Announcing PieVaults

The Best of Index Investing + The Best of DeFi.

Nushi
PieDAO
4 min readDec 18, 2020

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Introducing PieVaults

PieVaults are a brand new product type fresh from the PieDAO bakery.

They unlock many new possibilities and features as PieVaults are able to directly interact with smart-contracts and DeFi protocols.

PieVaults will initially launch with three core features: meta-governance, yield-bearing assets and asset lending.

PieVaults were recently audited by MixBytes, finding zero critical vulnerabilities. Despite this we are initially keeping PieVaults in beta for additional security guarantees.

The first PieVault will be YPIE, the Yearn Ecosystem Pie, providing complete exposure to the rapidly developing network.

You can try out YPIE today, available to mint directly or via the Oven gas-free through our beta site.

Let’s take a look at each of the new features PieVaults unlock in detail.

Features

Metagovernance

Meta-governance allows DOUGH holders to be govern the underlying assets in PieVaults.

Through this design our governance token DOUGH becomes a passport for governance across DeFi.

Decentralised governance is a nascent phenomenon with the potential to radically change power structures, but in early implementations it has often suffered from low participation.

A part of the problem has been the friction users face who often have to move their tokens around, needing to pay expensive gas costs in order to participate.

PieVault meta-governance overcomes this barrier, reducing the friction users face to get involved. With meta-governance users can participate in governance across the DeFi ecosystem with just one ERC-20, our governance token DOUGH.

What’s even better is that DOUGH meta-governance occurs gas-free through Snapshot, removing the economic barrier to participation entirely.

Intrinsic Productivity
Previously pies were able to generate yield only via swap fees.

Now thanks to PieVaults users will be able to benefit from yield from various strategies for each each asset, from lending to staking and even yield-farm.

Yield-bearing assets provide an additional revenue source, improving the value proposition of holding our community’s products. Asset appreciation is reflected in the price of the PieVault, constantly growing as the underlying tokens generate yield.

The first strategy PieVaults employ is earning interest on the underlying assets, further maximising pie holder’s return.

PieVaults use yield-bouncing, moving between lending protocols to guarantee the best return.

Supported lending protocols are: Cream, Yearn, Compound, and Aave.

Through this design PieVaults are able to provide a further revenue stream for their holders.

How do Vaults work?

PieVaults are a completely new design.
Unlike PieSmartPools which are based on Balancer, PieVaults are native to PieDAO and allow our products to integrate with other protocols.

PieVaults combine the benefits of passive index investing with the best opportunities DeFi has to offer.

While PieVaults enable a broad range of new features, from an end-user perspective they are just as easy to access and require no additional steps.

Greater Security

Alongside these new features PieVaults introduce additional security benefits.

Regular Balancer pools are AMMs (automated market makers), which rebalance continually and could be affected by one underlying token losing all its value. This could lead to a draining event, where the AMM would continue to buy up the collapsing asset. Although the DAO has the ability to act quickly and pause trading in the event of such an event, PieVaults employ a different method going through regular rebalancing periods, avoiding this security risk entirely.

Conclusion

PieVaults represent a big step forwards for PieDAO and we can’t wait to see our users benefiting from more productive Pie holding.

Although YPIE will be the first PieVault we plan to transition our existing pies to the new design in the near future, pending governance approval.

Metagovernance, yield-bearing assets and lending bouncing are a fantastic new offering for our community, but PieVaults will allow for even more options moving forwards.

Metagovernance in particular is incredibly exciting and has been a core commitment for the PieDAO community since day one.

We strongly believe in raising decentralized governance participation, and through PieDAO’s DOUGH token DeFi users will be able to easily get involved across a broad portion of the ecosystem with just one token, gas-free.

Stay tuned for more updates on PieVault very soon..

In the mean time feel free to experiment with our first unofficially launched PieVault, YPIE. You can mint YPIE directly or through Oven gas-free.

The PieDAO is a decentralized organization dedicated to bringing market accessibility and economic empowerment to anyone with an internet connection through Pie Protocol. Anybody in the public community may support these efforts by completing bounties, making feature requests, or proposing new Pies. DOUGH token holders are the DAO’s decision-makers, governing which proposals are accepted. If you want to know more about PieDAO:

PieDAO on Aragon

PieDAO website

Discord

PieDAO Forum

Official Documentation

Github

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Nushi
PieDAO
Writer for

Winter Bears Founder, covering Ethereum/DeFi/NFTs/DAOs