Alpaca Roadmap Update
Dear alpacas,
Many of you have been asking us every day:
”Wer AUSD?”
“Wat roadmap?”
“Wen moon journey?”
Well, after working hard to decide on the timing of the initiatives we’ll be delivering over the next year, we can now share those details with you.
We apologize for being a little late with this roadmap release, but everyone has been busy working on Alpaca so it’s taken a while to get various departments to take time out of their work to strategize and coordinate plans for new 2022 quarterly roadmaps.
Most importantly, we take these decisions very seriously, believing the most vital thing is to be moving in the correct strategic direction. Before we share our upcoming roadmap though, we’d like to take a look back at our first published roadmap article from March of this year, and evaluate how well we’ve achieved the high-level goals we laid out at that time.
2021 Roadmap Review
Below were our goals when we first launched Alpaca at the start of the year. Though 2021 isn’t over and it’s only been 7 months since then, since we’re updating the roadmap, we figured this is a good enough time to review our performance.
1. Establish the most comprehensive and advanced leveraged yield farming ecosystem with highly-composable features, integrating with the top AMMs and protocols across BNB Chain.
We’ve integrated with the top BNB Chain AMMs including PancakeSwap, MDEX, and WaultSwap. When looking at the other leveraged yield farming platforms in crypto, we also believe we’ve far surpassed them in terms of composability, position customization, and ease of use.
Having developed features unique to Alpaca such as adjusting positions, partial closing, minimizing trading on closing, adding collateral during Alpaca Guard activation, advanced liquidation data, mobile and Telegram alerts, support for many languages, and PnL tracking, we believe we’ve done our best to make Alpaca Finance one of the easiest to use products in DeFi.
Regarding composability, there are few BNB Chain protocols that have as many 3rd party projects integrated with them as we do, perhaps only the longstanding platforms PancakeSwap and Venus being comparable.
2. Increase the ALPACA token’s long-term value and utility within our ecosystem through additional deflationary mechanisms and protocol use-cases, as well as across the DeFi-space through accelerating marketing and business development activities (partnerships, cross-platform lending, CEX listings, etc).
As promised, we’ve created significant deflationary mechanisms for ALPACA. Most of the platform revenue now accrues to ALPACA holders through buyback & burn and Protocol APR sharing. Soon, the amount of ALPACA we’ve burned will reach 5 million and that number continues to grow steadily.
We’ve also not slacked in BD. For one, we’ve already established 24 Grazing Range partnerships, which is significant considering we’re not a DEX or launchpad, having developed our own type of partnership with this program. As far as listings, CoinGecko has us listed at over 20 exchanges. Most notably, we’ve managed to list on Binance within 6 months of launching, all through hard work and focus on product and community, without any type of VC or networking support.
3. Optimize protocol security and robustness through audits and the addition of multi-sig.
At this point, Alpaca Finance is rated and widely considered as one of the most secure protocols on BNB Chain. Most notably, we’ve had 12 audits, which is one of the highest amounts for any DeFi project. While we haven’t instituted a multi-sig due to eventually deciding it wasn’t necessary because we have a 24h timelock, non-custodial and decentralized funds deployment, and have multiple online and offline layers of protections over control access, we’ve further developed security by instituting a professional Bug Bounty Program with Immunefi, being one of the first projects in BNB Chain’s Priority One Program, and integrating insurance with Nexus and InsurAce.
4. Implement NFT campaigns leveraging Alpaca’s unique branding, and integrate those NFTs with platform features that improve engagement, deliver genuine utility, and offer increased yields.
To date, we’ve released over 50 NFT campaigns, with multiple campaigns having generated over 10,000 minted NFTs. These have resulted in increased engagements in various internal and external events including AMAs, partnerships, and more. Now, we’re moving to the next stage of integrating utility.
Our upcoming Alpie NFTs will provide a 50% boost to max leverage for yield farmers, along with many other benefits. In our upcoming roadmap, you’ll also see that NFT Utility integration will be an area we’ll continue developing, and our play-to-earn game will be a major next phase of that.
