Gyroscope’s rollout — what you need to know
Gyroscope’s design goal is to protect stablecoin holders against risks to the extent possible. To fulfil this, Gyroscope has a responsible roll-out strategy in place. This allows battle-testing (audited) smart contracts before a full protocol launch on Ethereum mainnet.
The roll-out is staggered as follows:
- Launch of Concentrated Liquidity Pools (capped, for testing), Consolidated Price Feed — [Completed Sep ‘22]
- ‘Proto’ launch of the GYD stablecoin (capped, for testing) — [Jan ‘23]
- Launch of Gyroscope decentralized governance system — [Q2 ‘23]
- Full protocol launch on Ethereum — [Q2 ‘23]
Gyro Proto: a ‘proto’ launch of the GYD stablecoin
While the full system is intended to be on Ethereum, today, a ‘proto’ version of the GYD stablecoin system has been launched on Balancer Polygon: https://app.gyro.finance/.
Here’s how to try Gyro Proto out.
The goal of Gyro Proto is to test the protocol: in particular, the smart contracts and their interactions in a production environment. The proto launch will, therefore, have asset caps.
After Q2 ’23, the Gyro Proto will continue as a platform for testing future protocol updates. Users may continue to use the proto-system, but will be encouraged to remove committed assets before the final protocol launch on Ethereum.
During the proto launch, all smart contracts are being tested in a real environment for the first time. As such, it is important that both the community and the development team at FTL Labs, who is mandated to deliver v1 of the protocol, are able to quickly address smart contract issues that may be found.
The development team will temporarily retain control over the proto-system parameters and protocol update and design decisions. Even though all contracts have been audited — by Trail of Bits, Nethermind, and Runtime Verification — residual smart contract risk always remains.
However, the initial development team will only retain control over smart contract updates in Gyro Proto. Following the Gyroscope governance launch, updates to Gyroscope contracts will have to be enacted by Gyroscope governance. This is fundamentally important to launching Gyroscope as a decentralised protocol.
To protect users until the protocol is completely decentralized, the proto launch will be a guarded launch. Individual addresses will be limited to contributing a nominal amount of assets (10 USD) for testing purposes. Users may be able to get on a guarded whitelist for a higher asset cap by obtaining either a Binance or GoldFinch soul-bound token. However, there is no benefit to users for doing this. The proto system will also have a total asset cap of 100k USD.
The goal of this guarded launch is to hand over well-calibrated and tested contract code to Gyroscope governance so that it can launch the final system at its discretion.
Read more about Gyro Proto and its risks in the docs.
After the launch of Gyro Proto
After the proto launch, there are two additional protocol roll-out phases:
1. Initialize governance — Q2 ’23: The Gyroscope governance system is currently under development. The governance contract code is scheduled to be audited in March 2023. More information about the governance design will be released soon for community discussion.
Following the code audit, the governance system will be launched and a governance bootstrapping and delegation phase will commence.
The bootstrapping of Gyroscope governance will also be informed by the testnet game to include active and plausibly-unique users.
2. Final protocol launch event — Q2 ’23: Once Gyroscope governance is functional, the final protocol launch on Ethereum can be initiated. Decentralized Gyroscope governance will have sole control over protocol updates, subject only to checks and balances within the governance design.
