AIP-189: Add $APE Compounder button at app.apestake.io

Final AIPs Returned For Reconstruction
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Proposal Name: Add $APE Compounder button at https://app.apestake.io/

Proposal Category: Core: Brand Decision

Abstract

This AIP provides an auto-compounding public good to the $APE community by adding a link in the ApeCoin site to direct users to an interface to stake $APE, and get back an auto-compounding $sAPE token. The Compounder will support the basic $APE pool.

Team Description

Pendle is a DeFi protocol that enables the permissionless tokenization and trading of yield, allowing users to purchase assets at a discount or long yield. To date, Pendle has facilitated $350M of trading volume and amassed $70M of TVL at its peak. The protocol is also backed by a lineup of renowned VCs which include Mechanism Capital, Spartan Capital, Alliance, Hashkey Capital and more.
The team consists of former team members of reputable DeFi projects such as Kyber and imToken. Pendle also prides itself on its capable Dev team, which is composed of multiple Math and Informatic Olympiad winners and ICPC World Finalists who are deeply experienced in blockchain.

Motivation

ApeCoin staking is cool. You stake $APE, you earn $APE - simple, straightforward, beautiful. With the release of ApeCoin staking, the team at Pendle wanted the process of staking and compounding to be made much easier. The Pendle $APE Compounder is intended to be an absolutely free-to-use public good, built for Apes by Apes.

No fees, no charges.

Staking on the Pendle $APE Compounder is really just as simple as clicking on one button. Simply input the amount of $APE you’d like to stake. Approve and confirm the transaction and that’s it.

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Similarly, unstaking is also extremely straightforward. Input the amount of $APE to be unstaked, approve, confirm, and you’re done!

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The motivation of this AIP is to provide the above seamless experience by including a link in the app.apestake.io site to direct users to the APE Compounder UI.

Rationale

The problem with native $APE staking is that it doesn’t compound. This means, if you want to hit the maximum potential of your $APE, you need to be manually claiming and re-staking your rewards all the time.

That’s way too much effort, especially for a bunch of rich, futuristic bored apes who want to and should remain bored.

Staking should be fuss-free, low-effort. With the Pendle Compounder, $APE holders will be able to compound rewards passively. Do less, earn more.

Key Terms

Auto-compounding — when yield farming rewards (in this case, $APE) are automatically harvested and re-added to the staking pool to earn higher APY.

Specifications

Kindly see this pull request for the code implementation on Pendle. https://github.com/pendle-finance/pendle-core-v2/pull/219

The APE Compounder contracts are audited by WatchPug. The audit can be found here.

Specifically:

  • The Pendle team will deploy the $APE Compounder contracts (as taken from the PR above) to Ethereum mainnet
  • The Pendle team will create a dedicated UI on app.pendle.finance for users to auto-compound their ApeCoin
  • The UI will be intuitive enough for users to navigate staking/unstaking their ApeCoin
  • Will request the Horizen Labs team to possibly create a link button in the app.apestake.io page to direct users to the $APE Compounder

Steps to Implement

Deployment of the contracts, maintenance of the UI, and development costs will all be shouldered by the Pendle team and will be given to the $APE community as a public good.

The Horizen Labs team will just need to implement the link button on app.apestake.io as requested in this AIP.

Timeline

  • The Pendle team has already deployed the $APE Compounder as of this writing (announcement can be found here)
  • The Pendle will look into collaborating with an engineer or representative from the Horizen Labs team in order to add the link button on app.apestake.io

Overall Cost

$0

4 Likes
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I am generally very hesitant about this idea for several reasons. I believe ApeCoin DAO should have a DAO native compounding tool with clear community alignment around fee structure, DAO benefits, development team, auditors, and more.

The key for ApeCoin DAO in creating valuable software infrastructure is in building DAO native tools with transparency around product build, security, and long-term value of that piece of infrastructure to the DAO. Without all of these pieces, ApeCoin DAO will derive no inherent benefit from the resources and exposure it dedicates to the infrastructure that it supports.

Main Questions:

  1. Would like to see if there are any other audits as to the current pendle.fi protocol and assurances around it’s security. I have not heard of “Watchpug” and I have dealt with many audits with top auditing firms. (Not saying this audit is not legitimate or the protocol is not safe, but we have cause to exercise EXTRA caution here)
    Obscure firms like this, with little to no information on their website, do not establish a lot of confidence. This is especially true for a protocol that carries this level of risk. (Consider securing further audits or running a bug bounty to improve community confidence)

  2. Curious to understand where the company or protocol’s legal entity is formed & core team resides with such a large amount of TVL potentially being locked in this contract. Huge risk to DAO and the community, doxxing, background checks, and more are probably in order if we were to consider this.

Final concerns:
Why would the DAO make Pendle a brand partner? What does the DAO gain?

This brand decision drives traffic to Pendle and essentially acts as a marketing mechanism for the protocol with zero benefits to the DAO. I understand the cost is zero but this is because the protocol earns a 2% fee (this adds up massively and could benefit DAO in one way or another if built natively).

Recap:

  1. Get more audits, use high profile firm
  2. Run a bug bounty
  3. Doxx the team and company/protocol and give some visibility into who your entity actually is. (If you are backed by VCs there should be an entity right?)
  4. Figure out some ways for this to benefit the DAO and not just serve as a marketing play for you guys to increase TVL.
  5. Keep building awesome stuff! Love the innovation and the effort to make the post!
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Hi there, posting on behalf of Pendle’s contract dev (Twitter @vuonglongtoan) as his post for some reason is waiting for mod approval.

