$CIVILIZATION
CivFund AMA 28th Dec 2022
Our journey towards DeFi for everyone
Thanks to Civ community for the questions and Dexman for updates. Below a recap about yesterday session shared in Civilization Telegram Chat
DexMan — CIVian at Civilization $CIV, [28 dic 2022, 19:16:20]:
Before the answers I would like to share a bit of a personal reflection on the journey so far. More than 1 year ago, a group of friends pointed me in the direction of the magic world of crypto and of automated market makers, and I have been fascinated by the opportunity of giving everyone the chance of becoming the bank. That initial intuition and vision has been taking shape and has evolved in a beautiful, yet unpredictable way, over the past year. I feel blessed and lucky to be part of this ongoing social experiment — thank you everyone for an amazing run so far, and so much more to happen!
Before jumping into the nitty gritty of the AMA questions, which are more on the technical side, I would also like to reflect on the concept of decentralisation. The whole idea of Civ is to build things in a decentralised way; and even more so for the Fund about which many questions have understandably been asked. Based on the market momentum, I have observed a wild swing of mood — last year a lot of people were randomly raising their hand to contribute; whereas this year, fewer people seem in the mood to help. But the whole idea here is to go beyond “devs” or anyone specifically including myself, and we are still a long way to go.
Surely, much like Ethereum itself, or Bitcoin even, decentralisation is a gradual process, requiring a headstart. Much like a fire requires someone lighting it initially before it can live its own life, or much like even a baby requires nurturing parents to help it grow before becoming autonomous, I think our role in this community is not to own Civilization, but solely to look after it for the next generation, caring and fostering it until it will have evolved to the point of not needing us anymore. That is my own personal interpretation, and I think it’s totally independent of bear or bull market: it’s a social responsibility. And I hope it will progress at the speed of fire rather than that comparatively longer one of a baby, but whichever it will be, let it be!
So I will talk about the work of the Dev Team, which is an amazing international community of people who have come together without previously knowing each other, to help build this initial seed. But the seed can only grow and become a beautiful plant if we all care for it together. This is not my project or my team, it’s as much mine as it’s yours or everyone else’s. Otherwise, I would be working at a traditional company — and pardon me, but that would make zero sense, as I am not even getting paid here! I am working here, because I believe that decentralisation eventually will win and take over this project in ways that I could never think of myself, or even believe or know exist. That’s a point of faith, and it depends on everyone here, not just me, so I felt it was important to share especially around this time of the year, before jumping into the Q&A. Thank you for your patience in listening to my random ramblings
Question: Wen CivFund?
Well, the answer is not just “soon” but also “already now” and “it will take a long time”. Let me explain better. Already now, and in fact for many months now, the trading team have been running some very specific trading strategies which I will explain later, and there are clear steps towards general availability which I had already explained in the past and partially already deployed (which I will also explain later). Soon will be progressing further, and within a relatively short time, the first version of the product will be made public. However, it will take a long time before a truly decentralised multi-strategy fund will benefit from the independent contribution of multiple autonomous groups. The infrastructure for that project is incredibly complex, and we don’t even have a fraction of the people or the resources to make it happen yet. So I can only hope that new people, resources and contributions will continue to emerge based on the inspiration that we are providing!
Question 2: in CivFund strategy n.1, how are the pools decided where to make the strategy work? Also does the strategy work in multiple pools at the same time or does it work with one pool at a time? thank you
So this links to the point of the very specific trading strategies mentioned above. As you know, in order to build our Fund we had to create some infrastructure and capability, specifically the Trade and Farm products (which are already live). The Fund is requiring a hell of a lot of additional infrastructure and capability! In fact, there is a shit load of new stuff which is ready, and I am extremely proud of it. We are now capable to monitor and execute complex trades in near real-time (within milliseconds) within a stable environment and with autonomous infrastructure, meaning zero human supervision once launched. This, in itself, is already a hugely valuable piece of knowledge and capability that undoubtedly has value per se. Furthermore the first strategy has been very clearly defined as a combination of two ingredients: roughly 85% of capital allocated to Automated Market Making pools (LPs in any dex and any blockchain, including Uniswap v2 and v3 but not only) and 15% allocated to the hedging of Impermanent Loss, which we have now confidently achieved to production-level quality (and it’s been a lot of work). The combination of these two ingredients can be deployed in many, many ways, and it will surely take a lot of testing and learning over time to continue to make the overall strategy smarter. For now we are strictly prioritising highly liquid tokens (top 20 by market cap) with the goal of maximum return denominated in stablecoins, picking the pools with the highest expected return for the investor (which is a rather complex formula beyond the scope of this AMA, but we’ll talk more about it later). However the strategy is extremely flexible, future versions can be deployed towards any token on any blockchain, and be denominated in other currencies like ETH, all of which will surely make the returns even more universally appealing and interesting. So I expect the v1 of the Fund, much like any other product we launched until now, to be relatively basic, and then in the future to have v2 and even v3, v4 etc continuing to evolve on the initial version, eventually adding also other new strategies to the mix.
Question 3: what mechanism will be used to limit the amount of users and or the amount of money which can be invested into the fund?
The very first initial strategy will be accepting a gradually increasing amount of money over time. For now, we have been running it with tens of thousands of dollars. Now there are two sub-teams working in parallel, the Trading team which is working to expand the amounts (more on it later) and the Dev team which is working to make the strategy public. This second team, as you will have seen, has already made a rather mysterious “Autocompound test” pool generally available; this was the first step. Next will be a more structured type of pool (more on it later). This will then be deployed for tests, and also be sent to Auditors. At that point, while the Audit will be in progress, we will scale up from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars (more on it later). When in general availability, we will allow up to a maximum of $5–10 millions into this first strategy (exact total tbd), which will be subject to specific token-holding rules and strictly public, on a first-come-first-serve basis much like any autonomous piece of code. But this is not the end as the whole strategy eventually can scale up to hundreds of millions or even billions of investable dollars, and we can of course also expand to additional strategies which would make the investable universe even broader. But this will take time. And everything I write today is subject to the approval and voting of the DAO — ultimately all rules of engagement are governed by a much higher authority than myself, which is all of you. For now some judgment calls are required to get to a stable v1 as fast as possible, but with enough time and resources, we can literally make anything happen (and then some)!