5. Establish Alpaca Finance as a foundational layer in the DeFi landscape through horizontal and vertical protocol integrations, unmatched composability and leverage offerings, and cross-chain expansions.
In regards to TVL, we’ve secured and maintained our ranking as a top 5 BNB Chain protocol, and a top 35 protocol within all blockchains. Our ranking in volume of capital passing through our smart contracts is even higher, often competing for the number one spot with the likes of Uniswap and Aave. Thus, we believe we’ve succeeded in becoming a foundational lego.
Furthermore, cross-chain is still a direction of great potential expansion for us, and this is a channel of growth we haven’t tapped yet, mostly due to external factors of those networks lacking sufficient scale and infrastructure. Even in the case of Ethereum, though there exists a large amount of capital in the network, it carries an inefficiency of extremely high operating costs, which is why the network is shifting to Eth 2.0 and L2 offloading next year.
Thus, multi-chain is absolutely one of our points of focus, but it’s not a step we want to take haphazardly, especially when we still have many other areas we can innovate in, such as AUSD, play-to-earn gaming, and more. Looking back now though, I think most of you alpacas should be able to see that we’ve delivered on almost all our high-level goals for 2021, and that since it’s only been 7 months since we announced them, we’re ahead of schedule.
In any case, now that we’ve looked at the past, it’s time to turn our eyes to the future. As such, here are our high-level goals for Q4 2021 to Q4 2022:
Current High-Level Goals
- Unlock higher capital efficiency for Alpaca Finance users through product innovations, resulting in returns unmatchable by competing under-leveraged DeFi protocols.
- Widen our customer reach beyond the niche of leveraged yield farming by building high-quality engaging products in broad and high-growth new media segments such as NFTs and play-to-earn gaming, which will help develop the Alpaca brand and metaverse. Then, create organic funnels to integrate those entertainment products with financial services, resulting in the onboarding of massive market segments currently untapped by DeFi incumbents.
- Further decentralize Alpaca by introducing governance. Create proper incentivization mechanisms to assure the bulk of the platform’s revenues are distributed to loyal long-term ALPACA holders.
- Expand horizontally by building multi-chain, tapping into completely new user bases beyond BNB Chain, resulting in multiplied user numbers and revenues.
- Expand access to new segments of large institutional capital by creating easy-to-use structured products for institutions and investment funds.
- Through the aforementioned vertical and horizontal expansions, grow Alpaca’s brand from a top BNB Chain DeFi platform to a top cross-chain finance and new media conglomerate.
Now that we’ve gone over the high-level goals, let’s get into the specifics.
Updated Roadmap
Q4 2021
- Alpies Dauntless BNB Chain Sale — October 19th
- Alpies Dreamers ETH Sale — October 27th
- List Alpies on NFT marketplaces
- Launch Alpies Gallery Site
- Add more utility to ALPACA token
— More buyback & burn
— — 20% of Alpies sale proceeds
— — 2.5% of royalties from Alpies sales on secondary markets - Create BNB Chain <> ETH Bridge for Alpies
- Alpaca Finance site redesign: (almost ready)
- Additional CEX listings
- Additional Audits
- More Grazing Range pools
- More multi-language support
- App UI Improvements
- More farming pools from integrated DEXes
- Create an SDK: improve composability for other protocols, funds, and institutions to integrate our products:(We’ve been working on this and it’s halfway done)
- Create AUSD stablecoin:
— Create initial utility for AUSD
(AUSD smart contracts are completed, currently doing integration testing. The contracts for AUSD are very complicated, even more complex than our LYF. As a result, it’s taken longer than expected. In fact, the main reason for delay is security. The audit firms we’re working with requested a month to audit AUSD due to its complexity.
AUSD code: https://github.com/alpaca-finance/alpaca-stablecoin
AUSD is complex. However, this product’s complexity is also why when it’s complete, AUSD will become a strategic advantage for Alpaca that will be difficult for competitors to imitate; Simple forks will not be possible. Scheduled release date is late November-early December.)
