Aura Finance - Community Newsletter (October 15th, 2022)
Welcome to the 8th Community newsletter and welcome to another big week for Aura. Aura continues to climb the ladder of veBAL ownership with over 26% of all veBAL currently locked in AuraBAL. With our TVL now sitting over $400 Million, investors are starting to take notice of Aura Finance as a big player in the DeFi space. The past 2 weeks have seen more partnerships, more alpha being dropped and more interesting developments in the Aura ecosystem.
In a bog move for enhanced user experience, Hidden Hand has recently optimized their incentives system by ensuring smaller users receive a smaller number of tokens. This creates a far more cost effective means of claiming earned incentives for the average user and prevents too much âdustâ! This update has been perfectly timed as the great Aura unlockening swings into gear. With most of the airdropped tokens and the LBP acquired tokens that were locked reaching their first unlock, there has been a surge of Aura coming out of locked status. This has created a great opportunity to acquire more tokens and more interestingly, for those who choose to re-lock, the chance to earn an NFT.
With partnership announcements coming from Revest Finance, planned Notional Finance leveraged vaults, ongoing liquidity from large ETH stakers like Lido and Rocket Pool and excellent returns on incentives through Hidden Hand, the future for Aura Finance looks better than ever. If you are someone interested in getting the word out or have an idea to improve Aura Financeâs outreach, then there is always the Ecosystem Grant fund to support your efforts and help you to spread your ideas. Simply head over to the forum to write something up or get in touch with a contributor to discuss further.
Community News
The community continues to create great content across a number of different mediums! If you would like to see your work included in one of our community newsletters then ensure you tag Aura Finance!
Fox 
@FoxMaisonCo has been dropping some anime, looks like Fox is expecting some good news out of Jones DAO and Nomad capital! https://twitter.com/FoxMaisonCo/status/1580320051818700800
Global Web3@GlobalWeb3_io has called out Aura Finance at the very top of the list of the most undervalued tokens, relative to TVL. https://twitter.com/GlobalWeb3_io/status/1580270097478062080
Illiquidbear@illiquidbear is a big fan of otoins vaults moving forward, especially in the Balancer and Aura ecosystems! https://twitter.com/illiquidbear/status/1579842658822139912
Teddy Woodward@teddywoodward has shared some great content on leveraged vaults and Notional finance. If you are interested in getting an understanding of where things might be going, then check this one out! https://twitter.com/teddywoodward/status/1579474472893304833
Lobbyist Protocol@0xLobbyist has updated the UI for lobbyist protocol. Aura Finance has a great spot front and centre. https://twitter.com/0xLobbyist/status/1579414405070348289
CJCJCJ @CJCJCJCJ_has done another great twitter thread over 11 tweets that covers off what the biggest whales in defi are currently doing. Aura Finance is certainly in the list, although it appears that many of the biggest whales are farming and dumping. Never hurt CVX with farmers, especially when the best incentives seem to be on Aura! https://twitter.com/CJCJCJCJ_/status/1579094727403577344
Chadwick PoSman @ChadPosman is repping hard for Aura finance and has pointed out some of the great partnerships that are coming on board for Aura Finance. https://twitter.com/ChadPosman/status/1578081255345852416
DSV@DSVentures has clearly taken the red pill from the Small Cap Scientist and is a believer in the future for Aura Finacne with favourable comparisons to Convex and Curve. Great stuff! https://twitter.com/DSVentures_/status/1578012713002770439
0xMaki 
@0xMaki provided the community with a very positive short update. The update covered the big items, like TVL AuraBAL yields and much more. (including a cute little purple pepe!) https://twitter.com/0xMaki/status/1580222286648729601
hash_error (
,
) @HashError has posted about his passion, badger DAO and the graviAURA wrapper for the Aura token. Great tweet about one of Auraâs great partners! https://twitter.com/HashError/status/1577747588438278149
Jayson @Jaysoncaves and SEB @bastemateo_ are both super excited about the partnership underway with Revest Finance and their exciting new Resonate product. Great stuff from both of them!
