What an incredible few weeks it has been with Vesta Finance launching, the market going wild and every twist and turn we’ve had in between!
As we look back, we reflect on some of our big wins, our challenges and overall satisfaction with you, our community.
Looking at what’s happened these last few weeks and onto the horizon, we just want to say it’s been an incredible journey so far and we can’t wait to share what we have in store for Vesta and beyond!
What’s Happened So Far?
Coming out of a remarkable bootstrapping event that saw $10 million raised in under 72 hours, Vesta Finance was positioned with vigour and became one of the largest bootstrapped L2 lending protocols the space has seen.
Our TVL reached $50 million in the space of 12 hours which saw a large amount of unique addresses using the platform during that time. Users were then able to collateralize Ether, renBTC, and gOHM in our vaults that allowed them to mint $VST which is our low-fee, capital efficient stablecoin deployed on the Arbitrum ecosystem.
To swap for $VST, please visit the preferred curve factory here.
We launched with two liquidity pools, VSTA-ETH on Balancer and VST-FRAX on Curve to great success and we’re constantly looking to increase our exposure to other pools in the future. As a reminder, the original VST-FRAX staking contractwas migrated to the new Frax Gauge where users can now earn rewards in both $VSTA and $FXS.
In terms of protocol health, Recovery Mode has not been triggered at all even with the rough market condition. Even if Recovery Mode was triggered, the system is completely safe since we adjusted stability pool emission on a weekly basis, keeping the stability pools’ $VSTA APR at 8–10% whilst ensuring coverage ratios (amount in stability pool / amount borrowed) remain at 30–40%. We are constantly studying the market to ensure a healthy coverage ratio without increasing selling pressure on $VSTA.
We wanted to really nail our initial protocol mechanics to ensure the foundations were laid for further improvements and additions down the track, a few of these items we touch on in this Medium.
The Next Step
With the pools populated and our launch in the rear view mirror, we then took it upon ourselves to start securing partnerships with outstanding protocols. Partners like Balancer joined us in our incentive program, emitting 1000 BAL per week into our VSTA-ETH pool. Frax also joined with their $20-$40k of FXS going out to stakers each week.
We have a couple partnerships brewing. With Redacted, we have a deposit proposal up for them to deposit gOHM into Vesta (be sure to check out our upcoming AMA on this). We are proud to partner with B.Protocol, a backstop liquidity protocol that automates the liquidation process to put your mind at ease. We have a proposal with GMX to add VST to their GLP index. GMX is one of the most widely used protocols on Arbitrum. Our partners are a big factor in the success of Vesta so we will be always be adding new collateral types from exceptional teams and we’re extremely excited to strengthen Vesta with other collaborations / integrations in Q1 & Q2.
This month we added to our core team by recruiting two superstars, one for operations and the other for community awareness to further strengthen our skillset. At Vesta we strive for innovation and to always be pushing the envelope on new releases. Protocol improvements and communication refinements are two items we view as crucial elements for the team to get right and is something we will always be building on to ensure Vesta reaches its full potential.
Connecting our core team to the community is also going to remain a big focus for us moving forward. We’re always happy to listen to our biggest community participants and are ecstatic to be announcing the revamped contributor program. Read more about it below. ⬇️
New Initiatives
Please note: All of the below will have their own medium article upon release to further dive into their mechanics.
Along with our brand new contributor program, we have a few new initiatives to announce to the wider community — these will be rolled out in this year.
Tokenomics
We are working to enable fee sharing through vote escrowed VSTA (veVSTA). VSTA holders will be able to lock up their tokens to receive veVSTA. Holding veVSTA will entitle the user to receive protocol generated fees. veVSTA can also be used toward voting for reward weight of liquidity and stability pools within the Vesta ecosystems.
*more tokenomic additions will be added in Q3 but these cannot be released…. not yet at least.
Dao Alignment Program
One of Vesta’s core tenets is winning together. We want to align incentives with the fellow protocols that we work with, and this is exactly what the DAO Alignment Program is for. The program will not only strengthen Vesta Finance, but also our program participants.
The Arbitrum ecosystem is one filled with incredible projects but you can expect us to make the leap cross-chain to really increase our output and partnership potential. So if you see synergy between Vesta and a fellow project, please let us know and we will look to establish a partnership.
Grant Program
With Vesta positioned in an exciting place, we have looked deep and thought of different ways to provide opportunities and capital to fellow partners who build alongside us.
By successfully executing on opportunities and building up fellow synergizing projects, it opens up the door for Vesta to not only operate as a lending platform, but also allow us to evolve into a protocol that has a wider set of products.
We plan to provide help projects that are an excellent fit with our vision and look forward to releasing the grant program in the near future.
Contributor Program: The College v2
We are very excited to announce a new iteration of the College, which will let you become a contributor and earn rewards in $VSTA for your contributions.
💡 We aim to create a structure where everyone can contribute to the success of Vesta in a decentralised and open way.
Our first iteration of the college accomplished exactly what we needed in the early stages. The way we have set up Vesta ensures longevity of rewards that will empower each and every contributor, based on their work provided. With over 50%+ of tokens allocated to our ecosystem / community treasury, we have opened the ceiling to what’s possible at a paid community contributor level.
In the new College, contributors will be selected on an application basis. The program will start with the following categories:
- Community Engagement / Moderating
- Education and Documentation
- Analytics and Dashboards
- Content Creation / Media
We will be releasing another medium article that goes into more depth on our contributor program once the details have been finalised — expect this in a couple days.
If this is something you would be interested in, join our Discord and head to the #contributor-chat channel. More detail will come soon but feel free to hang out with fellow Vestals in the chat 💬
Here at Vesta we love listening to our community so if you have any questions or would like to submit feedback, do join the Discord group at discord.gg/yKsr6PRtxK and share your feedback with us.
Ave Vesta!
jcannon
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