A New Dawn is Coming
Back in the DeFi summer of 2021, Bao was the talk of the town. We brought high yields to over 200 communities, attracting hundreds of millions in deposits. The buzz around Bao’s vision — offering a lucrative, open, and fair financial future based on tokenizing data— was electrifying. Concepts like paying politicians in crime rate tokens or weather-linked tokens for farmers to hedge against bad weather captured the imagination of our bustling community. Expectations soared.
Our vision was clear. But the technology wasn’t quite there yet. As reality set in, people started to forget about Bao, writing us off as another overhyped project that failed to deliver. Disillusionment crept in.
This pattern of inflated expectations followed by disillusionment is well-known with new technologies, perfectly illustrated by the Gartner hype cycle:
Despite the negativity, the core of our community showed remarkable resilience. They continued to build, laying the foundations for tokenized data. Now, there are signs that Bao is emerging from this phase of the hype cycle.
We’ve developed products that can create pegged tokens and keep them pegged. We’ve solved technical problems that previously hindered our progress. Our team has grown from a solo act to a continuously evolving group of contributors, and our roadmap now clearly outlines a path to disrupt the $2.5 quadrillion derivatives industry.
Since the beginning of the DAO, we have kept influencers, shillers, paid groups, and other shenanigans at bay because we genuinely believe that marketing is only needed when there is something real to market.
Now, it’s time to let everyone know that Bao is still here, remaining true to its core identity and better than ever. With the help of internal marketing contributors and probably the top crypto marketing agency, Coinbound, it’s time for enlightenment!
2024 So Far
We’ve made significant strides towards our targets for the year. We launched new tokenomics that stopped inflation with excellent results. We sunset baskets and simplified our borrow vaults. baoUSD and baoETH liquidity balancers are live, helping to keep pegged tokens stable while earning additional revenue. Cross-chain contracts have been deployed and are being tested. Lend markets are launching imminently, and our new flagship product, the Minter, is almost ready for its Q3 debut.
The Minter is a massive step for Bao towards our vision of tokenizing data. Previously, pegged tokens were created with collateralized debt positions. While this works well for highly liquid markets, it’s less effective for markets that may not always be liquid. The Minter solves this problem by acting as a fully contained market, maintaining a healthy collateral ratio using incentivized stability pools. The entire position is tokenized, with a pegged token representing the debt and a leveraged token representing the value difference between all the minted pegged tokens and the collateral. If the value of collateral drops too much, pegged tokens are taken from the stability pool and redeemed for collateral to keep the system healthy.
Plans for the rest of 2024
The Minter
We’re launching a Minter with wstETH collateral that lets users mint baoUSD and longETH — a flexible leveraged long position on ETH.
After a successful launch, we’ll plan and implement our next synth, moving us closer to our goal of disrupting the mammoth $2.5 quadrillion derivatives market by creating on-chain tokenized derivatives linked to any data.
Lend Markets
The first Bao lend markets are just around the corner. These markets are built to allow lending and borrowing of our on-chain tokenized derivatives and other yield-bearing tokens such as Pendle’s PTs, sDAI, and sUSDe. These lend markets will provide an additional way for tokenized derivative holders to earn a yield and leverage their assets.
Cross Chain
Cross-chain contracts using Layer Zero have been deployed, allowing our on-chain derivatives to be easily transported between chains without using a bridge. Since collateral will always stay on the main net, we can burn derivatives on one chain and mint them on another, meaning native derivatives for each chain without the risk of a bridge hack leaving them without backing.
Once testing is completed, we’ll deploy lend markets to several chains and incentivize liquidity, bringing cheaper transactions and more use cases for our derivatives.
Marketing
While we wait for the Minter to be ready, we’ve been refining our messaging and landing page to make Bao easier to understand, removing crypto buzzwords, and using language that resonates with everyone.
Around the Minter launch, we’re planning a big marketing push with the help of our friends from Coinbound. Expect articles on respected crypto news sites, YouTube coverage, and threads from key opinion leaders on Twitter.
Minter Factory Once the Minter is live, it will be time to start work on our Minter Factory and bring to life our vision, letting anyone create tokens and link them to any data feed.
With Bao, the future is bright, bold, and brimming with potential. Stay tuned as we break new ground and redefine what’s possible in decentralized finance.
For more details, check out our 2024 roadmap: https://info.bao.finance/docs/roadmap
