Rigoblock Protocol - Growth Experiments - Cycle 11

ARCHIVED & OLD Missions Grants Council Cycle 10-11
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Basic Details

Project name: Rigoblock

Author name and contact info (please provide a reliable point of contact for the project.):
Gabriele Rigo gab@rigoblock.com Telegram: Contact @gabrielerigo

L2 recipient address: 0x080f08076e8EAdC66006C3CbFEd28a34918A1fA6

Which Voting Cycle are you applying for?: Cycle 11 - Growth Experiments

I confirm that I have read the landing pages for the Builders and Growth Experiments Sub-Committees and that I have determined my proposal is best suited to be reviewed by the Growth Experiments Sub-Committee: [Yes/No]: Yes

I understand that Growth Experiments grants are subject to a “no sale rule,” as explained in this post, and I have read the terms of the rule: [Yes/No]: Yes

Project Details

What are you building?: Rigoblock is a protocol for on-chain asset management. It provides the digital infrastructure for token management. What today is done mostly manually in the asset management world (i.e. investment funds, index funds, and so on) can be done on-chain, with real time tracking of portfolio tokens and users positions’ accounting, in a transparent and publicly verifiable way. Rigoblock is a fully open source and free to use smart contracts protocol that facilitates the interaction with DeFi applications by abstracting token allowances and makes it safer by removing exposure to external smart contract vulnerability risks. Rigoblock is multi-chain, live on Optimism since November 2022.

Why do you believe what you are building is going to succeed?: Rigoblock improves a user’s Dapp UX by removing the number of necessary transactions and removing the risk that a vulnerability in an external Dapp would result in a loss of tokens for the wallet.

How many users does your project have currently? Please include how you arrived at this estimate: Rigoblock V2 has about 40 smart pools, Rigoblock V3 about 10. While these are not exciting numbers, we haven’t started promoting V3 yet. TVL is currently aroung 500k USD, we are working on displaying these figures on a public dashboard. Target users are specialized DeFi degens, therefore our target audience is in the order of thousands (or tens of thousands) as opposed to hundreds of thousands (or millions) of smaller users.

How will receiving a grant enable you to further the mission of maximizing the number of users interacting with Optimism? Please include a step-by-step flow of how you imagine this grant can lead to a greater number of user interactions with Optimism: the biggest hurdle we are facing is in explaining why a user should use a smart pool instead of an EOA. We are aiming at using the distribution as funnel for user acquisition, where users are expected to keep using the platform even after the expiration of the program because of ease of use and ongoing Rigoblock incentives.

  1. Promotion of program to public channels, praising benefits of Optimism L2
  2. L1 users bridge to Optimism and create a smart pool
  3. User mints smart pool tokens with own tokens and activates GRG staking
  4. User receives GRG rewards and OP rewards at each epoch (2 weeks)
  5. User keeps receiving GRG staking rewards even after OP program ends.

The value added to an Optimism user is that a users’ wallet, which generally won’t generate yield, will generate yield in terms of GRG staking rewards, which is a win-win for the user and the protocol. Actors in the Rigoblock ecosystem are encouraged to take an active role, as passive GRG holders do not have any staking rewards nor governance benefits.

Tell us about the users you plan to target with this grant. Include any defining characteristics that will help you identify and target them.: we are aiming mostly at attracting Ethereum L1 users, where the protocol already counts around 500k USD TVL. However, even Optimism users will be able to obtain the same benefits by using Rigoblock . We also want to promote the program to L1 users who are looking to reduce transaction cost for swaps.

How would these users interact with Optimism? For how long?: we expect the users to keep using Rigoblock on Optimism even after the program comes to its end. Rigoblock has a continuous rewards program that will keep rewarding users in a competitive way. GRG smart pools compete for GRG stake in order to maximize their staking rewards. After the end of the OP program, users will find that they can earn a yield on their tokens by either staking GRG or by having GRG holders stake to their pool.

Provide us with links to any of the following for the project:

Do you have any metrics on the project currently? (TVL, transactions, volume, unique addresses, etc. Optimism metrics preferred; please link to public sources such as Dune Analytics, etc.):

  • 40 V2 pools: RigoBlock
  • One of the top staking pools on the 0x staking system
  • More than $50MM volume generated by Rigoblock liquidity on 0x on Ethereum mainnet.
  • Around 500k USD TVL between Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon, for the great part on Ethereum

Displaying V3 metrics on a public dashboard is work in progress. The data listed here is the result of onchain activity, i.e. transactions.

