Aurigami Q3 in Review

Aurigami Finance

Published in

Aurigami

7 min readOct 4, 2022

TL;DR

The bear is upon us, but Aurigami is still going strong. Treasury has paved a healthy, lengthy runway for us to withstand even a multi-year bear market. Bear markets aren’t sexy, prices are down and liquidity is thin, but it’s also the best time to build, innovate, and improve — which is exactly what we plan to do
RiskDAO’s Worst Day Simulation shows that even in the most EXTREME of situations, Aurigami will still have $0 value at risk
Aurigami is the healthiest lending protocol according to RiskDAO’s Bad Debt Dashboard, staying consistently at $0 bad debt and 0 insolvent accounts
Aurigami will continue to work with RiskDAO and make full use of the real-time analytics dashboard to adopt active vigilance and proactive precaution towards risk management
Aurigami Game, a utility-based DeFi gamification centered around Game Theory, has been receiving great response and participation, with 12,765,000 PULP already scheduled for early unlock
Q3 2022 was a PR galore for Aurigami, filled with exciting partnerships, community + IRL events, headline-grabbing media coverage — all of which will form the foundation for us to build and innovate upon

Q3 2022 was another quarter ravaged by brutal macroeconomic conditions, with crypto also falling victim to the bear. STILL, this didn’t stop Aurigami from building, shipping and making friends. All in all, despite the bleeding market, Q3 still turned out to be a pretty au-some quarter, let’s take a look!

Aurigami Game

Who says paper (or PLY) making couldn’t be fun?

The Aurigami Game was designed as a quintessential representation of Aurigami, that is making DeFi fun, cheeky, interactive, and rewarding. They say fortune favours the brave, and that is indeed so for #Paperhands willing to take a spin on the Aurigami Game. The premise is simple — play game, win game, unlock PULP earlier by 8 months, rinse, repeat. For those who missed our Medium article on explaining the game mechanics, here’s the link.

In the end, the Aurigami Game was a resounding success that garnered positive responses from the #Paperhand community, with the first winner of the Reward Pool even walking away with 1,100,000 PLY ($2,000). Since launch, the Game has received steady participation, with the bi-weekly Reward Pool running up to >200K PLY on a regular basis and as much as 12,765,000 PULP being scheduled for early unlock — a testament to the game’s usership.

Do note that the Aurigami Game is only available for a limited time, so cut that PULP vesting while you still have the chance!

Partnerships

As always, Aurigami had been a busy social bee, making buzz within the cryptoverse and striking up strategic partnerships with several key players within the industry — some old, some new, all good. This not only helps to set up a wider, more holistic foundation for Aurigami to build upon, but also increases the number of DeFi avenues and possibilities for Paperhands.

Arctic — Aurigami became a launch partner and core member of Arctic DAO governance, a new ecosystem-DEX designed to provide deeper liquidity and higher capital efficiency with their novel DLAMM mechanism. Keep an eye out for PLY pool launch on Arctic soon!
Axelar — Partnership with Axelar, Trisolaris and 0xSquid to expand cross-chain capabilities on Aurora, laying down the foundation for Aurigami to establish a chain-agnostic, one-shop platform for users to access cross-chain liquidity
Impossible Finance — We joined hands once again with our IDO partner to launch the first ever IF pool on Aurora, unlocking more liquidity for Paperhands and Aurorians alike
ImmuneFi — Launch of Aurigami’s ImmuneFi Bug Bounty Program, with up to $500,000 in rewards up for grabs
Trisolaris — Launch of auUSDT-auUSDC Stable Pool on Trisolaris, the first ever auToken swap pool
Decentral Bank — As part of USN’s upcoming v3.0 launch, Aurigami partnered with Decentral Bank to spread educational awareness on our beloved native stablecoin
RiskDAO — Enlistment of RiskDAO to conduct a thorough analysis on Aurigami’s risk parameters (see Security)
KyberNetwork — Kyber collaborated with RiskDAO to build a real-time analytics dashboard as part of the risk assessment effort (see Security)

One of our core missions is to democratize the access to DeFi and most importantly, crafting synergistic opportunities that can help uplift the entire Near and Aurora ecosystem. We want to see Aurigami and by extension Aurora succeed and thrive. If you’re a project looking to build on Aurora, reach out, say hi, and let’s see how we can help each other!

Events

Speaking of making friends, now that the concerns of COVID have largely abated, IRL events and conferences came back with a vengeance — and you can bet that Aurigami was there in every single one of the major ones!

