Steer’s Financial Platform
Steer has been building a suite of financial products to expand what is possible in DeFi. Most users will interact with the Steer ecosystem by using the Strategy Marketplace: a platform where strategists can offer implementations of automated alpha generating models for a performance fee. Users can invest in strategies of their choosing and risk tolerance by depositing funds into the strategy’s vault. Users receive shares of the vault representing their position, and the deposited funds are used by the strategy. Using Steer’s infrastructure, these strategies can utilize off chain resources to provide new opportunities for complex models. Steer will offer various integration and vault contracts as a product, and provide tools to lower information risk for users and supplement strategy development.
Anatomy of a Strategy 🫀
You might find the term ‘strategy’ being used a little broadly, so let’s take a closer look at the components in play. It should be noted that strategies will all be different in some way–this mold won’t fit everything that can or will be built with Steer–but it’s a good starting point:
Data Source 📈
Data is very important, and with a decentralized way of confirming data streams, strategies can leverage Steer to bring in any data endpoint to their strategy. The data has a transformation stage where it gets bundled as a consumable, after which it can be passed to either the execution logic or the smart contract. This could be anything like historical on-chain data, consumer price indexes, or the temperature outside.
Execution Logic 🧮
Strategies use Steer’s keeper network to run operations which would otherwise be infeasible in the EVM. Code which would be computationally intensive, gas-expensive, or take up lots of contract space can instead be run by the keeper network. This code can be written in nearly any language, as long as it is compiled down into a WASM module; these modules will be run by nodes on Steer’s keeper network. The results of this logic might determine if any action is to be taken, and could pass in any necessary data to the smart contract for execution.
Contract Logic 📜
This logic code is deployed on-chain in a smart contract, and can optionally use input from the keeper network to perform actions like tending positions. At this level funds are drawn from the vault to interact with other protocols to generate yield and returns. Steer will offer contracts at this level to promote proper integration with Steer’s components and other protocols. We will work alongside the community to determine protocols that people are interested in building on to support integration with audited code.
Vault 🪙
We will provide a variety of vault types to be matched with whatever works best for the strategy. Vaults might manage one, two, or many assets, and will always give out shares representing ownership of their assets. The gains and losses of a strategy will be reflected in the value of these vault shares.
Publishing and Implementing 📨
Anyone who is interested in producing strategies can do so by creating off-chain execution logic, providing data sources if needed — no smart contract knowledge necessary. Once published to the network, the logic and source stack will be available for anyone to implement. Implementation consists of setting logic parameters like assets to be used, and then deploying via the vault registry. This will create the contracts on-chain and link them to the correct bundles for execution. The same strategy can be implemented more than once, as long as the implementation is initialized with different parameters. Similar asset groups will be ideal for this; a strategy that works well with one pair of stable assets will likely have similar performance with other stable assets. Anyone is free to implement someone else’s strategy, but the strategy fees will go to the publisher of the strategy.
Conclusion📌
At Steer, we hope to challenge what is possible in DeFi. The Strategy Marketplace will be a central part of our ecosystem and we are excited to build and see what others build on the platform. By leveraging off-chain capabilities and streamlining integration, you can make advanced strategies in no time. Read our documentation for more information, and get ready to participate!
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