Call for Input: Shaping Moonriver's DeFi Strategy

Governance
1

TLDR;

  • It is proposed to utilize additional parachain bond reserve funds to:
    • Fund a grant (or grants) to establish a Concentrated Liquidity (V3) AMM capability on Moonriver
    • Fund grants with the aim to drive new activity and deepen liquidity depth in Moonriver
  • Budget
    • Development Grant(s) for a Concentrated Liquidity AMM: 100K USD
    • Liquidity & New Activity Program: 1.5 M USD worth of MOVR for a 6 month period
  • The goal of this forum post is to:
    • Determine level of community support and gather feedback for the use of the Moonriver parachain bond reserve for this purpose
    • Identify project teams in the ecosystem that may be interested in seeking grant funding for this initiative
  • Next Steps
    • Assuming positive feedback, Incorporate Community and Project Team feedback into a governance proposal to ratify use of Moonriver Parachain Bond Reserve for this purpose along with methodology disbursement of grant funds

Background

In February 2024, the Moonriver community voted in favor of funding the participation in the Axelar Amplifier Pilot program (see forum post). The goal of this program is to have the Axelar Amplifier network deployed to Moonriver toward the end of Q2.

Community members have suggested that once this deployment is complete, capital should be used to fund grants to establish and deepen the liquidity of assets in the Moonriver Defi ecosystem including Axelar bridged assets. The community has also recommended that a Concentrated Liquidity (V3) AMM should be established on Moonriver as a prerequisite in order to have efficient use of capital.

Given recent more favorable market conditions and the Axelar deployment, it seems like the right time to take action.

Details

The proposal outlined here is high level and subject to community feedback. The basic idea is to:

  1. Provide a grant to one or more teams to develop and deploy a V3 AMM to Moonriver, ideally ready for when the Amplifier network goes live on Moonriver*
  2. Provide grants to select project teams in order to drive new activity and deepen liquidity on Moonriver, perhaps as part of a 6 month program

*While competition is always great, it may make sense to focus liquidity in a single AMM for now to avoid fragmentation but again, it would be great to get community feedback on this.

Similar to the Axelar Amplifier program, funds from the Moonriver Parachain Bond Reserve would be used to fund these initiatives which currently holds ~470K MOVR.

A rough budget for this initiative might be in the order of 1.75M USD. Again, this may be refined based on community feedback and proposals received from project teams.

To cover costs for the Axelar Amplifier program, the Moonbeam Foundation has already withdrawn 5K MOVR from the Parachain Bond Reserve to generate ~100K USD leaving ~250K USD required for the 1st year of operation for the Amplifier program.

Thus, at the high end, assuming a MOVR price of $18, the approximate amount of MOVR still required to fund remaining Amplifier costs and this initiative would be ~111K MOVR. To provide some perspective, note that 13K of MOVR was added to the Parachain Bond Reserve in March from inflation, so it would take less than 9 months to rebuild the funds in the parachain bond reserve.

Call to Action and Next Steps

In order to move swiftly, the aim of this post is to get a sense of community support for this initiative, spur further discussion and incorporate feedback in order to arrive at more exact figures (assuming the community is supportive).

In addition, this post aims to provide notice to, and to solicit feedback from project teams that may be interested in a grant to deploy a V3 AMM to Moonriver and/or seek a grant to participate in the Liquidity & New Activity Program.

Based on the feedback and interest shown, specifics around how grants would be awarded and distributed would be developed that will aim to balance speed with transparency and fairness.

Similar to the Axelar Amplifier Program, the Moonbeam Foundation would use a governance proposal on Moonriver to explicitly seek community approval for the parameters of this initiative.

Community Members and Project Teams are invited to comment on this forum post with their feedback and asked to share and discuss it with others, or directly contribute ideas. Participation by the community in this topic is vital to the success of the iniative and will directly shape the outcome.

As things progress, it may make sense for project teams to do independent forum posts outlining proposals to be considered by the community. If there are a lot of competing proposals, this may lead to further governance votes being required.

The hope would be to introduce a governance proposal within a few weeks based on collected feedback.

5 Likes
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I absolutely and fully support this proposal. we need more fun, cool stuff on Moonriver. we need more builders, new great projects, and that’s the way forward

so, I’m really supporting it wholeheartedly, and I’d love to see more grants for builders on Moonriver, along with more amazing and attractive campaigns for community

Let’s Make Moonriver Great Again!

4 Likes
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We have expressed our interest in deploying most of the Beamswap product on Moonriver. Forum post with our proposal will follow.

Let’s make Moonriver great again!

6 Likes
4

Looking forward to seeing your proposal!

2 Likes
5

I fully support the proposal of using additional parachain bond reserve funds. This helps drive innovation, growth, and increased utility of the network. But I think we shouldn’t just use the funds for run-of-the-mill things like DEXs and lending protocols. We also have to look at new ideas that no one has done before in the blockchain world.

We must think big! This could be the creation of a whole new metaverse on the Moonriver Network, where people can communicate online, just like in video games. Or use blockchain to help people buy and sell clean energy. Or creating a project on the Moonriver Network to inherit crypto assets. It’s the new and fresh ideas that will help Moonriver stand out and attract a lot of people who wouldn’t have been interested before, that’s my opinion.

And I would be interested to hear the community’s opinion. We all want Moonriver to regain the same popularity as when it was launched and the role of the community is very important in this matter.

4 Likes
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I support this in the terms of our Naitive Dex SolarBeam.

Solarbeam is the home to the heart of Moonriver.

