We are excited to announce that going forward, UnUniFi will be officially known as Gluon.
In anticipation of the launch of our latest product, we decided to choose a name that inspires our users, our purpose, and most importantly, is easy to pronounce.
What is Gluon?
Gluon is an exciting new strategic yield hub for the modular era. A multichain yield platform which aggregates high quality DeFi strategies, enables Interest Rate Swaps, and most importantly, provides Fixed Yield Tranches for any vault, on any chain, with multichain deposit and auto-compounding. Gluon is the solution to the digital asset liquidity problem, connecting and decentralizing liquidity for any yield bearing asset, while supercharging yield maneuverability for users everywhere.
The meaning of Gluon
In nuclear and particle physics, the Gluon particle is a type of elementary particle that mediates strong interaction between quarks, acting as an exchange particle for the interaction. This essential role as intermediary and exchange source is symbolic to the underlying protocol we are building. Gluon’s mission to create a multichain yield hub extends beyond simple strategy aggregation, instead acting as an intermediary between stakeholders and liquidity providers.
Why Fixed Yield?
In looking to integrate long term (1yr+) stable yield and liquidity products into our own yield aggregator, we realized that currently there is a lack of Yield Tokenization modules in the Cosmos Ecosystem. (As a reminder, UnUniFi Protocol was formerly developed as a L1 appchain using the Cosmos sdk, with EVM compatibility).
Fixed yield is guaranteed yield, a DeFi value proposition that we believe is much more enticing to the average DeFi user
Offering Interest Rate Swaps allows us to also offer Yield Tokenization to Cosmos, which achieves the following for the ecosystem:
1) Provides stakers across the Cosmos ecosystem with easy access to long term fixed yield products, with auto-compounding (incentivizes stability for yield bearing assets)
2) Provide current + future Cosmos ecosystem stakers leveraged yield trading, which allows for speculation on yield (enhances liquidity by allowing larger traders to enter leveraged long + short yield positions, hedge yield, and access liquidity from token positions).
The immediate iteration of our Interest Rate Swap module accomplishes this by focusing on providing Fixed Yield for ATOM through the use of stATOM deposits. Combining these various functions (fixed yield, support for liquid staking tokens, and auto-compounding) supercharges yield utility for users everywhere.
Beyond ATOM, our intention is to provide other Cosmos builders with these resources to also enhance their liquidity and introduce complex yield applications to the various tokens across the interchain ecosystem.
For context, in our comparative analysis of other Yield Tokenization protocols outside of the Cosmos ecosystem, such as Pendle Finance ($370M TVL) we learned that access to speculative and leveraged yield products ultimately enhances liquidity for the underlying assets and allows complex positions to be developed by larger systematic traders (LPs, Quant, Algo, Fund, etc.) due to the customizability and specificity of yield tokenization products.
We could not find this infrastructure readily available, so we decided to build it ourselves, and share the benefits that come with it to many ecosystems.
Fixing the Liquidity Problem in a Modular Era
The first iteration of our product, a yield aggregator, was released as a public beta test in Q4, 2023. At capacity, 20,000 unique wallet addresses were generated, the TVL of our initial vault was maxed out, and the public beta was shut down due to scaling issues. We quickly realized in order to support our partners like Docomo, we needed to scale. Gluon began looking at modular blockchain structures, including sovereign rollups. It was in exploring this synergy of liquidity, yield, and modularity that we then arrived at a new capability made possible by our infrastructure: solving the liquidity problem for sovereign rollups.
Restaking (Modularity x Yield)
Gluon will also explore the combination of Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRT) and Fixed Yield. Natively supporting fixed yield restaking will further increase the types of yield bearing assets supported by Gluon, thus situating Gluon perfectly at the intersection of Modularity x Yield.
CODENAME: Sunrise
With this, a sister project was born, codenamed Sunrise. The synergy between Sunrise and Gluon is something that extends far beyond yield tokenization. While we expect some will use the Gluon app for fixed yield and never look further, we are still very excited by these unique functionalities that we have built out to extend Gluon’s utility. We can’t wait to share further details with you very soon! Stay tuned for the public announcement regarding Sunrise!
What will happen to UnUniFi?
As we slowly begin the transfer process from UnUniFi to Gluon, we will release continued updates regarding UnUniFi chain, GUU stakers, etc.
- Within the next two weeks, GUU token will be renamed GLU.
(GUU stakers will not need to make any changes, this will happen automatically) There will be no changes to GLU tokenomic structure. - Further updates and instructions will be released accordingly on the UnUniFi/Gluon transition
We are excited to release Gluon, further enhancing the value and utility of our original GUU token. For now, we are just here to introduce our new brand to everyone and also share a vital status update on the app we have been building these past few months.
What’s next for Gluon?
Immediately, we welcome our community to come check out our new website. Soon, we will be releasing an educational guide further describing how to use Gluon Earn and Gluon Trade, our two applications designed for basic and advanced users, respectively. Additionally, follow us closely for announcements on the upcoming Gluon airdrop, details to be released shortly.
We are so excited to embark on this next chapter with you!
Follow Gluon For Updates
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/GluonZone
- Website: https://gluon.zone
- Documentation: https://docs.sunriselayer.io/learn/gluon
- Testnet app: (coming soon)
