[BIP-27] Enable DIGG/wBTC/graviAURA 40/40/20 Gauge [Ethereum]

Gauge Proposal Template:

Summary:

BadgerDAO Proposal to add a gauge for the DIGG/wBTC/graviAURA Pool

References/Useful links:

• Website: Main Website Vaults dApp
• Documentation: Gitbook
• Github Page: Github
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BadgerDAO
• Discord: Discord

Protocol Description:

BADGER Protocol

BadgerDAO is a well established DAO which seeks to build the infrastructure for Bitcoin in DeFi. We make it easy to bridge your Bitcoin into other blockchains and start earning yield right away. Badger Vaults currently have over $80m in TVL as well as launched ibBTC which is the number 5 Bitcoin synthetic in defi. DIGG is a token integral in BadgerDAO’s user yield boost mechanics which allows for users to optimize their vault yields through improved capital efficiency. DIGG is paired with wBTC which is the largest Bitcoin synthetic and has well established security.

Price History $DIGG

Price History for DIGG can be found on coingecko

Motivation:

The DIGG/wBTC/graviAURA 40/40/20 Pool needs incentivization to migrate meaningful amounts of liquidity over to the Balancer ecosystem. Digg enthusiasts in the Badger DAO community are interested in making Balancer DIGGs primary exchange, source of liquidity and giving Badger supporters many opportunities to earn fees and yield on their tokens.

Specifications:

  1. Governance:

BadgerDAO has a hierarchy of different multisig accounts that handle operations within the DAO. These have specific use cases and are outlined in detail in the repo linked below:
Badger Multisigs

The highest risk operations are controlled by a timelock address which needs to be triggered and has a 2 day time delay to perform any actions.

  1. Oracles:

Badger does not rely on any external oracles

  1. Audits:

Audits have been performed by multiple top tier audit agencies. Web2 has been fully audited and reviewed by Halborn and we have an ongoing relationship with Quantstamp and code4rena. Badger Audits can be found on badger.com here: Security & Audits

  1. Centralization vectors:

Badger does utilize upgradeable contracts for many of the products we offer, though these are protected by a 2 day timelock for prevention of issues. Our API and frontend are hosted by centralized entities but the DAO is releasing an IPFS hosted access point for people to utilize that is fully permissionless.

  1. Market History:

DIGG has been actively trading since January 2021. DIGG’s year to date average daily trading volume is approximately $65.5k USD (almost $990k average daily since inception) primarily on sushi. The Balancer pool has only recently been launched and has not received volume to give any insights. The expectation is once Badger DAO and/or its Digg community users migrate existing liquidity the pool can bring consistent volume and fees to Balancer as DIGG’s new primary source of liquidity.

Pool: wBTC/DIGG/graviAURA

Gauge: 0x5204f813cF58a4722E481b3b1cDfBBa45088fE36

5 Likes

The concern here is DIGG is a micro cap token and unlikely to be able to generate meaningful fees for Balancer. If we approve this gauge and it receives a large amount of BAL emissions we have created another CREAM situation.

Per your docs, DIGG is meant to be pegged to the price of bitcoin but it is currently far off peg which tells me the market has lost confidence in this mechanism.

I see why Badger wants this gauge. I’d like to hear from you about the value this gauge would bring to Balancer - that’s the part I’m not seeing.

2 Likes

Hello @solarcurve,
Thank you for the prompt response.

Digg is no longer pegged to BTC per BIP 92 . It’s a free-floating price, fixed supply token and any peg to BTC price is purely market driven.

Certainly agree Digg is a microcap token but it’s average daily trading volume this year (in USD terms) is ~3% of it’s fully diluted valuation and ~7% of it’s present market cap.

What can I do to help alleviate the concern mentioned?

Are there other active gauges for pools with less than $65k USD average daily volume for 2022? Are they manifesting the results of which there is concern this gauge request would create?

I don’t speak for the Badger DAO but am here as an advocate within the Badger community.

I’d really like to see Balancer’s ve model and the Lego building blocks being developed to expand flourish. My hope is that migrating primary liquidity pools to the balancer ecosystem is a step in that direction.

Best regards, hash

4 Likes

Forum discussion has been open for 7 days.

I’d like to request to move this gauge enabling discussion to snapshot for this week’s voting round.

Thank you.

1 Like

https://snapshot.org/#/balancer.eth/proposal/0x7acc8e26392f751c1afa41784cb803fbbb9c271a41006bac142afb71304b4d8e

1 Like

While the vote is open for the next couple days I’d respectfully ask for you to consider the following when voting.

  • The aim with this snapshot is to make this balancer pool Digg’s primary liquidity source. Enabling the gauge is an important element to that end.
  • I’d ask for consideration to not negatively single out the DIGG pool by disallowing a gauge for what it hasn’t done yet.
  • The pool is a micro cap pool DIGG/wBTC/graviAURA 40/40/20. If this pool somehow received 0.2% of Balancer emissions is this truly detrimental to the balancer ecosystem? If it was could balancer community not then vote to disable the gauge if it’s proven to be an issue? Presumably this disabling process will need to be put in place anyhow seeing that that there are presently active gauges yielding 300%-1000% aprs on low trading volume.
  • as Badger DAO has already exhibited a willingness to collaborate and incorporate Balancer and Aura input into design I see no reason that wouldn’t also be true here. Balancer wants a cap on emissions for the pool? Wants to diverts some earnings? It could all be open for discussion.

Really simply looking for the opportunity to demonstrate our intentions with responsible gauge voting/management in the se spirit other micro/small caps have already received.

Best regards, hash

2 Likes

DIGG remains a very interesting token, despite its relatively poor market performance over the past few months. The potential DIGG has as a BTC pegged token (although it is no longer pegged and re-basing has been turned off) is not yet fully explored. From what I understand the creation of a Balancer pool, paired with vote influence assets in graviAURA, provides a great opportunity to see what can be done in BAL in creating a BTC ‘like” ETF using this model. To my mind this proposal is something that could easily be tried for a probationary period if the community feels uncomfortable noting concerns around CREAM.

Of note though, DIGG is not dominated by a single holder in the same manner as CREAM and even if someone wanted to do that, in moving the primary liquidity for DIGG to BAL then this would generate fees as they sought to capture more of the token. Would this not be a win for BAL? It seems to me that experimenting with a BTC ‘like’ token, wBTC, and a vote influence token in BAL is an opportunity to model what can be done with BAL and to demonstrate yield in BTC. As we know, chasing yields for BTC in defi remains a popular past time, just nobody seems able to do it due to low swap volumes between BTC pairs…. Maybe this is a solution that the market will appreciate??? (ie maybe this has greater potential for BAL and AURA than a renBTC/wBTC pool and maybe BADGER could seed some of the DIGG supply to BAL to demonstrate the potential?)

Happy to be wrong if anything here does not make sense.

3 Likes