Introducing Vesper Season Two
Summarizing Vesper’s momentum going into 2022
Vesper went to production in February 2021, after several weeks of beta testing, with a unique approach that combined careful auditing and testing practices with an innovative approach to DeFi. Vesper’s on-chain, non-custodial, carefully engineered approach and revenue system has been demonstrated to be working in the field, and that it works well. This has created the foundations for what is being released today.
Season Two
Vesper Season Two broadens the scope and reach of the Vesper platform, while staying true to its core principles and continuing the path to a fully decentralized, permissionless, non-custodial DAO-based system.
Here is what is being released to production today, live right now.
Vesper Earn
We are — very literally — transforming DeFi yield with Vesper Earn. This a new, unique product category for DeFi, where users hold their preferred crypto token, with capital preservation (no impermanent loss), and receive a stream of a second crypto token.
Example: Deposit ETH, and receive a stream of DAI stablecoin based on that deposited collateral. This reflects a “daily income” style yielding experience where users keep exposure to the deposit asset they are bullish on and accumulate stablecoin.
Vesper Earn uses the same foundational yield strategies and generation-three pool framework as Vesper Grow (launched this past summer), yet in a new and interesting A-into-B automated action. Our first set of Earn products look like the daily income experience highlighted above as well as a perpetual stablecoin-to-cryptoasset purchase experience (today, DAI-to-ETH, WBTC, or DPI).
These experiences are the first of many to come. One can imagine an infinite number of possibilities (as decided by Vesper governance).
Imagine donating to a charity without actually spending money: Deposit DAI into a specialized Earn pool that sends proceeds to a local animal shelter or homeless shelter. Your DAI may be withdrawn at any time; the yield earned is what is sent to the charity. Perhaps your deposits accumulate “points” that can be redeemed for exclusive NFTs from artists partnering with the charity.
New app experience from an award-winning designer
The community and VBC team constantly look to improve the dApp experiences of everyday users in DeFi. User safety and ease of use are paramount, and go hand in hand.
The Vesper app experience has been completely redesigned from the ground up with these principles in mind. As the Vesper protocol and network expand across pools, products, chains and L2s, complexity should not overwhelm the user.
Check out the new app experience.
Multi-chain
The fees to use the Ethereum Network are high. Besides the obvious monetary costs, high fees exclude a large portion of the world. We want to be inclusive in crypto, bringing the benefits of financial freedom and financial inclusion to as many people as possible.
With that in mind, Vesper is deploying the VSP token and a selection of Grow pools on the Polygon Network as a first step towards making Vesper more accessible to broader communities.
The Vesper community voted via the governance system to whitelist a number of chains and L2s. Polygon is just the first of many “spokes” in the expanding Vesper network, with networks such as Avalanche, Arbitrum and others following.
Ultimately, this experience will evolve from “multi-chain” to “cross-chain”: deposit, withdraw, and manage positions on the accessible network of choice. Funds are routed and bridged to high APY opportunities on the premium chain, without an associated “premium” gas burden.
Learn more about Vesper-on-Polygon or try it out for yourself.
New tokens, new friends
In addition to multi-chain, the Vesper community also approved two VIPs that broaden the scope of projects and partnerships with Vesper.
First, the Vesper Orbit VIP creates an on-ramp for new projects, such as DeFi 2.0 tokens, to be onboarded rapidly, yet in a separate app and risk domain. Projects and their tokens may be evaluated rapidly, then onboarded with guardrails. After some months of “seasoning,” if all looks good technically and economically, those tokens level up to the main production Vesper pool set.
A second VIP, “token white listing frenzy”, added a number of tokens to the Vesper whitelist. This, combined with our V3 pool framework built and tested during Season One, should enable the Vesper network to launch more pools, faster, while remaining within the bounds of Vesper’s risk adjusted engineering and QA pipeline.
With a more proactive approach to emerging communities, Vesper can serve a more engaged, collaborative role with these counterparts, with both parties better off as a result. After launching the FRAX pool on Vesper Orbit, VBC proposed and FRAX community approved a proposal to incorporate the pool into the global FXS emissions framework, where users will now earn APY in FRAX + VSP + FXS.
This is the first of many cooperations that will help to foster engaged community members and drive stickier TVL. Above all else, these are cooperations that just make sense.
The March of the VSP DAO
The Vesper community approved a VIP describing a major upgrade to the DAO and revenue system, which enables greater sustainability and diversity of DAO and treasury operations for the short, medium, and long-term. This is now live.
Combined with increasing exchange liquidity, this is intended to maximize Vesper’s and VSP’s longevity.
With a new governance forum now live, plenty of thoughtful debate on our Discord, and on chain decentralized governance on the horizon via the well-known Compound Bravo module from the Compound project, the path of progressive decentralization towards the DAO goal continues as predicted and hoped, perhaps even ahead of schedule.
Audits
As per normal practice, all Vesper smart contracts are audited twice, by independent firms, in addition to private review and QA. Vesper products then go through a beta testing cycle, with guardrails such as deposit limits, to further maximize safety. Only then do products go to production as the full public release visible to users in the public Vesper app.
Migration and existing user impact
The app user experience is live for all users today. No upgrade action is needed on the part of users.
Summary
Season Two is a massive step for Vesper. Through these upgrades, Vesper can sustain more products more sustainably as Vesper grows and innovates into DeFi 2.0, NFTs and beyond.
This is in line with the vision we set out to bring into reality nearly a year ago.
We hope you are as excited as we are!
