June 17, 2022: All in on AladdinDAO ๐ง๐ฎ
Q&A with crouguer.eth on Concentrator, CLever, and upcoming IFO
The Aladdin team has been a fantastic resource lately for all of DeFi. Their weekly Aladdin DAO x BanklessDAO Boule series is like being a fly on the wall as you listen to smart people probe into all things Web3.
The first launch from this process was Concentrator, which has grown quickly to nearly $50MM TVL and is preparing for a unique token drop issued via a novel upcoming Initial Farm Offering (IFO).
Theyโve also jumped into the future CVX yield wars with their wrapped clevCVX on CLever which allows users to automate your CVX yield harvesting and instantly claim your future yields.
We were lucky enough to chat with the teamโs affable afro-ed robot advocate crouguer.eth, a name we presume to be a portmanteau of โcroutonโ and โbig-leaguer.โ In the interview we dive into the above products, mechanics of the upcoming IFO, requests for alfa,
As usual, interview is paywalled until Monday, when it will be available to all. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Author has funds in Concentrator pools.
CMC
Ser Crouguer, tell us a bit about who you are, what you do, etc.
crouguer.eth
Sure! My background is in the world of science and engineering, but I'm fascinated by crypto, especially DeFi, and its implications. I became a a core contributor at AladdinDAO around 8 months ago, where I focus mainly on communication/education and mechanism design. Most of what you read that's published by Aladdin, Concentrator or CLever is written by me, though of course I'm only the voice of the team in those cases.
CMC
I've been continually impressed by the thoughtful dissection of DeFi trends Aladdin has been publishing between the blogs and the videos of the Boule sessions. It's clearly led to shipping thoughtful products. To borrow a physics parlance, would you say your process is more "theoretical" than "experimental"? That is, do you mostly dream up products based on your observations and discussions, or is it more hands-on than appears?
crouguer.eth
Well, our products are certainly the result of careful observation and discussion (some insiders might say argument...) however all those Boule sessions, writing and blogs you mentioned draw on the hard won practical crypto/finance experience of our Boule members, contributors and Aladdin's founder Sharlyn Wu.
Maybe it's most correct to think of us as experimentalists that do a very good literature review first. The products we create are experiments designed to turn the highest consensus and highest conviction ideas of our group into actionable strategies, and validate them in the market.
CMC
Can you walk us through the creation of your Concentrator product? It's such an inspired idea it's tough to believe it was actually designed by a committee!
crouguer.eth
Thanks! And you're right... we work together to get the details right and make Aladdin's stuff as bulletproof as possible, but in fact Sharlyn deserves the lion's share of credit for dreaming up the big picture.
Concentrator is actually a very pure implementation of one of Aladdin's founding principles: it's better to farm and hold the very best assets than farm and dump anything else.
The first challenge, of course, is identifying the best assets... which is the whole purpose of Aladdin's Boule council. Over months of research meetings and direct experience we collectively built huge conviction in Curve and Convex, and their surrounding ecosystem. As the market began to turn sour earlier this year, we turned our attention to designing more concrete ways to share our research and philosophy while adding value that is worth paying for. Concentrator is the result.
CMC
How has the uptake of Concentrator been so far? Any juicy insights you can share? Obviously markets are garbage right now, but at ~$50MM TVL it looks to have found some decent traction.
crouguer.eth
Yeah, we're very proud of the amount of TVL that has joined us as the markets progress from bad to worse to dumpster fire... it's a nice validation of the concept, and an indication of good product-market fit (without relying on unsustainable rewards to pump it up!)
It's been gratifying to see that the capital in the system has been sticky and not panicky throughout the market deterioration because that's what Concentrator is designed for: long term set and forget type investing.
At the same time, we think that there is way, way more money in the Curve and Convex ecosystem that can and will benefit from Concentrator, so we're focused on attracting that by establishing a solid reputation and simplifying the user experience with features like zap in. In addition, we hope a side effect of the upcoming IFO will be to provide some extra oomph and give people who might be on the fence the nudge they need to try us out!
CMC
This is a good time to discuss the upcoming IFO! Presuming everybody's already read the article -- do you think it's worthwhile for me to move funds out of my existing Concentrator pools to take advantage of the IFO?
