Radiant Goes Cross-Chain

After months of development, Radiant launched 28 days ago with the vision of uniting the fragmented, cross-chain liquidity across web3’s money markets. We haven’t stopped moving since. We have learned quite a bit, made several key moves, and are excited to share what we have been working on since deploying to Arbitrum.

Radiant development is full steam ahead, and our next phase of maturation intends to push the limits of decentralized finance into new territory. We are now entering into the “Galaxy Expansion” phase of the protocol, expanding our territories and charting out new interstellar routes within the DeFi galaxy.

Arbitrum has been fantastic to work with, has an excellent team behind it, and we are big believers in their vision. That said, to achieve our end-state vision, we’ll need to expand onto new chains to capture a larger market share and % of DeFi TVL.

V2 of Radiant will allow for depositing and borrowing on any major chain, seamlessly — with a robust cross-chain protocol fee sharing mechanism.

Our first major expansion will give Radiant access to the ~$6 billion TVL accessible on BNB Chain.

We are quite focused on growing the mindshare and daily active users interacting with RDNT, and we believe that the BNB chain provides us with a great opportunity to do so. Most of the TVL is passive, earning non-competitive lending & borrowing rates, and has no opportunity to share protocol fees through existing money markets. We think we can capture a large piece of the market and we are getting close to public release (testnet is well underway).

With a new chain in our crosshairs, we understand the importance of refining the RDNT emission structure to best set up the platform for long-term stability across multiple markets.

Reworking emissions structure is short-term priority #1.

Most DeFi protocols falter due to highly front-loaded emissions and lack of token utility, which attract mercenary capital and non-sticky TVL. We are looking to better calibrate RDNT emissions in order to 1) continue to give RDNT best-in-class lending & borrowing compared to other money markets and 2) be flexible and responsive to fluctuations and protocol fees.

If the market cap of RDNT were to drastically change in either direction as an example, the current emission structure would not make sense, as it would over/under inflate on a USD basis relative to protocol revenue. Maintaining nimbleness and flexibility is key to the design structure the protocol is moving towards.

The core value proposition and vision stand out from the rest of the market. After all, Radiant is the only cross-chain money market that shares protocol fees with its community.

While initial lending/borrowing rates were successful at generating interest and market share, the vision is a marathon, not a sprint. Emissions on a $USD basis as a percentage of protocol revenue is a critical metric that is tracked closely.

This will be reworked over the next 10 days. Current expectations are to redirect ALL emissions (including team) by at least 50% to the Radiant DAO reserve wallet, which will be pre-announced and submitted to the 48-hour timelock. The RDNT that “would have’’ been emitted will now go to a DAO treasury and can be used for future chain launches, DAO to DAO treasury swaps, and other uses that will be governed by the RADIANT DAO.

New mechanism to aid in cross-chain unity

For the first time in DeFi history, protocol fees from each chain will be possible to be shared with lockers of RDNT. The end-state vision for RDNT was always that it could benefit from the activity on all chains, and with this development milestone and second chain launch, that journey is beginning.

Locking RDNT currently provides some of the best real yields of “blue chip” (BTC, ETH, USDC/USDT/DAI) across all DeFi. This will only improve as Radiant redirects emissions, attracting TVL and interest via Arbitrum Odyssey, and additional chain launches.

Mistakes were made in post-launch craziness

All of the contracts should have been verified at genesis block with a security timelock already in place. The confusion regarding the RDNT tokenomics, and specifically the team allocation, could have been easily averted with better upfront communication. We apologize for our miscommunications, promptly fixed timelock and verification issues in the days post launch, and have learned our lessons with respect to communication and transparency.

We are incredibly proud of the fact that the team’s financial incentives are in full alignment with the success of the protocol. By making the recent decision to permanently lock millions (in USD value) worth of team tokens, a significant percentage of our salaries now comes directly from protocol revenue. If we fail in generating cross-chain interest, then we don’t get paid nor reimbursed for the money spent to launch and operate Radiant.

Finally, we will be implementing a contract Bug Bounty as a third layer of safety in tandem with our two existing audits by PeckShield and Solidity Finance. More details to come.

We really do appreciate the community’s collective feedback and input. To ensure that the line of communication remains open and constructive between the team and the Radiant community, we will be conducting more frequent AMAs and are currently interviewing PR candidates.

Come visit the DAO at discord.gg/radiantcapital to learn more and directly engage with the team.

The DAO’s vision is to make DeFi more accessible for the average user and are thus incredibly passionate about seamlessly integrating cross-chain borrowing & lending. We view this as a necessary primitive to bring on the next 10 million users to DeFi

The omnichain future will be a bright one, and we look forward to embarking on the next phase of this journey together! 🚀🌌