April 28, 2022: A CLever Long Enough🧞♂️✨
April 28, 2022: A CLever Long Enough🧞♂️✨
Aladdin Launches CLever, + a Rubric for Evaluating DeFi Risk
Mr. Aladdin Sir, I’ve boosted your Convex yields by 50% with Concentrator, what’s your second wish? You want tomorrow’s Convex yields today? Let’s see what I can do.
Yesterday AladdinDAO announced the beta launch of CLever, fulfilling flywheelers’ second wish. CLever promises to let you claim your future yields today.
How’s this work? Let’s dive in!
Just as Aladdin’s Concentrator before this, CLever makes a moderately complex strategy pleasantly comprehensible. We recommend reading through their launch article and audit for more details, but the basic process is as follows:
You deposit your $CVX into CLever, allowing you to immediately claim a $clevCVX token representing future yields (up to 50% of amount locked).
You can do as you like with your $clevCVX today, (including converting it back to $CVX to repeat the process).
In the background, CLever autocompounds the yield from your $CVX, paying off the debt automatically.
What’s in it for CLever is they take up to 20% of the yield (slashed to a more generous 3% rate during the beta period).
CLever therefore functions a bit like a loan paid back with future yield, albeit a loan with favorable conditions for the lender. CLever does not have liquidation terms and charges no interest. In this way, it’s loosely comparable to Alchemix for flywheelers.
Much of the mechanics hinges on the $clevCVX token, which is designed to be pegged 1:1 to the $CVX token.
At the moment, the $clevCVX token is minted by depositing your $CVX. Harvested $CVX ends up in the CLever Furnace, which redeems $clevCVX for $CVX at a 1:1 rate whenever supplies permit. However, the furnace may take time to refill, so beta users may have to wait for redemption.
CLever plans to launch a Curve $clevCVX:$CVX pool, and use yield generated by the protocol to incentivize this pool. In this way the $clevCVX token is expected to be more liquid at scale, provided the peg holds.
For users who accept the drawbacks associated with the beta period, CLever has some incentives in addition to the discounted rate (3% instead of 20%).
All wallets who use CLever during the beta period will be added to a whitelist for an upcoming token sale, where a small tranche of tokens will be sold for CVX to seed Curve liquidity. Whitelisted addresses will be offered the best price.
CLever is getting a lot of attention in its beta period. @0xmrmasa88 is a believer
He takes the time to walk through the entirety Aladdin Ecosystem, including a deep dive into CLever, in this video interview with Aladdin’s Forgiven:
It’s not just Mr. Masa, but big brains across the world. The word has spread if you speak Chinese…
or Japanese…
To date the protocol has already attracted $1.2MM and quotes a 46.5% APR (comparable to the 45% APR calculated by the Llama Airforce)
My take is that it’s definitely a cool concept. AladdinDAO is becoming the flywheel’s idea factory, rapidly dreaming up and churning out nifty concepts at a steady pace.
So should you use it?
Well, if you’re looking for financial advice, you’re in the wrong place. We don’t offer financial advice here. All we can offer is the sort of framework you might use when evaluating risk factors of anything.
This framework is for subscribers only though… if you’re considering subscribing you can run your own risk/reward analysis. Is such a rubric worth less than one hour’s labor at minimum wage? You decide…
Disclaimer: Author has a small balance in a Concentrator pool. Thanks to 0xcrouguer.eth for fact checking