Maximizer’s 2021 Year In Review

Maximizer
5 min readJan 4, 2022

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BUIDL-ing in Stealth Is Wealth

A Maximizer Rises

Early 2021.

Binance Smart Chain’s DeFi ecosystem was cannibalizing itself…

So an OG developer set out to save the BSC community he helped launch.

In 2020, Madxi (anon) co-developed a vault that rose to become the #1 yield optimizer on BSC. However, he watched in dismay as a predatory new behavior emerged from his project’s various forks: these copycat vaults compounded new protocols’ tokens, then dumped them, tanking the price and the young protocols’ futures.

Madxi felt compelled to engineer a solution to reprogram BSC DeFi to support founders rather than prey on them.This lead to the creation of Maximizer Vault a novel, no-sell yield optimizer that protects protocols’ token price by incentivizing long-term community investment.

Unfortunately, the more Madxi observed BSC DeFi’s community, the less he recognized it. He was confident Maximizer Vaults could be a game-changer for a healthy DeFi ecosystem, but BSC’s casino culture seemed too far gone to pull back from the brink.

But then a new blockchain with promising tech and a surging DeFi ecosystem caught his eye…Avalanche.

Maximizer & Avalanche — The Dynamic Duo

The more Madxi researched Avalanche, the more it seemed a perfect fit.

  • All-star team
  • Sub-second finality transactions
  • Cheap gas
  • Fervent community
  • Subnets

But what finally convinced him to go all in was an experience many founders encounter when they dip their toe into the Avalanche DeFi ecosystem: he met like-minded innovators.

For Madxi, it was BENQI. Hot off their successful launch, BENQI sought to amplify their momentum and grow Avalanche into the top DeFi ecosystem in Web 3. As their initial convos with Madxi blossomed into a collaborative courtship, the founders united around three core goals:

Goal #1: Support Avalanche’s top projects to grow the AVAX ecosystem long-term.

Goal #2: Fix DeFi’s rent-seeking problem — yield farmers earning LP tokens, then dumping them for profit, tanking the underlying project and destabilizing the DeFi ecosystem.

Goal #3: Unite the Avalanche community around the “win and help win” mentality found cross Web 3.

Thus, Maximizer was born and our journey began.

The BUIDL-ing Begins

It would have been fairly simple at this stage to drum up enthusiasm for Maximizer with the standard marketing announcements, social media pushes, and a token launch. However, this course of action would be grossly premature. Maximizer was first and foremost going to be by founders for founders, not by hypemen for “wen Lambo?” moonbois.

So we geared up in stealth to do what the Avalanche community does best: BUIDL.

BUIDL #1 — Maximizer Vaults

Our first BUIDL tackled fixing DeFi rent-seeking (Goal #2) head-on: launching the novel no-sell yield optimizer vaults. Here are the broad strokes of how they operate–

  • Users stake their preferred blue chip LP tokens (Qi, Joe, AVAX, etc.) into a vault
  • Maximizer’s vaults auto-compound the yield, requiring no additional effort from the staker
  • Unlike other auto-compounders, Maximizer continuously compounds yielded blue chip tokens to maximize the returns of the underlying farm without selling yielded assets. This approach has never been done before.

Example: The vault compounded AVAX yield from $60 to $100 in a matter of weeks, outperforming competing vaults by a significant margin. Savvy readers (aka Maximizer OGs) have likely already connected the dots: the vaults incentivize long-term HODL investing in the Avalanche ecosystem (Goal #1).

OG Maxi Vaults for QI

BUIDL #2 — The Maximizer Treasury

With this new “DeFi Lego” created, tested, and a proven success, it came time for Maximizer to BUIDL another one to snap into place: the Maximizer treasury and its three core objectives:

  • Boost the efficiency of the no-sell-yield optimizer vaults by increasing the Total Value Locked (more TVL = better optimized yield)
  • Prepare Maximizer to support promising Avalanche projects directly
  • Turbocharge the Maxi community from 0–60

To do so, Maximizer launched the $MAXI token with the bootstrapping mechanics popularized by Olympus. Again, savvy readers will note that Maximizer didn’t launch as a momentum-chasing Ohm-fork. First we developed the novel Maximizer vaults, then we used Ohm’s co-op reserve currency strategy as a DeFi tool in the service of our grander vision (Goal #1).

We won’t sugarcoat it — December was a rough month to be a Maximizer, or in Defi/Crypto overall. However, Maximizer’s fundamentals remain strong.

  • As of today, original stakers of Maximizer will have doubled their $MAXI token holdings due to Maximizer’s algorithmically-derived APY rebasing three times a day (currently 80k%)
  • Maximizer’s well-balanced, quantitatively-diversified treasury has reached over $12M
  • $250K partner mints with Avalanche DeFi blue-chips BENQI, Trader Joe, and Pangolin significantly outperformed Olympus Pro’s Avalanche cohort
Maximizer Minting Partners
  • Maximizer’s runway remains above 250 days
  • Maximizer created wsMAXI (wrapped staked $MAXI) so that stakers can simultaneously earn more $MAXI while using their assets with DeFi partner projects (more to be announced on this soon, Q1 2022).

Additionally, Maximizer grew the Maxi community to include Avalanche OGs, NFT artists, and leading influential crypto messengers and marketers. However, there’s something the Maximizer team did not do and we want to be crystal clear about it:

We did not panic. We did not juice our APYs. We did not pay shillers to boost the token. We did not spin up bots for Twitter takeovers. We did not tease marketing announcements hyping future announcements. This is how rugs get woven, not how protocols grow strong.

Instead Maximizer’s experienced founders built through the bear. We worked around the clock through the holidays securing partnerships and coding technical enhancements to kick 2022 off with maximum momentum…

Which is why we can proudly share that we have reached our third BUIDL, the one that fulfills the commitment we made to each other, and to the Avalanche community.

BUIDL #3 — Avalanche Startup Boosting

It’s time for Maximizer to help new Avalanche projects bootstrap liquidity and support their launches.

This first week of 2022, Maximizer will announce multiple partnerships, including Maximizer’s first supported Avalanche startup, and a mechanism to support many more in 2022 and beyond.

As lifelong founders, this is profoundly meaningful to us: there is nothing more rewarding than helping other founders begin their journey. The startup will benefit. $MAXI HODLers will benefit. Avalanche’s ecosystem will benefit. We will all win and help win. Together (Goal#3).

Maximizers are Gonna Make It.

#MGMI

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About Maximizer

Maximizer aims to scale and enable sustainability for Avalanche ecosystem projects through it’s novel no-sell vault treasury.

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