April 22, 2024: Field Guide to Llamas ποΈπ¦
Comprehensive guide to various "Llama" affiliated projects
A well-earned congratulations to Llama Risk, officially being onboarded as Aaveβs new risk provider!
With so many various Llama products out there, how are they all related? Many different groups have independently adopted the llama as a mascot. While thereβs certainly some overlap between several groups, and several have origins from Curve and the broader flywheel, not all are directly related.
Today we present the definitive guide to entities that fly the Llama banner in some way, shape, or form.
Llamas can be difficult to keep track of, as many of these herds consist of anon or pseudo-anon members. We note specific individuals only where they self-describe, or are otherwise publicly attributed, to some particular position within the group.
Index:
Principal
Curve Lend, aka Llama Lend
Lightning Round
Llama Corp
Key Llamas (via website):
To the extent thereβs an βofficialβ Llama group, itβs arguably Llama Corp, the parent entity of so many of your favorite web3 services:
DefiLlama: Crypto analytics site
DL News: Long-form news and analysis service
Llama Pay: Streaming payments service
Llamafolio: Open source, privacy friendly portfolio tracker
LlamaNodes: MEV resistant RPC
Chainlist: List of RPCs
More?
The organization boasts a large and high-caliber team, with at least a few of the team having roots in Curve. Two of the co-founders listed on their website (Charlie and Ben) were on the early Curve team. The Block described them both as βkeeping low profiles,β which strikes us as a fair characterization (although itβs worth noting Ben disputed this particular article at time of publication, noting his lack of involvement in specifically founding DefiLlama).
As a private organization that βkeeps a low profile,β not too much is known about their financials (although it is presumably non-zero as the team includes a βHead of Revenueβ). As of last year Andre Cronje commented that the organizationβs operations were funded entirely by Charlie:
The incident referenced here is from the last time much spilled into the public from Llama Corp, concerning unfortunate regarding whether the team might split up over alleged plans of launching a token. We covered the drama here:
Thankfully, the team rekindled after a day and has been continuing to build and ship ever since. Befitting this βlow profileβ descriptor, we havenβt found any public comments about their next plans. Worth keeping an eye on the entity, who have already done so much to shape DeFi as we know it.
Llama Risk
Key Llamas:
Wormhole Oracle (βHead Llama Herderβ)
Svetlin Konsulov (βLegal Counsel & Regulatory Expertβ)
Val
numerous others who donβt self-credit in their π bio (and maybe some we missed who do?)
No official relation with the Llama Corp umbrella of products, Llama Risk is a decentralized herd of gigabrains who produce thorough research reports that deliver a degree of quality and professionalism far above and beyond what you might expect from an industry where the hot topic among most βanalystsβ is debating the merits of βJeo Bodenβ versus βDoland Trempβ
The most recent description of the teamβs activities and operations can be found in their forum post requesting to become a risk services provider to Aave. This pursuit was successful, as the team officially got voted in this past weekend, congrats to all!
In addition to his, the team also successfully finalized OP rewards streaming to Curve:
This turned out to be a meandering process that took over a year due to the decentralized nature of Curve and Optimismβs KYC restrictions, per various posts made to the Curve forum throughout.
The supergroup initially came into existence via Curve grants council funding (the Aave grant would also provide additional funding). They started off with just research reports but more recently moved into creating some gorgeous dashboards.
You can connect with the team in the new Telegram Channel:
Other key links:
Much more on the group from last weekβs Llama Party
Llama NFT
Key People:
Dina / Alecks (core devs)
hundreds of other llamanons who grabbed an oar and started rowingβ¦
Llama Quest NFTs:
The Llama NFT project is another independent coalition of Llama fans. They launched with several NFTs referencing protocols within the broader flywheel ecosystem, but have pushed into interesting new directions.
Some of their notable projects include their recruiting/job board β in which they help source web3 talent that earns badges for their NFT for successful completion of the project. Their team has distinguished themselves, earning tremendous plaudits for their outstanding work:
The project is also active at negotiating airdrops for NFT holders (or perhaps other projects actively opt to issue airdrops to NFT holders)
The NFT itself also has traditional NFT properties, with frequent updates on the treasury issued by The Llama Bro:
Theyβve launched some affiliate projects, including Llama Quest and Brrito.
Links:
Curve Llama Lend
Key People:
A direct Curve project: permissionless lending markets on Curve and Arbitrum.
In the runup to launch, Mich polled users whether to call it βCurve Lendβ or βLlama Lend.β Both proved popular and stuck, but otherwise thereβs no particular affiliation with any other Llama organization.
For more, we have several resources here in this blog:
Lightning round!
Leviathan News Llama Parties
A bit of a distant cousin hereβ¦ Leviathan News was originally titled Llama News Network, but changed to a different βLβ animal after chatting with the DL News team and realizing quite how confusing the broader ecosystem had grown.
The organization (to which this blogβs author contributes) maintains an ongoing connection with the Llamas in that every Friday we have the honor of hosting βLlama Parties,β a livestream with builders and other interesting people within this wider Llama community.
Napier Finance Llama Race
The currently active Napier Finance points program
The Llamarket
The Llamarket is a merchandise store that peddles various swag related to Llamas run independently by $overeignty. We purchased a beautiful print edition of our Wen Llama NFT from them.
My Lucky Llama
A memecoin on Fraxtal, with 80% of the supply going to Curve LPs
eVoh Llama Friends
OGs may own an older NFT that was mintable by veCRV lockers. Seemingly inactive now though.
Llama3
Complicating all this is Metaβs AI project. We hope they are as confused by all the various other llama projects as we areβ¦
Disclaimers! Author reserves the right to update this article as people wake up and complain about mistakesβ¦.