YouTube
YouTube remains the home of longer form content for Aura Finance, especially for news and updates.
Token Terminal has done a deep dive on Notional Finance and Aura finance strategies. This is an interesting idea as it will allow for leveraged positions with ETH and Stable coins using Aura Finance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ557uIl_Cs
Stock Investor has done a quick video on Aura Finance where he reads through some of the key fundamentals on Aura Finance. Always nice to see some attention for Aura Finance! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehmIXN7UElE
There continues to be only a small number of Aura content creators on youtube, with the following 2 creators providing the most consistent content:
Market Capping https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxcxH7BjLdGPx_HGhd4msA
Trantor https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgUmvBsRISqeDyiC-P0K-2w
Aura News and Defi Stories.
Aura Ecosystem Grants
The Aura Ecosystem Fund Grants committee has completed its review of the first 3 Grant requests. All 3 were excellent ideas with 1 rejected, 1 modified and 1 approved. Remember, if you have an idea that promotes all things Aura then head over to the forum grants page and open a new topic. The committee will let it sit on the forum for at least a week to allow the community to see it and ask any questions or make any suggestions before it is taken for review and voting.
NFT Drop for Re-Locking!
Over the next 15 weeks there will be a series of NFT drops going to re-lockers! For those who have their locks expiring over the next 15 weeks there will be the chance to mint up to a max of 5 NFT per wallet. You can only mint 1 NFT per re-lock per wallet with different characteristics assigned as per the below:
COMMON: 55%
UNCOMMON: 30%
RARE: 12.5%
EPIC: 2%
LEGENDARY: 0.5%
Revest Finance and Resonate
Revest Finance has recently announced their support and partnership with Aura Finance. They have developed Financial NFT which allow users to split the interest earned and the principal into separate and tradeable NFT, especially using the yields from Auraâs pools. To read more about this partnership and how it might be used, head over to https://smartliquidity.info/2022/10/04/resonate-support-for-aura-finance/ or directly to Revest Finance.
The Un-Lockening
The first big unlock in Aura history has come and gone with many users who either bought in the LBP or were airdropped their tokens, now able to withdraw their vote locked Aura. Early indications are that most users are simply re-locking their tokens to keep getting those sweet incentives (and an NFT!)
To track the percentages of users who re-locked, withdrew their Aura or simply did nothing with it check out the Dune dash board here: Aura weekly lock unlock re-lock
Hidden Hand- Dust minimization!
0xSAMI and the team over at Redacted Cartel have made some big improvements to the Hidden Hand (HH) marketplace! One of the biggest complaints regarding the incentives there was that the average user was receiving too many small tokens that were cost prohibitive to sell (ie Dust). Recent improvements are seeking to minimize this problem with average holders now receiving a much smaller number of tokens, whilst larger holders receive a greater mix. This makes it much easier (and cheaper) to consolidate your incentives into your chosen asset!
Gravitationally Bound Aura
With plenty of additional Aura now being unlocked from the initial great waves of Aura locking, Badger DAO is promoting their auto compounding product, Gravitationally Bound Aura. GraviAURA automates bribe collection and supports its own liquidity on Balancer. It leverages its vlAURA to vote for the pool itâs in and uses the remaining votes for bribes which are sold for graviAURA and $BADGER and emitted to holders. This essentially means that as an Aura locker, you never have to worry about claiming and selling your tokens as they are auto compounded for you! Feel free to check them out at badger.app
Paladin update
Many Aurans have been asking about Paladin and what they offer. Paladin is a DeFi protocol that creates voting markets and platforms to unlock the value of governance. Their Quest product is a gauge solution for veToken systems like veBAL. Itâs the only platform that allows DAOs to fix their rewards for voters. They also offer a delegator for vlAURA holders that aggregates and optimizes incentives across all platforms. Learn more at paladin.vote!
Eco-system Governance
To get the latest on Aura governance updates head over to the Aura Discord and track the channel âGovernance updatesâ. Be on the lookout for the âOfficial Newsletterâ coming soon!
Disclaimer
This newsletter is not official Aura correspondence and is written by community members