The 5 week graviAURA bootstrapping event

BadgerDAO

BadgerDAO

Jun 17, 2022

On June 16th, Aura Finance (a Convex-like layer on top of the Balancer AMM), launched with an initial airdrop and encouraged users to deposit their vote-locked veBAL (forked from veCRV) tokens to bootstrap farming pools.

Aura has now opened up for deposits of 80-BAL/20-WETH BPT tokens which it will perma-lock and mint auraBAL for depositors. The goal of Aura in relation to Balancer is much like the goal of Convex to Curve, to create a richer and more efficient governance layer on top of the base protocol’s ve-style token distribution. If successful in accruing a large amount of locked BPT, AURA tokenholders will have significant influence over the BAL token distribution.

Ahead of this launch, Badger has been hard at work developing Project Gravity, a new product division focused on yield influence tokens such as CRV, CVX and now BAL and AURA.

graviAURA

As its first product, Gravity presents to you: graviAURA, a semi-liquid locked AURA token designed to support its own liquidity on Balancer.

graviAURA is a bribe-harvesting token similar to bveCVX, but with a very different strategy for how it provides exit liquidity to holders and a different use-case for DAOs that will be highlighted over the next few months.

Just like bveCVX, AURA deposited into graviAURA will be locked and then every 16 weeks be unlocked for 1 week. During these periods where there is unlocked AURA there is the ability to withdraw from the vault. While tokens are not immediately available, in any 16 week period the vault can be completely withdrawn.

graviAURA is very similar to bveCVX in its ability to harvest locked AURA yield from both protocol emissions and bribe harvesting, but the flexibility in Balancer pools will allow it to have even further utility for pool depositors, projects with native tokens, and beyond.

AURA holders can deposit their AURA into graviAURA and earn yield from auto-harvested bribes as the ecosystem develops.

DAOs can include graviAURA in Balancer pools they create for set-and-forget liquidity incentive for their pool since graviAURA automatically votes for Balancer pools it is included in.

Security & Audits

As of today, graviAURA has been reviewed internally and has moved into a final Code4rena review. Badger’s underlying Vaults 1.5 tech powering thegraviAURA vault was recently audited by Quantstamp.

Per standard security practices & protocols, graviAURA has been launched in a guarded state for a period of at least 1 week with a total vault cap of 500,000 AURA. A decision to unguard the vault and remove caps will be made once the C4 results have been issued.

Bootstrapping Incentives

To bootstrap graviAURA, a budget of 25,000 BADGER has been allocated to  emit to lockers. It will be paid out at a rate of 2000 a week during guarded launch, and 5,000 a week during full open launch. Emissions will end when the BADGER runs out, and remaining BADGER for the last week will be evenly spread out over that week.

The goal is to incentivize AURA holders to deposit these assets into graviAURA to quickly bootstrap both the AURA and graviAURA ecosystems. These resulting yields will be paid out to anyone holding graviAURA in their wallets starting on June 17th 2022. The BADGER will be emitted 50% flat and 50% boosted based on your BADGER holdings. You can learn more about Badger Boost  and hop into the Discord if you have further questions,

This is a new ecosystem so graviAURA is an opportunity to learn and build together. The vault will evolve over time as the bribe environment develops. The end goal is to help create an AURA/veBAL ecosystem with significant returns for individual holders and both sustainable and affordable liquidity for DAOs.

Risks

Gravity hopes to encourage early adopters to learn about and participate in our system, but there are some important risks that users should be aware of:

  • Liquidity: graviAURA that is deposited in a Balancer pool will vote for that pool instead of earning bribes. This means that as we get graviAURA gauges up, more and more graviAURA will become liquid on the market and trading will become available. It also means that there will not be much direct withdrawal capacity or liquidity depth until the initial gauges are up and hold significant deposits or tokens start to unlock in 16 weeks.
  • Gauges: The approval of gauges depends on Balancer governance. Gravity has been working hard to build and maintain good relationships with both the Balancer and Aura communities and feels confident in our ability to agree upon and launch  acceptable gauges quickly.

The main user-facing feature of graviAURA is its automatic bribe harvesting for yield generation. The yield of this feature depends on there being a bribe environment, there being bribes in that environment, and Gravity having the voting tech in place to vote for these bribes.

As we presently understand it, Hidden Hand is currently working to establish a bribe environment that will generate these user facing yields. As this environment is established, small changes to the strategy and voting engine may be required to integrate.

BadgerDAO has timelocks and strict review processes which may result in missing the initial bribe round. In this event, BadgerDAO will vote with 100% of its voting power for the AURA/ETH and auraBAL/BAL pools at a weight specified by an emoji vote in the governance channel of the AURA discord.

Ape Together Strong

Project Gravity is very excited to open this bootstrapping event and to welcome early adopters who are looking to build good yield solutions that work in both bull and bear markets. Aura and veBAL as a robust and growing early stage ve-ecosystem and are delighted to invite users to learn and build with us.

Before you ape on this one, take some time to understand it. The Badger Discord is full of elder Badgers who can explain how all this stuff works.

Come build with us!

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