Defi的一场革命? 或是扣了个帽子的基金?Instrumental Finance全分析

前情提要:

文章很长,彻底解读一下Instrumental Finance, 这个背后hype超高的币,关于是否可以ape,结论直接放在开头,有耐心的可以细读为何我会做出这样的判断。

投资与否?

  • 护城河主要集中在这个预测的算法上以及composable finance生态能发展多好上。

  • 跨链桥很多,使用Mosaic没感觉比其他跨链桥好太多,这个不算护城河。

  • 预测的算法方面,过于依赖团队的学术能力,如果真的CEO MIT Math Phd,那么的确有看点,但是关于on-chain activity prediction这方面,真不太了解,只是直觉感觉这个东西是个point of failure,一步走错就直接gg。

  • 团队不透明也是一个问题,并不知道技术团队的能力就很难判断roadmap什么时候能完成,在这段开发期间是否会有竞争者来take your spot?

  • composable生态我觉得是可以好好发展的,感觉protocol本身野心很大,做事情也很利索,加上backers阵容很强,我觉得composable长期发展下去没啥问题,$STRM也大概率会从这中间受利。

  • 不长期很看好这个协议,感觉更多就是像一个AI arbitrage基金公司套了个壳子然后还收费贼贵的感觉,但是短期内因为没啥竞争者,通过先发者优势好好跑也不是不可能直接治霸。

  • 如果一定要入场,tokenomics方面,目前来看,起码airdrops加各种LP/Staking award,前半年的卖压很强,并且团队也是50%都是第一年unlock。外加市场现在情绪没那么火热,defi也不是最火热的赛道,感觉如果要入场的话,可以考虑半年后卖压降低后,再考虑入场。

  • 个人不会投资,生态系统比较有意思,但因为point of failure + 技术团队不确定性 + tokenomics + 看起来不太会运营的样子,感觉可担心的东西太多了,我宁愿投资他的母协议。

简介:

Instrumental Finance 是一个跨链/跨层yield optimizer,由Composable Labs孵化,与ABAG(Advanced Blockchain AG)合作,由Stela Labs做了安全审核(于2021年12月13号)。建于以太坊上,主要面向用户为Defi LP玩家,目标是解决过往L1和L2之间,以及不同链之间转移LP位置的高费用,高延迟问题。并且想在未来将这个过程自动化。

市场痛点与需求 :

目前看来,最直接的受用者将是比较高频率操作的LP Provider/Trader,确实可能能将整个过程变得比较方便。 作为经常追着APR到处跑的人,如果说整个过程真的可以自动化,那么的确是非常方便的,并且从目前docs里读到的消息,用的graph search method的确是比较有逻辑的,长期来看实现可能性较大。

竞争与创新 :

完全一样的项目暂时没有找到,但是具有多链功能的yield aggreagator非常多,比较有名的项目有Autofarm和Beefy finance. 项目的最大创新,也许就是这个promise出来的跨链yield optimize自动化了。 举个例子,我的大部分LP都在fantom上,但是我现在看到cronos上有个很好的机会,不过我现在如果要转到cronos上,我需要先把我fantom LP unstake,卖掉,把卖出来的币转到cronos上(如果卖出来的币cronos也支持的话),然后provide LP, Stake。 整个过程时间可能需要10分钟,比较麻烦,如果是超级volatile的yield,那么10分钟可能变化更多,如果这个跨链里有ETH的话,费用会变得很贵,并且时间也可能变得更长,作为用户,需要承担更大的风险。 而$STRM会采用算法(A.I和传统ML都会采用)去预测不同链之间APY的变化,从而在APY真正出现差距前就直接进行跨链,加速整个过程。或也可以直接通过现在的APY差而自动导向最佳链。 跨链过程 项目目前比较依赖Composable Finance开发的Mosaic Bridge,但在开发docs里,anyswaps以及wormhole也有被提及,在项目进行到后期时,大概率会在策略最优化时将所有跨链桥考虑进来,但现在整个项目几乎是只Mosaic Bridge(关于Mosaic Bridge,我有在英文文档里写自己的用户体验)。 到后期时,会根据用户输入的参数,而选择要么是最快的/最便宜的/比较折中的跨链方法。

项目阶段:

项目分为三个阶段:

  • 第一阶段,同样的 LP position可在不同层/链之间转移,

  • 第二阶段,不同的LP position可在不同层/链之间兑换,并且会加入更多的AMM。

  • 第三阶段,非EVM compatible的链也会被纳入生态系统中,并且会正式加入一些yield最大化的自动执行策略。 目前项目为第一阶段的早期,转移功能暂未上线。第二阶段与第三阶段的细节并未放出。目前的页面里只有两种可操作方法,一个是liquidity rush(3周),一个是锁仓LP三个月。目前,所有Mosaic支持的链都将在第一阶段内启用(Mosaic上现在仅支持部分EVM Compatible Chains),第一阶段将支持Curve, Aave和Sushiswap上的部分LP Position.

