Optim Finance Vaults / Tranche Structures - DeFi Building Blocks for Cardano.

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Ethan Protas

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

ethan@optim.finance

Additional applicants

Maksymilian Brodowicz

@zygomeb (Twitter) - tech lead

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

8

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

No dependancies

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

Yes

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Project will be open source with business source license

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

dApp

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Problem Approach

Cardano DeFi has some basic primitives. People can swap tokens, take out over-collateralized loans, and create CDPs. However, these basic functions don't enable most financial products.

There is no way to create structured products, fund loans and opportunities in the real economy, and divide cash flows between different parties with various risk and return preferences.

DeFi is a very small market. RealFi or Real World Assets on-chain are expected to grow to $4-$16 Trillion by 2030 according to the Boston Consulting Group.

In order to grow our DeFi, push into RealFi, and compete as a blockchain Cardano MUST have an on-chain tranche structure as a basic building block.

"Tranches are segments created from a pool of securities—usually debt instruments such as bonds or mortgages—that are divvied up by risk, time to maturity, or other characteristics in order to be marketable to different investors." 

Solution Approach

We believe that on-chain, smart-contract tranche structures will enable an expansive array of DeFi products to be built.

Optim has successfully built novel Bond products on-chain with over 12 Million ADA locked in them

Our Bonds (our first product) have many use cases built with the same smart contracts

Tranche structures offer even more use cases across the DeFi ecosystem and will function as a core building block for countless products.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Our proposed solution addresses the challenge by enabling more advanced financial products to be built in the Cardano DeFi ecosystem.

Tranche structures serve as a foundational building block for scalable finance, enabling the division of risks and returns among various participants. By implementing this primitive, Cardano DeFi can expand beyond its current phase of simple products and open the door to more sophisticated offerings.

Any cash-producing asset such as bonds, mortgages, etc. benefit from on-chain tranche structures.

Our solution directly aligns with the aim of Cardano to provide decentralized applications that manage value and aim to “bank the unbanked.”

By introducing tranche structures, we enable the ecosystem to thrive and grow, attracting more users and participants to the Cardano community. Tranche structures support leverage products for CNTs (Cardano Native Tokens) and empower the utilization of Real World Assets on the Cardano blockchain. This taps into the largest growth opportunity for DeFi over the next 10 years.

The impact of our project on the Cardano ecosystem will be significant. It will not only bring more users to the community but also strengthen the ecosystem through the introduction of more advanced financial products. The availability of tranche structures will solve a key problem by providing the necessary infrastructure for scalable finance. While it is challenging to quantify the exact number of users or transactions that will be achieved within a specific timeframe, we anticipate a substantial increase in adoption and usage shortly after the project completes.

This expansion will drive the ecosystem towards its goal of empowering the unbanked population and positioning Cardano as a leader in the DeFi space.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

We intend to measure the success of our project by considering three key metrics:

1) User adoption of tranche structure-based financial products

2) Total Value Locked (TVL) in tranche structure-based financial products.

3) Unique Financial Products enabled by our tranche structures

Short-term

• Shipping a safe dApp
• User adoption (# of wallets)
• TVL (Total Value Locked)

Long-Term

• Integrated with other DeFi protocols
• TVL of other projects using tranche structures
• Number of different use cases utilizing tranche structures

User adoption will be evaluated by tracking the number of users utilizing the tranche structures that we introduce. We will collect feedback and opinions from users to gain a clear understanding of what they like about the products and what improvements can be made. TVL will be measured by evaluating the total value of assets that participants hold in tranche structure-based financial products.

We believe that these measures are realistic as they provide a clear picture of the impact of our project on the Cardano ecosystem. The metrics allow us to evaluate the overall popularity and usage of the tranche structures and the success in achieving the aim of providing more advanced financial products on the platform. Additionally, by gathering feedback and opinions from users, we can learn how to improve our products to better serve the community.

The innovation of introducing tranche structures to the Cardano ecosystem is expected to significantly impact the productivity and growth of Cardano in both the short and long term.

In the short term, it will attract more users to both Optim and other ecosystem dApps, increasing engagement and contributing to the overall growth of the ecosystem. Additionally, this will potentially result in a higher volume of transactions, a boost in liquidity, and more stable prices for native tokens.

In the long term, tranche structures can serve as a building block for more other, composable, sophisticated financial products and attract institutional investors to the platform, increasing the TVL and stabilizing the ecosystem even further.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

We plan to publish our audits and open source our code

Users

Publish Medium articles, Gitbook guides, educational videos, and other media to help Cardano DeFi users understand tranche structures and how they are used in different ways across the ecosystem.

Developers

Clearly articulate and document in detail how to smart contracts work and can be used to compose and create other DeFi products across the ecosystem. We will assist other project that inquire about the specific mechanics and possible functional modifications for financial engineering purposes.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

The team has already delivered a working dApp that's top 10 in DeFi TVL.

Liquidity Bonds, Optim's first product, isn't seen anywhere else in crypto.

We are able to leverage Cardano's unique capabilities, design products around them, and ship quickly and cheaply. We've done this once and will continue to do so in the future.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

Goals

• Deliver dApp that is safe building block for DeFi -- Audited, live mainnet Q1 2024
• Create new products on Optim -- 2 products (RWA Vaults, CNT vaults)
• Deliver tranche structure to at least 2 other projects -- by mid Q3 2024
• $5MM TVL in first year through CNT leverage and RWAs
• Increase unique users on dApp by 50%

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Milestone 1

Finalize Vault Design smart contracts (3 months)

Cost - $10,000

Milestone 2

Finalize and review financial engineering (1 month)

Cost - $10,000

Milestone 3

Professional Audit (3 months)

Cost - $85,000

Milestone 4

Testnet, then mainnet (1 months)

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

Milestone 1

Finalize Vault Design smart contracts (2 months)

Outcome - Documentation on Github

Milestone 2

Finalize and review financial engineering (1 month)

Outcome - Documentation on Gitbook of financial design choices and functionality

Milestone 3

Professional Audit (3 months)

Outcome - Product and publish audit report

Milestone 4

Testnet, then mainnet (2 months)

Outcome - Live on Cardano mainnet with functioning UI

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Software development (final)

$45/ hr x 220 hours = $10,000

Financial Engineering Review

$70/ hr x 100 hrs = $7000

Audit = $88,000

Total = $105,000 (.30 ADA) = 350,000 ADA

*the audit is an approximation based on the number of lines of on-chain code and what we paid for previous Cardano audits of similar complexity and scale

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Advanced smart contract and financial engineering for blockchains is expensive

We have experience developing and deploying on Cardano and know what it costs.

Costs of $45/ hr for aiken lang engineering

$70/ hr for advanced financial engineering with software background

$88,000 for Cardano smart contract audit

Are all within the normal to cheaper range seen across the ecosystem

Value

There are few teams dedicated to new DeFi primitives on Cardano with a proven track record. We believe it is worth supporting if you believe in DeFi and RealFi

Tranche structures are one of the most foundational building blocks of modern finance.

Without this, there is limited ability to expand beyond some very basic functionality that is primarily crypto native speculation on token prices and farming governance tokens.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept