[BIP-693] Aegis Finance - Strategic Partnership Proposal

  1. Summation

Aegis Finance proposes an agreement to collaborate with Balancer within a strategic partnership in exchange for 1% supply of Aegis’ utility token SHIELD to be allocated at the discretion of Balancer DAO.

  1. What is Aegis?

Aegis is an upcoming Collateralized Debt Position (CDP) platform launching native to Frax Finance’s Fraxtal Layer 2. The project is fully supported by Frax with the relationship being strong enough to the point Sam Kazemian himself is an official advisor. The platform at its core is operated under a formal licensing agreement with Liquity with their upcoming V2 backend. Upon launch, the team will continue to build upon the concept to build a highly liquid, cross chain lending solution with competitive borrow rates and collateral requirements.

The CDP Market will allow users to borrow against Wrapped Ether, Select Stablecoins and FRAX native assets with multi collateral enabled vaults at a minimum collateral ratio of 110% (90.9% Loan To Value (LTV)). Multi collateral vaults enable users to supply multiple assets within a singular debt position. Within this, users only need to supply sufficient reserves to meet a 100% collateral ratio of external assets in some circumstances. This can occur if users choose to allocate part of their collateral position in SHIELD. Other innovative features will include one click looping leverage for positions, and a platform yield boosting direct incentives layer.

The ecosystem will consist of two tokens, the first being the SHIELD utility token and the borrow-to-mint aegUSD stablecoin. SHIELD will be used as the native liquidity token while aegUSD will strictly be for lending purposes. SHIELD has a max supply of 100,000,000 while aegUSD is demand elastic.

Aegis will be the first native CDP platform on Fraxland and will work closely with the Frax Team to build robust liquidity and spread awareness. Aegis will eventually go cross chain onto Ethereum Mainnet along with other to be later announced Layer 2s.

  1. Aegis Strategic Alignment and Support from Frax

As stated, the Aegis Team will closely be working in tandem with the Frax Team in order to maximize scaling the platform. The teams have collectively built a plan to build large liquidity pairs between assets and to comarket. Brainfund has already contributed 50,000 FRAX as initial pre-seed funding.

CDP markets are a growing trend in DeFi by offering permissionless loans that do not require a sell side party to add new debt positions. This allows for seamless user experience by avoiding the frustration of lack of contribution incentives present in Peer to Peer (P2P) platform architecture. As Aegis will be the first Frax backed CDP platform, the convenience and overall benefits of the loan structure architecture will seamlessly translate to Fraxtal’s already impressive ecosystem.

The Aegis Team will also collaborate with other Fraxtal lending ecosystem players like Fraxlend to further coalign with the ecosystem’s ethos. Overall, the main objective of Aegis is to grow rapidly while simultaneously assisting to continue Fraxtal’s overall scaling.

  1. Opportunity on Fraxtal for Balancer

Fraxtal is one of the fastest growing Layer 2s in DeFi. It launched in February 2024 and has already surpassed $130,000,000 TVL. Founder Sam Kazemian is optimistic this growth will continue as the Layer 2 matures. A challenge all platforms face is competing regardless of innovation of a finite amount of liquidity present. Within this conundrum, platforms like Balancer stand out as a leader in assisting projects to incentivize liquidity provisions.

As Frax and Fraxtal are leading and reputable platforms, it makes sense that the incentives to collaborate have emerged between Frax’s Fraxtal and Balancer. Aegis invisions leading the charge in a growing relationship between the platforms well into the future.

  1. Aegis’s specific asks of Balancer

In exchange for an agreement, Aegis wants to delegate responsibilities to Balancer to further the collective relationship. The Aegis Team proposes the following tasks for Balancer to adhere to:

  1. Public Facing Support from Balancer

This includes leveraging Balancer’s network to assist in comarketing the strategic partnership for the betterment of all parties. Within this, it includes social media support such as composting and boosting Aegis posts to collaboration in business development (BD) processes.

  1. Support with Pools/Incentives

The Aegis Team plans on leveraging Balancer’s liquidity pool technology to offer competitive yields on LPs. Although left up to the discretion of the Balancer DAO, allocated SHIELD within this proposed agreement can be used to support heavily incentivized Aegis pools on the platform. This will be of benefit to all associated parties.

  1. Incentives for Passing Proposal

Within a consensus to proceed with passing this proposal, Aegis Finance has allocated 1% of SHIELD supply to the Balancer DAO. Upon passing and transfer of the supply, The DAO is within its rights to come to consensus of specific allocations and uses of the funds acquired.

The transfer of the funds will be upon launch of Aegis within the upcoming few months. The 1% will be transferred and unlocked for appropriate use at the discretion of Balancer’s DAO. .25% will be unlocked upon launch with the remaining .75% distributed proportionally on a monthly basis over 18 months. These funds are targeted to both an increase in collaboration between the project but also to further the reputations of all respective parties.

"Aegis will be one of the most innovative Fraxtal DeFi dApps in the Frax ecosystem. Its unique CDP system will allow for fully decentralized lending-borrowing on day 1. We’re excited to work closely with the Aegis team to help them bring their vision to life on Fraxtal ensuring that Aegis integrates seamlessly and expands swiftly, reflecting the rapid ascent of Fraxtal itself.”

-Sam Kazemian, CEO of FRAX

Technical Specification:

1% or 1,000,000 SHIELD tokens will be sent to the Balancer DAO Multisig on Fraxtal 0x4f22C2784Cbd2B24a172566491Ee73fee1A63c2e .This is to be used at the discretion of the DAO. As mentioned our recombination is prudent use at least in partial.

Initial Unlock: .083333% or 83,333 SHIELD tokens

Remaining Unlocking Over: 12 months with .076389% or 76,389 SHIELD unlocked on monthly basis

4 Likes

Hi there, thanks for the proposal

As there haven’t been any comments, I want to provide some context on how I see this partnership unfold:

  • Balancer is a strategic DEX on Fraxtal
  • Fraxtal themselves want to utilize Balancer as their main liquidity hub in the future and already allocated POL to the platform
  • Overall, this collaboration proposal sounds fruitful for both parties involved and will drive new product growth towards Balancer as the potentially leading DEX on Fraxtal.

The Maxis can assist in designing and executing incentive programs on Aegis pools. We can easily set up incentive programs with SHIELD tokens directly emitted to a set of gauges. Let’s discuss more details once this proposal passes.

There has been no decision on how these funds will be used apart from the above mentioned incentive program idea. Ecosystem participants should come forward with ideas on how to utilize or distribute those funds once this vote is pased.

In general, I am in favor of this proposal and the terms sound reasonable.

2 Likes

Aura is in favor as well, if this proposal can drive value to veBAL holders. Welcome to the ecosystem!

1 Like