Thank you for your concern! I would like to address/discuss a few technical points (will leave non-technical concerns to my teammates).

TL;DR:

  1. Audit is important, I totally agree on having the biggest names like Consensys, ToB joining forces should the AIP move forward. WatchPug is 2nd place on Code4rena and their performance speaks for itself in an extremely competitive field.

  2. There is NO FEE on the compounder, and it will remain that way as the contract is immutable and non-upgradable. And we are also auto-compounding them every hour for free too!

4 / 5: Beaten down by the 4, lifted right up by the 5 haha. Thanks!

Audit is important, no doubt about that. Totally agree on the point of getting more audits using high-profile firm should the AIP moves forward to bring greater peace of mind to the community (they have a very long queue, though, so up to the community to balance the cost/wait vs benefits).

On WatchPug, check out Code4rena (https://code4rena.com/contests), utilized by many protocols including OpenSea, Aave, ENS …

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WatchPug is ranked 2nd on the all-time leaderboard, having earned 793k bounty in their lifetime. We also had cmichel (Rank 1) & leastwood (Rank 3) audit our main protocol, along with firms like Ackee & Dedaub Details.

Working with these 3 Code4rena auditors has been nothing short of amazing, having also experienced working with the ‘bigger names’. I’m confident that many well-connected security researchers would recognize WatchPug’s reputation by their work, and although they aren’t as recognized on CT, I stand by them for their excellent work, any day.

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Back to me! Thanks for the feedback, I’ll also address the last 3 points:

  1. Our core team is pretty much doxxed given our long history in the DeFi space. To mention a few team members:
    https://twitter.com/tn_pendle
    https://twitter.com/gabavineb
    https://twitter.com/ayobuenavista

  2. We’ve always been big fans of the APE community, and this is our love letter to the DAO on how we can contribute at NO COST (no 2% fee at all). With how our Compounder works, the staked APE goes back directly to the APE staking contract. We just help facilitate the compounding, so it does not add any direct TVL to our platform.

The contract is also non-upgradable → it’s not reliant on the core team to run and it cannot be changed. It’s intended as a public good and we hope to see it used as such. Just to highlight again: There are no fees flowing out to anyone, team or otherwise.

  1. Thanks! We’ve always been builders in this space!

The moment we learned about APE staking, we knew we wanted to be involved as we deal with yield everyday.

Even if not the button, we’re open to explore further with the DAO - there may be other areas we can help given our expertise. As cryptonatives in this space, we know the value of being able to give back to the community. And so this is our effort in doing so.

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Hi @EynSoph,

Your topic will be automatically closing in less than 24 hours. Are you content with the feedback received, or do you wish to extend community discussion for a further 7 days?

If we do not hear from you within 48 hours after your topic closes, your topic will be moved straight to the AIP Draft process.

We look forward to hearing from you.

-Pearson

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Hi. We’re satisfied with the feedback and would like to proceed to the AIP Draft process.

1 Like
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This topic was automatically closed after 7 days. New replies are no longer allowed.

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Thank you @EynSoph for your ideas. A moderator will get in touch with the author to draft the AIP in the appropriate template. Once the AIP is drafted and meets all the DAO-approved guidelines, the proposal will be posted on Snapshot for live official voting at: Snapshot

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments. @EynSoph please see your messages for the next steps.

-Escape

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Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@EynSoph has completed editing their AIP Idea to be their AIP Draft.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-Escape

1 Like
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Hello community,

Just an update here that we have received the Draft from @EynSoph and have just sent over an initial list of questions. We await the answers from the group.

Keep an eye out here for further updates.

Thanks,
-mallard

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Hello again everyone,

Just an update to let you know we have already received the answers back answers from @EynSoph and I will be reporting them back to the team.
Stay tuned for further details.

Best,
-mallard

1 Like
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Hi all, It would also be nice to see the realtime price of $APE on the staking site.

3 Likes
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Hello again everyone,

Just a quick update to let you know that an additional round of questions has been sent to @EynSoph. Next steps will proceed as soon as the team has heard back on these ones.

As always, will keep this space notified of any changes.

Thanks all,
-mallard

1 Like
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Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@EynSoph has responded to our questions and they are in our review once again.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-river

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Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

We have no further questions for @EynSoph. This AIP is now with the Special Council for Administrative Review.

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments.

Kind Regards,

-Amplify

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Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

This AIP Idea was tagged as “Needs Administrative Review” and sent to the Special Council. Upon careful review, the proposal has been deemed “Return for Reconstruction”. In doing so the Special Council cited

This is effectively submitting an AIP on behalf of another party. The author would first need consent from Horzen and/or have Horizen be a Co-Author on the proposal. Otherwise, it is not appropriate for the DAO to consider AIPs for third parties. The author can build an auto compounder without DAO approval, and interact directly with the contract.

We thank the author for their participation and encourage everyone to continue sharing ideas with the ApeCoin DAO Community.

This Topic will be moved to and remain in the Final AIPs: Returned for Reconstruction category. The author may resubmit their proposal if they wish.

Thank you,

@Lost.Admin

2 Likes