Artemis Product Reveal, StarkNet’s Native Money-market Protocol
zkLend has been developing the next generation lending dApp on StarkNet. We strive to democratise financial services, and above all, provide a secure, and scalable lending and borrowing platform for all. With the permissionless Artemis going live on testnet imminently, we’re one-step closer to achieving this goal. In the meantime, here are some unique features that you’ll be able to find in our latest release.
1. Simplified UX
Artemis is not intended to only serve the current pool of DeFi users, but also mass-market Web3 users of all levels. It’s been said many times but the user journey must be intuitive and appropriate to sustainably bring in first time users.
In our protocol design, we went back to the basics that kept our products simple, robust and efficient with the three fundamental elements of borrowing and lending: 1) deposit, 2) collateralise, and 3) borrow. Users deposit their assets into the protocol, in exchange, they receive ERC-20 tokens such as zDAI, zUSDC, etc. to represent their claim to the asset pool (signifying both principal and growing interest accrued). Then, users may opt-in their deposits as collateral. Once enabled, users are free to borrow within limits set forth by the risk- adjusted factor.
Artemis has a number of refinements under the hood to enhance operational control, capital efficiency and risk management such as:
- Intuitive dashboard (see section 2 below)
- Deposit as collateral toggle
- Asset tiering
- Risk-adjusted borrowing factor
2. Intuitive Dashboard
Whether it is to earn passive income, increase exposure or productive capital, users will be able to do so on Artemis and consistently track their positions through the dApp dashboard.
Artemis will include a customised dashboard for the users as an overview of their depositing and borrowing positions, as well as the critical information such as performance metrics (Net APY %) and risk analysis (i.e. borrowing capacity and health factor). This critical information has been illustrated clearly and well defined with transparency of the underlying sources. In addition, market overview pages will also provide more in-depth details of the currencies descriptions, liquidity pools, interest rate pricing curves, etc. The end goal is so that users can: i) see relevant information at a glance, ii) navigate zkLend easily, iii) execute protocol functions intuitively, iv) consistently monitor their positions and, v) adjust their position(s) as they please.
3. Core Markets
Having considered the current development of StarkGate (the StarkNet native bridge) and our risk parameters, we’ve decided to prioritise five short-tail assets including, ETH, USDC, DAI, USDT, and wBTC in our testnet launch. These starting five assets have been chosen as they cover over 90% of TVL on comparable money market market protocols such as Compound and AAVE.
Listed asset parameters on the protocol will be adjustable in future ZEND governance proposals in the future as StarkNet matures and more native protocols are deployed onto the network.
4. Risk-Adjusted Borrowing Factors
Central to our risk-management strategy is the ability to assess the risk parameters for both collateral assets as well as borrow assets. Afterall, the volatility of one’s DAI-denominated loan is not the same as an altcoin loan, even if the underlying collateral pledged is the same. The introduction of collateral and borrowing factors will enable the protocol to account for both factors when determining a user’s risk-adjusted borrowing capacity and health factor. Ultimately, this means that users will be able to fine tune borrow position in accordance to their risk appetite.
5. Decentralised and Robust Price Oracle
Price oracles can become a point of vulnerability, and we’re proud to work with Pontis, the first live native StarkNet oracle, to provide robust pricing data feed for our protocol. Their decentralised solution features data sources that directly sign data and bring it on chain (i.e. exchanges, market makers). Combining both Pontis’ robust design and our decision to ring-fence risk by only listing core asset markets first allows us to manage risk during this initial testnet phase.
Going forward, the zkLend protocol will integrate with more price sources as they become available on StarkNet to further enhance its robustness. We are also confident in Pontis’ roadmap to achieve eventual decentralisation and security towards a thriving StarkNet ecosystem.
6. Dynamic Liquidations
The liquidation process for users has always been somewhat opaque in other lending dApps. In some cases, protocols have had to penalise borrowers heavily (i.e. liquidate up to 50% worth of their borrowing position) in order to incentivise liquidators to take action. In leveraging L2 capabilities, specifically higher transaction speed and lower fees, liquidations can now be done more efficiently to bring underwater positions back to the safe boundary.
7. Community Dev Tooling
As an early adopter in the StarkNet ecosystem, throughout the process of building out the protocol, we found ourselves limited by the lack of common tools and services one would find useful or outright necessary. Therefore, we built several of these tools for our internal use, one of which is starknet-rs, a performant Rust SDK for interacting with StarkNet, and we’re proud that it is already open-sourced.
Other tools include CLI tools, an event indexing service, and more. We will open-source these once we feel confident that they’re mature enough and useful to the wider developer community.
8. Smart Contracts and Formally Verified Code
With full decentralisation and ultimately a DAO transition in mind, we have built our smart contracts to be upgradable so as to minimise the need of manual migration into a newer version of the protocol at each iteration. Community members will eventually be able to vote by governance via Snapshot X to propose changes. Information on open-source code to come.
As security is one of the core pillars of our protocol (as it should be for any), we have engaged two auditing companies, ABDK and Nethermind. They will conduct independent code audits for our next iteration (V1). We’re also pleased to highlight that Nethermind has been appointed for the formal verification of our codebase. To ensure user funds are always SAFU, Artemis will remain on testnet until all auditing work is completed by both ABDK and Nethermind. Up until then, whitelisted users are free to play around with the protocol and provide us with any feedback.
As we reflect on the first half of 2022 and the events that unravelled in crypto, more than ever the importance of security and accessibility cannot be taken for granted. The team is committed to building a viable product for the long term, and the above showcases the first of many features we will be introducing to achieve this. Artemis testnet on Goerli is currently open to a select group of early supporters, partners, and investors. If you’re interested in getting in on the action, join our Discord now to stay up to date on the latest happenings. We’ll be working to incorporate feedback into our official launch in late Q3 /early Q4 2022.
Key milestone and dates for zkLend Artemis:
Jun 2022 Announce whitelist spots for Artemis testnet
Jul 2022 Artemis testnet launch
Aug 2022 Smart contract code auditing
Sep 2022 Artemis mainnet launch
Q1 2023 Apollo testnet launch
About zkLend
zkLend is an L2 money-market protocol built on StarkNet, combining zk-rollup scalability, superior transaction speed, and cost-savings with Ethereum’s security. The protocol offers a dual solution: a permissioned and compliance-focused solution for institutional clients, and a permissionless service for DeFi users — all without sacrificing decentralisation.