- NFT Utility Integration
— 50% max leverage boost for Alpie owners (There’s a chance development will run over into Q1) - Implement Governance Part 1/2: ALPACA->xALPACA lockup pool to earn yields from ALPACA emissions, Protocol Revenue Sharing & Grazing Ranges
(After this is implemented, our Protocol APR, ibALPACA staking rewards, and Grazing Ranges will only be available to users who lock up their ibALPACA in the governance vault. This means loyal ALPACA holders will be the sole recipients of the platform’s revenues, receiving their just rewards.
Minimum lockup time will be a week, maximum 1 year, and the multiplier for rewards and governance votes will scale upwards with longer lockup.
Since 61% of circulating ALPACA supply is currently deployed in ALPACA lending, this lockup vault should take a considerable % of ALPACA off the market, resulting in significantly decreased selling pressure, which would be very positive for ALPACA’s price. We’ve already been developing this but there’s a chance it won’t be completed until Q1. Can view it on Github: https://github.com/alpaca-finance/xALPACA-contract)
- Additional undisclosed strategic features
Q1 2022
(The largest deliverables this quarter will be multi-chain and the new institutional products platform, scheduled to release towards the end of the quarter.)
- Implement Governance Part 2/2: xALPACA voting
(Those who lockup will receive xALPACA which will give them voting power in the protocol.)
- Exclusive Alpaca physical merch for Alpie owners
- Add more protocol utility for AUSD
— Partner with external protocols to accept AUSD as collateral
— Partner to create an AUSD-BUSD low fee trading pool - Improve App Performance
- Fund 3rd-party teams to build ecosystem dApps off Alpaca
— Trading platform with automation options, etc. - Additional CEX listings
- Additional Audits
- More Grazing Range pools
- App UI Improvements
- More farming pools from integrated DEXes
- Go multi-chain
- Launch Alpaca Institutional platform (structured products for institutions)
- Additional undisclosed strategic features
Q2 2022
(The largest deliverables this quarter will be launching the gaming token, the game and its surrounding components, as well as new products for the institutional platform.)
- Launch play-to-earn gaming token
— Presale for Alpie owners - Launch Beta of play-to-earn game
— Exclusive access for Alpie owners
— Create breeding mechanism for Alpies - Additional CEX listings
- Additional Audits
- More Grazing Range pools
- App UI Improvements
- Add more lending pools
- More farming pools from integrated DEXes
- PnL V2 — include ALPACA rewards in calculation
- Integrate support for additional web and mobile wallets
- Create separate UI for auto-compounding 1x LP positions
- Launch more products on Alpaca Institutional
- Additional undisclosed strategic features
Q3 2022
(The largest deliverables this quarter will be launching the NFT marketplace, augmenting the game to its full version and releasing it to the public, and expanding the institutional platform.)
- Launch NFT marketplace (primarily for our gaming/Alpaca NFTs)
- More NFT Utility Integration
- Partner with lending protocols to accept ibTOKENS as collateral
- Additional CEX listings
- Additional Audits
- More Grazing Range pools
- App UI Improvements
- More farming pools from integrated DEXes
- Add more lending pools
- Augment lending pool APYs through composable deployment
- Strategies on staking vaults: add staking vault strategies to improve capital efficiency; implement additional yield-generation methods for staking funds.
- Launch more products on Alpaca Institutional
- Launch Public Version of play-to-earn game
- Additional undisclosed strategic features
That’s the current roadmap. Having said that, we’re an agile team which means the roadmap is subject to change, especially if there is a large shift in market conditions. However, what you can be sure of is we’ll never stop working harder than any other team to expand our platform and generate value for our ALPACA and Alpie holders.
We also value the opinions of all alpacas in our Herd. So if you have any ideas or questions about our roadmap, feel free to hop into our socials, and start humming!
