auto-staking and flexible vesting.
  • Multi-chain: Potential multi-chain/ZK DEX expansion


Q2

  • AMM/DEX: CobraSwap — new UI deployed and adjusted for CobraSwap
  • AMM/DEX: ViperSwap & CobraSwap — gamification and NFT:s that unlock unique functionality on the platform.
  • Money market: further improvements, new features and additional collateralizable assets.
  • Stableswap platform: new product entirely dedicated to stablecoin swaps
  • Protocol Owned Liquidity (PoL): WAGMI Pro — bonds as a service.


Q3

  • Rebrand: a new overall brand identity better reflecting our commitment to DeFi
  • AMM/DEX: ViperSwap & CobraSwap limit orders
  • Launchpad: a new and re-imagined launchpad concept where projects will be able to bootstrap and own their own liquidity (using Wagmi PRO) the moment they launch
  • Multi-chain: Potential multi-chain/ZK DEX and/or money market expansion


Q4

  • Perpetual/leverage platform: new product that will utilize ViperSwap and our upcoming money market for leveraged trading and/or leveraged yield farming.
  • Metaverse: potential spin-off metaverse product
This roadmap should be interpreted as an estimate for what we’ll implement this year. We reserve the right to completely change what will be implemented and when based on market dynamics and market conditions. The world is constantly changing and so, too, are roadmaps.


About ViperSwap

VenomDAO is a cross-chain, multi-product DeFi DAO. Our goal is to become a complete solution for all aspects of DeFi: swapping, lending, borrowing, earning yield, yield optimization, and leverage trading.

Where to buy ViperSwap?