Geyser Refresh for April 25th, 2023

The current wave of geysers are set to expire on April 25th, 2023. I propose keeping the same configuration as last time, since the liquidity landscape is largely the same. If the PALM proposal executes, or more smart vaults get released, we can revisit with new information.

About the Geysers

The AMPL Geyser distributes AMPL tokens from the ecosystem fund to those who provide liquidity on decentralized exchanges.

The motivation of the geyser project is two-fold. First, it helps distribute the Ecosystem fund out into the world in a sensible, permissionless, and predictable way. And second, it distributes to those who contribute to the health of the AMPL ecosystem.

It was announced to be a 10 year program, with emissions roughly following Bitcoin’s emission curve. You can learn more here. However, it’s still within the DAO’s control to change or modify this program as it sees fit to keep up with the evolution of the marketplace.

Overall Thoughts

Now that SPOT is soft-launched, it’s a good time to revisit the Geyser configurations to best optimize AMPL, WAMPL, and SPOT liquidity to work well together.

Long term, there is a general consensus building that a small number of deep pools, combined with liquidity owned directly by the DAO is the best direction to move toward. Platforms like PALM from Arrakis are promising avenues to explore for acquiring the matching pair tokens (i.e. ETH or USDC) for the AMPL and SPOT. Using SPOT as the geyser reward token provides predictable, “real” yield for LPs while allowing the DAO to maintain exposure to the AMPL in the Eco Fund.

Proposed Configuration

Background:

  • Original EcoFund carveout was 23.5% of network
  • Forth DAO Treasury owns 4,273,629 AMPL, so 42.66% of original EcoFund carveout is liquid
    (not counting the 549K AMPL and 319 WETH in Uni v2)
Geyser Platform Pair Chain SPOT Amount
Beehive v5 Uniswap v2 ETH/AMPL Ethereum 75,000 SPOT
Fly Uniswap v3 SPOT/USDC Ethereum 10,000 SPOT
Total 85,000 SPOT

Mechanics

The onchain proposal will include enough from the DAO treasury to mint the required amount of SPOT, while the Z-tranches still be owned by the DAO.

3 Likes

Since there are no planned changes to last round and I haven’t seen any other changes suggested, any objections if I move straight to the onchain vote tomorrow?

This would allow us to renew the Geysers right when the old ones expire. If we do a round of signal vote first, it would add ~5 or more day delay.

2 Likes

I understand that SPOT is still in the soft launch phase so I’m fine with the settings for this round.

However for future rounds, I would like to see higher rewards for the SPOT/USDC pool. I would like the DAO to set a clear goal (like having 20% of the AMPL supply being utilized for SPOT as an example) and make a push towards it by providing more rewards to the SPOT/USDC pool.

In one of the previous geyser discussions, I mentioned the idea of a potential positive feedback loop that might come out of by offering 0.4% of the AMPL supply per year as rewards to the SPOT/USDC pool (as AMPL).

Since then we came to the conclusion that SPOT is a better form of paying out rewards due to the stableness and real yield aspect of it, and I agree.

I believe the same positive feedback loop can be achieved with SPOT too by giving out rewards that equals to 0.4% of the total supply of AMPL in every geyser round.

If this was implemented in the future, in numbers this would mean(at current supply):
42,600,000 * 0.004 Ă· 4 = 42,600

42,600 SPOT per geyser round


Just throwing out this idea into the room again for consideration for future geysers.

(Edit: removed link to forum post)

2 Likes

Got it. With PALM deploying and the DAO hopefully accumulating some ETH soon, we’ll have more to consider with respect to geyser settings & DAO owned liquidity. Let’s plan to have more time for discussion in the lead up to the next round.

In the meantime, the onchain proposal for the current round is posted and voting should begin in ~2 days.

1 Like

Agree on all the points with all the limbs and especially:

  1. Oh yes, SPOT as the reward is MUCH better. Yes, the upside is not as big, but I hold naked AMPL for that, and I start to like the stability of USDC-SPOT pair A LOT. I would argue that it even held relatively well despite the SVB debacle.

  2. I also would like to see slightly higher rewards initially, but this is my greed talking here.

2 Likes

Geysers are funded, thanks everyone!

2 Likes