First, there was NEAR Space @ EthCC 2022 in Paris, France, followed almost immediately by NEAR Singapore Kickoff. Then, it was straight to Lisbon, Portugal for the biggest NEAR event in 2022 — NEARCON 2022! The unofficial world tour of Aurigami ended in the Lion City where the annual TOKEN2049 happened. If anyone of you managed to catch our dear leader EY Tan at any of these events, chances are you would have gotten your hands on some exclusive Aurigami swag too. While there was certainly fun, lots and lots of fun, these events also allowed us to finally meet some of our amazing partners face-to-face (and get those ultra secretive alpha discussions and brainstorms going😉) and of course, spread the good name of Aurigami.

Risk & Security

*Still the healthiest lending protocol out there, with $0 bad debt and 0 insolvent accounts*

The biggest leap we made this quarter was our enlistment of RiskDAO to conduct a thorough analysis of Aurigami’s risk parameters. Time and again we’ve emphasized how user safety and security are our highest priorities, and this time round we took it up a notch by adopting a preventative stance towards mitigating risks

Thanks to RiskDAO’s novel risk assessment framework, we were able to conduct a rigorous quantitative analysis, including simulating the WORST case scenario for the protocol.

We wanted to ensure that user funds would be safe even in the most EXTREME of situations, and we’re proud to share that even under the MOST stressful situation, the assessment showed that Aurigami has $0 value at risk.

Additionally, we also adopted some of RiskDAO’s recommendations, such as lowering the borrow cap for ETH prior to The Merge. Like The Merge itself, Aurigami’s security was a successful non-event.

As mentioned before, we will continue to work with RiskDAO to monitor and manage the protocol’s risks, making full use of the real-time analytics dashboard to keep a close eye on any changes in the liquidity environment.

Active vigilance and proactive precaution will always be our default approach.

For those of you who are interested in taking a peek, here’s the link to our RiskDAO dashboard and the guide to deciphering the metrics.

Public Relations

It seems that Aurigami has been making waves in the headlines! Q3 was a PR galore filled with coverage by both traditional and Web3 media sites, including the big names like Bloomberg, Forbes, The Block and more.

Here are some of the highlight pieces:

The Block — Aurora protocol Aurigami raises $12 million in token rounds
Blockchain News — DeFi Protocol Aurigami Raises $12m in Token Rounds
InvestorsObserver — Aurigami (PLY) has a Very Bullish Sentiment Score, is Rising, and Outperforming the Crypto Market Thursday: What’s Next?
Bloomberg — Aurigami Collects $12M Warchest to Grow Aurora-Based Lending Protocol
CryptoWisser — How Mercenary Capital Ruins DeFi Farming and How Gamification Can Help
International Business Times — These Are The Projects To Watch During The Next Crypto Bull Run
Forbes — DeFi: Is Anyone Really Using It?
Bloomberg — Aurigami Minimizes Risks in Proactive Precaution with Risk DAO

Community Update

Last but definitely not least, the #Paperhands family! With over 47k Twitter followers AND Discord members, the Aurigami community is still one of the largest and most vibrant within the Aurora ecosystem to-date — and you’re one of them 💘

Community activities are still well and underway on a regular basis, with several major competitions such as Gigabrain Competition, Aurigami Photo Taking Competition, USN Discord Quiz and KuCoin Trading Competition boasting exciting, bountiful rewards the most active of #Paperhands. Not forgetting of course the weekly Auri of the Week Discord contest which has turned several repeat winners into the biggest die-hard #Paperhands. This is the first step towards a sustainable, organic ambassador program.

Q4 will be just as exciting as Q3, if not even MORE, so keep your eyes peeled!

What’s Next?

Let’s be honest — the market’s not looking great. Record-breaking FED rate hikes, historically high CPI numbers, rumours of tradfi (and crypto) giants being mired in liquidity issues, warfare, job cuts, supply chain troubles… the list goes on. Safe to say, we’re in for some tough times ahead BUT, rain or shine, bull or bear, Aurigami is still here to stay.

Like we mentioned in our Q2 review, our stalwart treasury has paved a healthy, lengthy runway for us to withstand even a multi-year bear market. Bear markets aren’t sexy, prices are down and liquidity is thin, but it’s also the best time for teams to put our heads down and together to build, innovate and improve — and boy do we have some very exciting features to share with all of you soon.

Until then, stay safe and WAGMI Paperhands 🚀