关于自动执行策略:

一开始是项目方提供一些策略,然后用户可以自己调节这些策略里的一些参数,以自己的偏好为准。调好后,策略就会自动运营。目的都是在不同链/层间Optimize Yield. 在项目后期,$STRM持有者可通过参加governance voting去创建一些新的策略。 所有的策略几乎都要有“预测”这个部分,就是去预测不同链上的活动,交易量,liquidity,以及APY等等,运用AI或者ML,这部分目前还在开发,没有一个具体说法,下一个开发路线是照着Long Short Term Memory实验。

项目代币 :

项目代币为$STRM, 于12月6日在copper launch通过LBP发售,初始发售价格为2.43美金,拍卖结束价格为0.928美金,其中最低0.35美金,最高为2.43美金。项目方试图发售10%的总代币,但只卖出5.5%,最后不得不临时更改代币经济(下方会细说)。 值得一提的是,$STRM的一个大活动,liquidity rush在12月9号开始,可以说项目方有可能想用liquidity rush去带动LBP的拍卖,可惜即使这样,仍然卖的很一般,要么就是宣传做得不好,要么就是市场真的不太看好这个产品/看不懂这个产品。说实话twitter来看,社群确实没那么hyped up,感觉市场部宣传一般般。

代币经济 :

这部分直接英文了,没啥太多可说的,主观观点下面说:

Team - 15%, 50% 1st year, 25% 2nd, 12.5% for 3rd and 4th not sure if daily or monthly vesting

ETH-STRM Sushiswap Liquidity incentive - 15%, all sort of lock up incentives essentially.

Participate in LP position management strategies - 15%, distributed over 6 months Airdrop - 5%

Locking received tokens from either instrumental’s LP position or Metapool/stable coin pool - 10%

Provide liquidity to Metapool/Stablecoin - 20%

Transfer/swap assets across chains/layers using Instrumental - 10%

fair launch - 5.5%

Treasury - 4.5% (wasn’t originally planned but was a leftover from the sale)

最后这个treasury很有意思,一开始项目方貌似没有计划这部分,完全是token没卖出去才出现的,一开始项目方大概率是打算通过长期的revenue去增加这一部分。

代币用途 :

投票, stake。

stake这里分两个部分,一个是各种tokenomics里头提供的reward,另一部分是协议利润分成。

协议的利润主要是strategy 1%的管理费用+15%的表现分成(赚了100就拿走15),然后50%分给所有的$STRM staker,剩下没细说,估计是给treasury,也有可能给teams?

团队背景 :

CEO - 0XMoonscraper,自称MIT数学博士,有一定quant背景,但说实话没怎么查到这个人资料。

技术团队:一堆前FAANG的,做网络/图形搜索的,但是没有放出任何details,这些都是interview里看到的。

advisor:0xBrainjar, composable finance里的一位大佬,玩Defi挺久的挺6的,也写过一两篇关于ML的文章,感觉学术背景也应该有一些的。

查不到投资人信息,只能查到是composable labs孵化的。

团队的劣势挺明显,就是感觉商业运营挺一般,给我一种Tezos 2.0的感觉(marketing方面),优势主要集中在母协议,instrumental是属于他们第一个孵化的项目,并且母协议背景很强,然后母协议这里我们单独讲。

关于母协议 composable finance:

