In this post, we review the latest in the Brrito project, starting with brrETH, Brrito’s liquid staked ETH token.
We started hearing rumbles of brrETH a few weeks ago in The Llamas Discord, with core developer KP dropping hints that he was working on a new kind of liquid staked ETH token.
We were intrigued, to say the least. A liquid staked ETH token with ties to Curve’s community of builders?
Well, now we know much more about brrETH.
To start with, it’s an alternative to cbETH on the fast-growing Base chain. Built atop Compound’s lending market on Base, brrETH earns a yield similar to cbETH’s 4.4%. The custom contracts are permissionless, with no deposit or withdrawal fees. The protocol can set a reward rate capped at 10%.
But brrETH will also be a foundation for the next stage of Brrito’s growth, because it will power Brrito apps and generate fees for stakers of BRR (more on BRR staking below). In essence, Brrito will be bootstrapping its app ecosystem with its own form of liquid staked ETH.
The possibilities are interesting to consider, especially with the recent high-profile launch of the Blast chain, which is closely connected to the Blur.io NFT protocol. Blur’s founder has said that he developed Blast as a way to scale the Blur app. What kinds of uses can be unlocked by a liquid staked ETH that powers a suite of revenue-generating apps?
It appears the brrETH contracts are already brrrring, with deposits to open on Dec. 8.
It must be a wonderful moment for a builder to see a new creation spring to life on the chain. KP shared the image in a chat with other Llamas and the excitement was tangible.
Also, a note about the Compound connection to brrETH. KP recently discovered a bug in an unrelated Compound contract on Base and helped the Compound and OpenZeppelin teams patch the bug:
This is an impressive achievement, and it should give Brrito users some reassurance about the safety of brrETH. It is not easy to find a vulnerability in a project as established as Compound. Congratulations to KP for finding and responsibly reporting the vuln and helping keep DeFi users safe.
This contribution should also generate some goodwill for Brrito in the Base community, where a number of DeFi projects are taking root and stand to flourish next year as Coinbase continues to market their chain and onboard new users.
In October, the BRR token came into being on the Base chain, with a portion of the supply distributed to community members who helped test KP’s WERC721 protocol for compressed NFTs. This week it will be possible to stake BRR tokens and earn half of the fees from all Brrito apps going forward, as well as reward fees from brrETH. The staking frontend should go live at the same time as brrETH deposits.
KP has shared that one of his mentors, Joey Santoro, founder of the Fei Protocol and co-author of the ERC-4626 token vault standard, is joining Brrito as an advisor. This makes two people involved with Brrito who have developed their own token standards!
https://x.com/joeysantoro_eth/status/1719703187353993604?s=20
At the same time, the BRR tokens of some inactive advisors have been reclaimed and put to better uses. Such scourings, of course, are necessary and fruitful. If you would like to see the current cap table, it is all laid out here.
In the Llamas discord, KP also shared a rough roadmap of his priorities for Brrito. The near-term focus is delivering brrETH and BRR staking and make sure they run smoothly. After that comes development of the first brrETH-powered app, sometime this month.
Though we don’t know exactly what shape the app will take, we sense that early 2024 will bring some nice surprises.