In that home Moonwell Apollo Resides.

We Need Help, SolarBeam needs help.

Help us so that we can grow as a whole.

Through Moonwell Apollo we can grow MoonRiver.

Support of Solarbeam Liquidity will help MoonRiver grow.

Help us.

If Moonriver is a community Led Chain let the community voice their opinion.

I believe in Moonwell.

I believe in Solarbeam.

We must help them.

It is the Core of our Ecosystem.

1 Like
7

I’d like to put a deadline of April 23, 2024 for projects to indicate their interest in either of these areas:

  1. Fund a grant (or grants) to establish a Concentrated Liquidity (V3) AMM capability on Moonriver
  2. Fund grants with the aim to drive new activity and deepen liquidity depth in Moonriver

For the first item, I would invite teams to post a reply or new thread with a high level proposal (what would be developed/deployed, timeline, costs, etc.)

For inspiration of proposal structure, teams may wish to look at past ecosystem grant proposals or the guidelines from the Interim Grants Program doc in the section "MBGP Idea typically includes.

8

As a key contributor to Moonwell, I welcome this proposal. Solarbeam and Moonwell Apollo have been the top 2 protocols in the Moonriver ecosystem, and the loss of multichain has heavily impacted liquidity. Currently, the only way to bridge assets in and out of Moonriver is through FraxFerry, which takes days, and there is very little Frax liquidity to speak of.

Bringing Axelar wrapped assets, a V3 concentrated liquidity AMM (either as an upgrade to Solarbeam or potentially a new protocol), and a 6 month liquidity campaign could certainly help to revitalize the ecosystem and bring back developers and users who are passionate about Kusama and Moonriver.

In addition, when Beefy (light client bridge from Ethereum) finally arrives, the timing of a liquidity campaign to coincide with its arrival could also catalyze new user and developer growth in the ecosystem.

I wholeheartedly support this proposal, and many other Moonwell and Solarbeam contributors do as well.

2 Likes
9

We at Solarbeam fully support this proposal and want to express our interest in deploying and integrating new features into our existing protocol.

Solarbeam has supported the ecosystem since the beginning and would like to be able to continue supporting it.

The loss of liquidity impacted by Multichain and the lack of other bridges unfortunately made the network to be reduced to only native assets, and as a result, the volume and active users on the network also reduced, directly impacting Solarbeam, however we believe that with the implementation of the Axelar bridge and new native bridges, this scenario can be changed and we want to be part of it.

2 Likes
10

I’m in full support of this proposal. A new bridge partner / GMP provider for Moonriver is very much needed following Multichain, and tablestakes for a successful ecosystem. The Moonriver community is a resiliant one and it makes me happy to see effort being put in to get the ecosystem back on its feet.

I also agree that a liquidity incentives campaign + a new CL DEX would be needed to support these new assets. Initial values seem appropriate. Would we be pulling Gauntlet into incentives management or would this be run by the grants committee/Foundation?

11

Given the prevailing market conditions and the current state of Kusama and the Moonriver Network, we believe that the foundation deploying $1,750,000 worth of $MOVR as incentives over the next six months is a justifiable amount.

Given the operational dynamics of the network, we recommend allocating the majority of these funds towards a single decentralized exchange (DEX) and lending platform, namely Moonwell. Moonwell’s substantial audience, particularly on Base, positions it as a pivotal player in revitalising Moonriver.

Drawing from the lessons of Moonbeam Ignite #1, dispersing funds across multiple platforms risks diluting impact rather than enhancing it. Hence, we propose allocating $650,000 worth of $MOVR to Moonwell and one exchange, ensuring the establishment of a robust network for borrowing and trading.

The remaining $450,000 should be earmarked for projects interested in building on or migrating to the network, with a cap of $100,000 per participant. This strategy fosters a competitive environment conducive to development and network presence.

For any exchange coming, keep in mind that Algebra liquidity engine is not available as it is exclusively owned by StellaSwap and cannot be implemented to any other project.

– Team Beamswap

12

Hi all,

I wanted to reach out on this topic from Enosys.

We sent in a proposal last month that covered launching an indexer, multisig, CL CFAMM with native incentives, and bridge to Moonriver.

We currently run a suite of products on the Flare Network and their Canary Network, Songbird. We have been building on Songbird for over 2 years now and have fully incorporated Canary Networks into our development funnel. We are looking to expand that outward to new Canary Networks to create the first multichain Canary Network ecosystem. We would be looking to bring our two communities of Canary Network users together which would encourage the building of Canary cross-chain infrastructure. We would also be looking to bridge assets both to and from Moonriver, including our own established incentives.

I’m not sure if someone can find our proposal that was sent through the foundation grant application system, but I would be happy to send it through again.

Here is the link to the Proposed Milestones from the proposal

13

Follow up on this, I would ask that the teams that have indicated interest in deploying a Concentrated Liquidity (V3) AMM capability on Moonriver to create a forum post with their proposal:

@beamswapio
@x0s0l
@thanasimos_enosys

Please look at past ecosystem grant proposals and the guidelines from the Interim Grants Program doc in the section “MBGP Idea typically includes” and use this structure.

Please post your proposals under here before the end of this week (April 27, 2024):

The Moonbeam Grant Committee has graciously agreed to assist in this process and will review the proposals. As needed, they may engage with teams to ask further questions before making a recommendation.

There will be a follow up here with a timeline for the review period and next steps.