What is your proposal/project that you are requesting a grant for?
Sturdy is the largest pre-token lending protocol on Ethereum. Despite having no liquidity mining incentives, Sturdy has amassed over >$25m TVL since its launch in June 2022. Sturdy is a unique lending protocol that operates like a decentralized yield farming fund; lenders provide liquidity, while borrowers deploy that liquidity to generate yield. Borrowers get up to 10x leverage, and lenders receive a portion of the farming profits.
Currently, Sturdy integrates Convex, Lido, and Yearn, which can be used to earn levered yields. We would like to integrate Balancer’s BPTs with Aura staking, initially for the Aave Boosted Pool and wstETH/ETH pool (though we plan to integrate more pools in the future like rETH/ETH). The proposal is to cover the associated audit costs of this integration.
How does the grant aim to provide value to the Balancer Ecosystem?
This grant will increase Balancer’s TVL. As of now, there aren’t any ways to earn leveraged yields on popular BPTs like the Aave Boosted Pool at scale. By integrating this pool into Sturdy, users will be able to earn far greater APYs, attracting liquidity to Balancer.
For example, users can currently earn 2x as much on Curve TUSDFRAXBP LPs using Sturdy as opposed to Convex directly. This has led to over 40% of the pool’s TVL being used as collateral on Sturdy.
What is the requested grant and individual milestone/tranche amounts?
The grant amount will be equal to the audit cost. The milestones will be:
- Soliciting audit firms for quotes
- Selecting an auditor
- Making revisions based on the auditor’s recommendations
The full grant would be issued upon the selection of an auditor (and can be paid directly to the auditor). The code to be audited has already been completed and can be made available for review.
What are the milestones and the timeline?
- Soliciting audit firms for quotes: initiated as soon as we have approval for the grant, would likely take 1-2 weeks
- Selecting an auditor: within one week of receiving quotes
- Completing revisions based on the auditor’s recommendations: within two weeks of receiving the auditor’s recommendations
Can you quantify the expected value add?
Given the success of the Convex FRAXBP and TUSDFRAXBP integrations (>$8m TVL with over 40% of the pool’s TVL on Sturdy in the case of TUSDFRAXBP), we would expect well over $10m TVL from the Aave Boosted Pool integration alone given that its APY is higher than that of the supported Convex pools.
For the wstETH/ETH pool, we think the demand is even greater (see the popularity of Aave’s leveraged stETH strategy). Assuming the grant is approved quickly, this integration would be released at the same time as the introduction of the ETH market. And since it’s the highest APY collateral staking strategy being considered, we expect it to be extremely popular.
Sturdy has a number of upcoming catalysts to grow liquidity on both the stablecoin and ETH markets (e.g. integrations with yield aggregators like Spool and Yearn), making the possible TVL growth even greater.
Is this proposal value for money for the Balancer Ecosystem?
The cost would be equal to that of the audit; no money would go to the Sturdy team.