Composable Finance, 也就是Instrumental的parent protocol,前段时间刚拿下一个kusama平行链,并且现在正在参加dot平行链竞拍,排名第二,仅次于centrifuge。这些平行链都可为更多的跨链选择做铺垫。 目前主要产品为Mosaic Bridge,并且为开发者提供SDK,供他们开发具有跨链可能性的dAPP,简单看了一下,就是个standard SDK,没有具体使用很难评价好不好用,但是没啥特别的闪光点。 母协议倒是挺被业内看好的,有Alameda,也有ABAG,都是大佬级投资公司,同时都持有Composable可能也是挺看好这个生态系统的。 估值与通证 市值410w美金,fully diluted 4100万左右,币价0.41,破发了60%差不多。没上大的CEX,主要得通过Sushiswap买卖。etherscan上看,大部分币目前都在smart contract里,最大的personal holder也不过1.1%,不算很centralized,holder一共就不到850人。

References:

所有的instrumental medium帖子(全读了一遍)

instrumental的docs(全读了一遍)

twitter

polkadot的parachain.info

kusama的parachian.info

About Mosaic:

Tool built by composable finance, I tried swapping 0.09 wETH from Polygon to ETH mainnet, the fee was roughly about 0.05 Matic(at the date of writing, roughly $0.1) in total, and it took me about 12 minutes for the transaction to be completed. The other way back is expensive, as it costs around 0.003 ETH to transfer back(at the date of writing, equivalent to roughly $10)

Random notes:

Instrumental Finance is a Cross-chain,cross-layer yield optimizer incubated by ComposableLabs[1].

Essentially a cross-chain and cross-layer bridge-based yield optimizer, it counts itself as a liquidity infrastructure and depends itself on its cross-chain/layer swapper mosaic, which is a tool built by composable finance.

Instrumental Finance: LP is one of the most important development in Defi to date, the profits of LP providers heavily depend on moving in and out of trade positions to maximize earnings, at the earliest with the slightest cost. This means as an LP provider, to maximize your profit, a convenient solution would be a cheap and fast way to shift your position cross-layer or even cross-chain. However, interoperability remains a challenge, the time and fees that it takes to switch LP position is discouraging, thus not only do the LP providers fall short on maximizing their earnings, but certain Defi protocols built on rather less popular chains also find it hard to obtain LP providers at the earlier days of its development.

Instrumental is chain and layer agnostic, it directs LP positions through various L1 and L2 scaling solutions, its parent lab possesses cross-layer asset swapping tool “Mosaic” which helps to optimizer LP yield across different L2s and L1. Currently Mosaic supports transfers between ETH, MATIC, Arbitrum(ETH L2), Avalanche(C - Chain), Moonriver(para chain on KSM), and Fantom, itself is a cross-chain/layer swapper with the ability to stake different tokens to earn $LAYR, composable finance’s native token as a reward.

To participate, users deposit funds into an Instrumental Vault, where the funds are allocated to the highest yield-generating LPing platform and pool available, again, chain/layer agnostic. Currently, the supported movement of LP positions is on Curve, Aave, and Sushiswap as well as Abracadabra. Note in phase 1, essentially only transfer is enabled. With plans to add additional AMMs in phase 2, cross-chain/layer asset swaps could also be enabled. The AMMs to be added are currently undetermined. In phase 3, non-evm supported chains are going to be added to the network, details to be released by the protocol. However, the automation of yield optimization will be implemented though the specific timeline for such development is not specified.

Composable finance secured a Kusama Parachain around early November and is currently bidding for Polkadot’s parachain slot, it currently ranks the second after centrifuge. These parachain slots aim to further enhance interoperability and cross-chain/layer abilities.

Instrumental finance is built on Ethereum, security audit done by Stela Labs (a subsidiary of Advanced Blockchain AG) on 13th of Dec. They are partnered up with AG, which has some big name in it. Only 2 options: Liquidity rush and Locking up LP available at the moment. Both exert great downward pressure on the token. One day, given the metrics, the process could automate based on user requirements, however, this part is really unclear, as certain strategy seems to only be initiated by the protocol, so I’m guessing that protocol designs strategy, the user put in metrics, and runs.

So basically lock and stake $STRM, you share part of the protocol revenue, get some additional staking rewards that naturally incentivize you to stake, and some additional perks from time to time.Governance

Note, LBP via Copperlaunch was just launched 3 days before the 9th of Dec, either the marketing team did a poor job or was the token just fucked, how did it not all sale? The auction ended with 0.928. started with 2.4, lowest was around 0.3533.

[1] ComposableLabs is a Cross-chain research and development group run by Composable Finance, which is a liquidity infrastructure for DeFi assets, powered by Layer 2 Ethereum solutions and Polkadot. https://twitter.com/composableL