Question 4: What are the inclusion factors for CIVfund (what will be needed to access it)?
The specific holding of our tokens and NFTs. The final decision on which token exactly has not been taken yet by the DAO so I am not able to give exact guidance, but surely Stone and CIV will play the key role.
Sub-question: Would it be possible to require either xCIV, x0NE, and/or a NFT deposited in the farm in some capacity in order to access the fund at all?
Yes (see previous question, hope clear).
Sub-question: Could even have a queue for who is currently deposited and who is coming up to be allowed?
Yes, when I say “strictly first come first serve” this will include a queue-like mechanism for everyone’s fairness.
Question 5; Is free the exit from the fund or do the strategies have a predetermined time beyond which the exit is mandatory?
The entry and exit will be possible freely but at pre-determined windows, meaning you can book them at any time and they will be executed at the first available time (e.g. weekly). This is for security reason (e.g. to avoid a flash loan inflating values and draining our pools) and also for efficiency reasons (e.g. to invest/divest assets in a way which preserves everyone’s interests, which is all those who want to join, leave and remain invested!).
Question 6: Is there already any idea who will be eligible for the beta phase?
Not yet, but some things are sure: 1) the rules will be announced in public 2) priority will be given to people who belong to our community and hold our tokens 3) this will be a limited-time phase linked to the Audit timeline (e.g. a couple months long).
Question 7: How do you think to give new value to emerald nft? As per now, the apr is not enough to justify the investment
The Emerald NFT, as per plan, is stakable in CivFarm with a relatively interesting (at least to me) return profile. Not many NFTs have this utility. Many other projects had promised “NFT staking” and have yet to deliver on that promise. We made it possible 6 months ago, and may I say, in a flawless way until now. Security and consistency will always be our Top Priority. There will be new and additional utility for Emerald NFTs, even in relation to the Fund, for example in allowing access to specific strategies and return opportunities. However this will certainly not be part of the very first release, for the simple reason that it’s not yet the time for it, the focus of the first release is to bring the Fund v1 to the same level of security and reliability that already the Farm (and therefore the staked NFTs) enjoy today.
Question 8: hedge funds have insurance to exposure to loss and other packages…have you ever thought to develop a multisig wallet ,using part of the taxes used in CIV project, to create a partial coverage of the eventual losses?
So this is a mix of questions, but welcome nevertheless. As I have explained above, the Fund v1 will be fully hedged against Impermanent Loss and enjoy returns whether the market will move up, down or sideways, thanks to the benefits of providing liquidity. This is comparatively more attractive as a return profile than many existing hedge funds today, many of which (in spite of their historical name of “hedge fund”) are actually not “fully hedged”, as you for example saw this year many have lost money — but we didn’t. We do use multi-sign for admin functions, which is a very specific sub-part of the deployment eco-system. And part of the Fund performance returns are used to the benefit of the community, as per CivPaper. However we will not, and should not, use the resources of Civilization to subsidise the Fund returns. That is a very bad, terrible idea even — it’s the mechanism and idea through which Ponzi schemes and frauds are conceived. Investor returns and community resources are two totally unrelated pools of value, and so they shall always remain — at least if you ask me! (Of course the DAO may still choose to vote to donate community resources to whomever they want and I will duly oblige executing the will of the DAO)
Question 9: Is it forecast for q1 2023 a fast link on civfund.org to buy civ and 0ne directly with credit card or PayPal?
This actually already exists and was developed more than 6 months ago by a volunteer developer from this wonderful community. However, the underlying payment flow relied on Stripe, who discontinued our access even before we could say “hi” and launch it to the public (=everyone’s benefit including you). Even the Openzeppelin team were pissed, as they were eager for us to demonstrate and showcase this technology for their own benefit, so we could help other communities make it work for themselves also, with our help. However, the underlying technology flow still works, if only anyone could convince Stripe to not ban us 😊 And more importantly, anyone can reach out to providers (like for example the one used by Uniswap) to integrate Civ and Stone, so if you feel like, please do it NOW — everyone is an admin here, don’t wait for authorisations!!!
As for myself, I am working to the new concept of CivFiat, which is more complex and long-term (not a Q1 2023 thing) but ultimately even more powerful.
Bonus Question: Yes but when CivFund v1?
By the end of The DAO Cup in the second half of January, I will finally be able to give you more exact dates for the next steps. So stay tuned and please, do help, do spread the word, and do what a good CIVian does, which is to respond to FUD and ignorance with love and passion 😊
Hugs everyone, hope to have answered all questions and look forward to a super-exciting 2023 together!!!
Onwards and upwards, CIVians! #WeAreCIV
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PS: To learn more about Civilization, please read our vision blog post:
About Civilization
Civilization is the world’s first Decentralized Investment Fund: owned and managed directly by its own users. Token $CIV: the Community Investment Vehicle.
Its CivTrade reached volume of $5 million in its first month, earning $1,718 extra per trade while saving -37.5% gas versus Uniswap. The ProView upgrade achieved functional equivalence with Binance, but fully DeX / DeFi.
Also branded the Burning Man of Finance, Civilization now plans CivFarm and CivFund, to make the benefits of Decentralized Finance accessible to everyone. Any questions? Please join the global Telegram group.
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