keep3r.network & unit.xyz
After having received some feedback with regards to the lack of marketing with keep3r network, I wanted to take some time to walk through a practical example of where keep3r network fits in the ecosystem.
I have also been meaning to do an introductionary post on unit.xyz, so figured this is the perfect opportunity to do both.
First, a quick walkthrough of current key jobs; (you can view these on the keep3r.network dashboard)
Keep3rV1Oracle & SushiswapV1Oracle
The two keep3r oracles are a core component in systems like Alpha Homora v2 and Unit Protocol. It is easiest to describe as an on-chain price oracle for Uniswap & Sushiswap assets. Anyone that needs a price feed can request a new feed, it takes roughly ~10 seconds to add a new feed, and then you can use these feeds for price data. These feeds are flash loan proof, and you can configure your tolerance between data freshness and security. These feeds are currently securing over $300MM in funds in Alpha Homora v2 and Unit Protocol
The oracle feeds are also being used as optional oracles in Rari Capital’s Fuse and Sushi’s Kashi
With keep3r oracles you can build lending platforms, options, indexes, volatility indexes, volatility hedges, impermanent loss hedges, and more, all on-chain.
HegicKeep3rV2 & HegicBotKeep3r
The Hegic Options protocol has option expiry. When a users option expire an external trigger needs to release the locked funds back into the liquidity pool. This is managed autonomously by keep3rs. When expiry occurs, keep3rs close the option the funds are returned to the LP pool.
Keep3rs can also be used to auto exercise ITM (in profit) options. Option purchasers can set rules with regards to when they wish to exercise in profit, and keep3rs can execute these on their behalf. Similar to how keep3rs can enable limit orders in Uniswap & Sushiswap
Lido.fi allows end users to natively stake ETH for ETH2 and earn staking rewards / yield. The Lido system pools the ETH until there is enough for another 32 ETH batch and then deposits the ETH into ETH2. To automate this process they integrated a Keep3r job to deposit whenever their buffer is filled. It is a simple example of the kind of automation that keep3rs allow.
Mushroom Finance Vault Keep3r & Yearn Keep3r Vault Proxy
Vault based solutions such as Yearn, Mushroom, StakeDAO, Pickle, and Farm all need strategy automation, this includes 2 core steps;
- Depositing buffered funds in vaults into strategies
- Harvesting yield in strategies to convert to funds
Both of these actions require external triggers, currently both Yearn and Mushroom use keep3rs to facilitate this work, I hope to onboard more vault based providers in the future.
Yearn has two delegated vaults, these are vaults that use collateral to borrow credit and generate yield with the credit. Most notably yWETH (which borrows DAI) and yLINK (which borrows USDC, previously TUSD).
These vaults are potentially at risk for liquidation if their debt ratio falls within liquidatable ranges. Yearn wants to maximize yield, so they need to have risky debt ratios, the vaults themselves have built in protection mechanisms against this (for example they rebalance on every deposit & withdraw to ensure the vaults stay safe). But in a black swan event where people aren’t depositing / withdrawing due to high gas, we need a redundancy. In these situations the liquidation keep3rs trigger and force rebalance the vaults. This protects these vaults even in black swan events.
As a lender, Bzx needs to ensure their system health, often, some debt positions aren’t profitable to liquidate, to help maintain system health they integrate keep3rs to liquidate all their system jobs. This helps liquidations occur more frequently, and allows Bzx to keep their bad debt clean.
This is a useful design for all debt based solutions, in the future I hope to onboard Cream, Compound, and Aave as well.
Keep3r Health
So from the above, we can already see keep3r helps facilitate;
- liquidations
- vault safety & security
- ETH2 staking
- Options execution
- debt ratio health
- price feeds
- on-chain options pricing
- on-chain volatility indexes
The above are the “immediate” effects of keep3r network. But now let’s explore the secondary effects;
Unit Protocol allows you to collateralize a variety of short & long tail assets to mint their native stable coin USDP, USDP is available for trade at curve.fi/usdp and sushiswap, you can currently earn up to 112% APY on USDP at curve.fi
On Unit Protocol you can collateralize any of the following assets;
ETH, wBTC, STAKE, YFI, MKR, CRV, KP3R, UNI, AAVE, COMP, SNX, LINK, UMA, renBTC, HEGIC, USDC, USDT, DAI, sUSD, DPI, BAND, REN, BADGER, SUSHI, GRT, MTA, PICKLE, PERP, OCEAN, BAL, CREAM, DUSD, mUSD, OMG, FTM, COVER, YAM, yveCRV-DAO, xSUSHI, ANY, ARMOR, BOR, SFI, SOCKS, RGT
As well as the above, you can also use any of the above’s Uniswap or Sushiswap’s *-ETH LP pairs as collateral.
Now from the above, you will notice a lot of the tokens are “yearn ecosystem” tokens, this is because yearn ecosystem assets often use Keep3r Oracles
The beauty of keep3r oracles, they are completely permissionless, so any project can consume their price feeds. When you use Unit Protocol, you will notice that the majority of their assets use keep3r oracles as their price feeds;
There are currently over $200MM in collateral in Unit Protocol, all of which is being secured by Keep3r Oracles. As more projects use keep3r oracles, the liquidity and credits are shared between all projects, allowing them to decentralize (and create redundancy for) the oracle upkeep.
Conclusion & Problem statement
Now, with all of the above said, I am phenomenally happy with keep3r.network and what it has achieved and enabled within the defi ecosystem. It allows projects to not only decentralize their devops needs, but also enables them to build new product verticals (like auto exercising options, or AMM limit orders) that were previously not possible.
There are a lot more teams I would love to onboard, and a lot more products that are pending release in the backlog (limit orders and metawallet to just name two, but the list is long).
The problem is simply capacity. Keep3r, unlike a lot of its counter part projects does not have a team supporting it. Currently it is just myself working on it. So I hope I can use this blog post as a call to action to get more teams / projects / developers involved. Keep3r treasury is currently over $10m which the community can vote on to provide grants or include other teams into the ecosystem.
keep3r facilitates a core role within the defi ecosystem but I alone can’t bring it to full fruition.
There are so many exciting developments happening around Chainlink Keep3rs, Band Autotasks, Keep3r metatransactions, AMM limit orders, and Openzeppelin Defender integration, but keep3r needs a supporting team in terms of marketing, documentation, and integration assistance.
If this is something that interests you, please feel free to contact me on telegram @andrecronje to get involved.