Of course, not financial advice
crouguer.eth
Haha, NFA indeed! So first I would remind anyone who might ask that moving between vaults will cost you gas, so for small deposit size with very short time horizon it might not be worthwhile... but the IFO was designed to be crazy attractive, even in a bear market, and we really pulled out all the stops to make it that way.
I personally love that there are no games around FDV... all the tokens will be liquid after the IFO and we're distributing 50% of them for what I think is a very small 2.5m aCRV. Plus no vesting tokens or unlock bombs waiting in the future and a lot of power to direct revenue and potentially earn it (depending on community vote). I'd encourage everyone to check out the details as deeply as you like, because there are no tricks in there.
One other thing to consider is that the IFO vaults will revert to normal Concentrator vaults after the IFO is over, and the old vaults will eventually be less attractive (I won't say deprecated since they're on chain and will always work, but without much TVL they will eventually not harvest enough to be worthwhile). I'm planning to try to farm and earn as much CTR as possible.
CMC
Nobody else has done an IFO of this type either, do you expect this is going to become a new trend?
crouguer.eth
Maybe, it depends how it goes :) Our IFO is, unsurprisingly, tailored to our situation as a vault-based product launching a token in a bear market (when users might be more inclined to give up their yields for a while rather than spend principal) but I can definitely imagine a world where this model becomes a popular way to raise capital. I'm very keen to see how it plays out and get some data to look at!
CMC
Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but when does the IFO kick off?
crouguer.eth
Not at all, that's the most important question! I won't say soon or Soonโข๏ธ but rather that we're aiming to kick off in the next few weeks. There is a little bit of work remaining on the back end, and we want to use the remaining time before kickoff to do some outreach, especially to let people know more about the "community booster" program that gives people in the community a chance to earn some CTR by helping out during the IFO with content creation, education, and stuff like that.
CMC
How about the most recent launch, CLever. Feels like a notably tough time to launch it, but what are the learnings so far?
crouguer.eth
A bear market is a double-edged sword, but I'd honestly say it's better for us. On one hand capital and users are harder to come by, but on the other, we can compete on actual product rather than hype. The most disheartening thing about bull market building is that you really do need the hype in order to be visible. Building in down market conditions also has the advantage of more sophisticated and focused users, as well as higher standards that force us to build a better product.
As for CLever, we've learned a lot and I think we've seen a different kind of validation. One big thing we've learned is that everything takes longer than you want! CLever is in its "beta mode" until liquidity can be launched and this will be done via its own soon-to-be-announced token launch (minor alpha leak alert...!)
Even so we're quite pleased with the number of users that have come to try it out, as we've got around 85k CVX deposited. What's interesting about CLever going forward is that we've just had several weeks of front-row seating for why liquidations are bad, bad, bad (for the person being liquidated) and we feel more strongly than ever that this lending/leverage model is just a better, safer way than most of what is used in DeFi.
CMC
Nice alpha leak! Any more alpha? ๐
crouguer.eth
Anybody who's reading this and checking out the IFO details officially already has my best alpha!
CMC
Fair enough. Any thoughts or ideas on what corner of DeFi you see opportunity for team Aladdin to tackle next?
crouguer.eth
Well, I would say that the Concentrator and CLever ideas are very, very nascent still. They are just the kernel of what they will be. Concentrator, for example, will branch out to allow concentrating into other high quality assets.
And as I mentioned we're super bullish on the the CLever leverage model, which we can also apply to other high yield farming opportunities. I have to stop myself from spilling too much here or I'll get thrown out of the DAO!! But... Concentrator and CLever will become more composable and able to each make the other more powerful, with very exciting implications.
Beyond that... well, Aladdin created Concentrator and CLever because they were the exact kind of protocols that Aladdin as an investment DAO wants to own... and Aladdin will continue to both identify and/or create those types of products while we ultimately build toward what we're calling the "Decentralized Berkshire Hathaway" To do that we will also continue our work in research and education.
We see pretty much limitless long-term possibility in DeFi and crypto, no matter what is happening in the short term, so we will continue to help our community buy what's great and build what's missing!
CMC
Any other parting words of wisdom?
crouguer.eth
Donโt eat the yellow snow.