Aura Finance - Community Newsletter (August 7th 2022)
Hello Aura Finance Community and welcome to the 3rd community newsletter for the ‘Purple Coin’. Over the last 2 weeks Aura Finance has achieved over $280 million in Total Value Locked and has maintained over 27% capture of all available veBAL, these are very impressive numbers! Building a sustainable ecosystem on top of these numbers continues to be the key to driving growth and Aura Finance has seen several key improvement proposals implemented over the past 2 weeks. These proposals are starting to bear fruit for both the DAO and the community as Aura Finance continues to grow. Enabling larger players and DAOs to get involved in Aura Finance will likely prove decisive for the growth of the protocol and by enabling big buyers through deepening Aura’s liquidity and establishing limit orders, Aura Finance will enable maximum participation across DeFi.
The DAO has also voted to increase rewards to auraBAL stakers demonstrating a desire and commitment to the long-term health of Aura Finance. Most importantly it was community members that highlighted the need to increase these rewards to ensure that Aura continued to capture a high percentage of the available Balancer tokens. Through the system of temperature checks, forum discussions, and then finally snapshot decisions, Aura Finance has enacted community led governance decisions that have demonstrated a commitment to long term protocol health rather than short term yields.
As Aura Finance builds momentum and attention across crypto Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms, it remains the community that drives Aura’s growth and fundamental health. This health is generated through active participation and honest feedback about what is happening in DeFI and what the community wants to build. As an Aura token community member, it is the vibrancy of community discussions, the quality of the content created and the depth of analysis that will continue to grow Aura Finance into the future. Aura Finance will continue to focus on the core mission of achieving the best possible Balancer yields through social aggregation of influence assets to provide the best possible yields for the community in DeFi. It is the community that will spread this message and promote awareness of what Aura has built.
Community News
The community has been very active recently, especially on twitter with the yields on offer from Aura Finance taking center stage. The Twitter posts below are some of the highlights from community members and interested parties although there are many more twitter contributors that have been discussing all things Aura Finance.
@wtylerwallace created and tweeted a DUNE dashboard that covers off on the percentages of Balancer Pool Tokens currently held by Aura and the pools currently available on Aura. The dashboard is an easy to digest and useful snapshot of where Aura Finance currently sits for BAL capture and for Pool capture too. https://twitter.com/wtylerwallace/status/1552316270493569025
@okra_sfx provided some deep dives on the synergies between Badger DAO, Aura Finance and Balancer protocol in a series of tweets and retweets. Notably his work continues to bring together the different communities who are engaged in the success of Aura moving forward! https://twitter.com/okra_sfx
@DeFi_Dad provides updates on DeFi from a general sense and has been looking into Aura Finance, Convex and Velodrome as some of his big winners in the bear market. https://twitter.com/DeFi_Dad/status/1555731390448209927
@CryptoSnooper_ wrote a detailed thread on the Balancer wars, tokenomics and where Aura sits as a protocol that is amassing influence within the Balancer ecosystem. The thread covers the influence of whales and how Aura is positioning itself moving forward. https://twitter.com/CryptoSnooper_/status/1555276404475850752
@DefiIgnas created a huge thread on ve tokenomics covering Balancer, Curve, Aura Finance and Convex. Some great content that covers AMMs and general vote escrowed/locked tokenomics in detail. https://twitter.com/DefiIgnas/status/1555116061112303616
@coraldefi created a thread focused on stable coin yields and the yields available on Aura Finance in his weekly DeFi update. The winner from the thread was the high yields in the FIAT/USDC/DAI stable pool with some excellent explanation regarding the Balancer ecosystem. https://twitter.com/coraldefi/status/1554972941179396097 .
@SmallCapScience continues to drop nothing but high quality content on twitter focusing on DeFi, Aura Finance and other interesting projects. The latest thread covers voting rounds, gauge votes and some number crunching. https://twitter.com/SmallCapScience/status/1555329449670975488
YouTube
YouTube continues to be the home of deep dive content for Aura finance but there remains a lot of opportunity for community members to build out more content here to reach the DeFi community. Some recent Aura community content on YouTube includes:
Trantor has provided another update on Aura and the Balancer eco system in a video titled Aura Finance- the Alpha in the Balancer ecosystem at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TCJh_X2c7E
Blackie has provided a deep dive on Aura Finance for Aura’s Italian viewers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-oBZ7r2R-w
John Flores has provided a quick round up of Aura Finance in an article on cyber pump that references videos from within the community. The short article can be found at Aura Finance BIG MOVES - Balancer wars continue
Aura Latest News
Improving Aura Finance Liquidity
The reallocation of unclaimed Aura tokens from the initial air drop has provided funding for 2 key improvements which will bring further strength to Aura in the coming months. Firstly, the increase in rewards to the Aura/ ETH pool will provide greater liquidity depth to the market and enable larger players to move in and out of the ecosystem. Removing barriers to entry for large players is key in promoting the kind of hyper growth that Aura is seeking to foster and liquidity depth is a key step in ensuring this is possible.
The second improvement builds on this planned reduction in barriers to entry for big players through the introduction of limit orders on CoW swap as per Aura Improvement Proposal (AIP) 3. Limit orders allow large orders of Aura to be placed at prices above the current market. Importantly, these limit orders will allow big players to buy heavily into Aura without spiking the price due to limited liquidity in the market. The funds generated from these limit order sales will be used to build out the treasury and provide for the long-term health of the protocol as described in ‘treasury diversification’ below.
Treasury Diversification
The limit orders currently being executed on CoW swap are being executed for USDC. The Aura Finance treasury is diversifying its holdings by acquiring USDC to provide for a long-term growth runway and to increase the bounties on offer to promote the security and health of the protocol. Increasing the treasury holding of stable coins provides security in uncertain time and enables the DAO to respond to a range of possible market conditions. The limit orders are currently in their second round of availability on CoW swap with the next round ending on the 12th of August.
Aura BAL
Aura has recently implemented AIP-4 which is providing for increased yields on those who stake their auraBAL with Aura Finance. This step has been implemented to provide the best possible yields on Balancer and veBAL tokens and thus ensure that these ‘ecosystem helper’ tokens are always incentivised for maximum possible capture. The accumulation of these assets is key to the ‘moat’ that Aura has built into its operating flywheel and the extra incentives now have APY well over 100% for auraBAL. Depositors may also notice a new feature on the claims page that enables one click claiming and then minting and staking of earned Balancer tokens to auraBAL, greatly improving the user experience.
Extra Rewards!
Vote locked Aura holders were recently treated to some ‘extra rewards’ airdropped to eligible user’s claim page on the Aura app. These extra rewards were the last tranche of penalty Aura tokens recovered from air drop recipients who chose to take their Aura directly to their wallets instead of locking them. A welcome surprise for vote lockers!
Eco-system Governance
Moving forward Aura governance discussions will be provided in a more dedicated manner for both the Balancer and Aura ecosystems to provide the community with the best possible information. This information will be released separately to the community newsletter, look out for more details soon.
Disclaimer
This newsletter is not official Aura correspondence and is written by community members.
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