Who are your competitors, and are they on Optimism?:
https://safe.global/ (on Optimism)
https://enzyme.finance/ (not on Optimism)
While safe.global is a multisig wallet, the Rigoblock tech is very similar and the products can target the same audience, i.e. project treasuries. Compared to safe.global, Rigoblock guarantees that only protocols pre-approved by the Rigoblock governance may be used by a smart pool. Compared to enzyme, Rigoblock pools are highly efficient in terms of gas cost for running a transaction. A swap on Rigoblock is at least 50% less expensive in terms of gas used. The creation of a Rigoblock pool, furthermore, is 90% less expensive than an enzyme vault. Pool minting, furthermore, is more than 80% cheaper than enzyme. Compared to both, Rigoblock guarantees that the smart pool is not exposed to external smart contract risk.

Please link to code audits (if any): An audit has not been produced yet. However, all smart contracts have full test coverage, with overall >99% test coverage and 100% protocol test coverage. Verifiable on coveralls

Team

Who are your founders?: Gabriele Rigo Linkedin profile

What makes your team well-suited to carry out the project described in this proposal? I have founded the project in 2016, built a team, successfully raised funds for the project and fully delivered what had been promised. In 2019 I had to let the other members of the team go because of lack of funds. After a critical vulnerability in Rigoblock V2 was exploited in early 2022, I rewrote the protocol and deployed a new interface and documentation. Rigoblock has constantly innovated, being the first onchain protocol connected to a Dex in 2019. I have earned a seat on the 0x DAO. While Rigoblock’s success has so far been very disappointing, I strongly believe that the product creates value for its users.

Is this your first Web3 project?: Yes. However, I recently launched a framework for upgradable governance, which is used by Rigoblock but can be leveraged by anyone (free and open source).

If not, what else have you built? (Share links, Github repository, or any other useful information.):
decentralized governance github link

Grant Request

What is the size of the grant request? (250k OP max): 25K OP

How do you justify the size of the grant?: the size of the grant is relatively small as the Rigoblock TVL does not justify a much bigger OP distribution at the moment. If the cost/impact ratio is taken into consideration, I believe the program has good chance of attracting multiples in TVL which will not leave Optimism once the program ends.

Roadmap and Distribution Plan

Describe in discrete steps how you will successfully implement your grant plan:

How will the OP tokens be distributed? (please include % allocated to different initiatives such as user rewards/marketing/liquidity mining. Please also include a justification as to why each of these initiatives align with the problem statement this proposal is solving. Distribution should not include the sale of any tokens by the grantee or the use of tokens for compensation, protocol expenses, etc. See the no sale rule here ): OP tokens will be distributed to Rigoblock pools based on their GRG staking rewards, augmenting the pools’ rewards. Allocated tokens will be split by epoch (each Rigoblock epoch is 2 weeks long) and distributed to the pools on top of their GRG staking reward. We will distribute the allocated OP pro-rata to each smart pool based on the GRG staking rewards. While GRG staking rewards are accrued both by smart pools and stakers, the OP experiment distribution will only be directed to smart pools. After the end of each Rigoblock epoch, each pool is finalized and its reward paid to its pool operator. We will use a pool’s staking reward as a % of the total pools’ staking rewards as the % allocation of the OP distribution. As can be seen here (github) a pool’s reward is an exponentially weighted average of its own active GRG stake relative to the sum of the other pools’ active GRG stakes (2/3 weight) and the active stake of a pool relative to the sum of the other pool’s active stakes (1/3 weight). In order to avoid confusion, GRG stakers will not be rewarded with OP. In order to guarantee fairness, we will stake at least 2000 GRG to the first 100 new pools and allocate the stake pro-rata to all the smart pools based on their TVL. As each participating pool is required to actively stake a non-null amount of GRG (any amount) and the pool must have at least 100 GRG staked to it (≃100$, either own stake or delegated) sufficient liquidity will be provided (either directly or indirectly) on Uniswap V3 on Optimism in order to guarantee the amount can be purchased without slippage. In terms of smart pool liquidity/TVL, smart pool operators are competing against each other, hence the more the assets, the bigger the stake and the bigger the reward. However, operators are not required to bootstrap liquidity like in AMM pools, therefore a smart pool can be run with any amount of tokens.

Over what period of time will the tokens be distributed for each initiative?: Shorter timelines are preferable to longer timelines. Shorter timelines (on the order of weeks) allow teams to quickly demonstrate achievement of milestones, better facilitating additional grants via subsequent proposals: 12 weeks. Each Rigoblock epoch is 2 weeks long. Therefore, 1/6th of the total amount will be distributed each epoch (i.e. every two weeks), exhausting the amount after approximately 3 months. The same amount of OP will be allocated to each epoch, with individual pool APY expected to decrease as the aggregate pools’ TVL grows.

Please provide benchmark milestones for this project. These milestones should guide the Optimism community on the progress of your project throughout your work on the project. Do not use distribution of the grant itself as a milestone:
The following dates assume a grant is approved on Mar 30th. Should actual event occur later, we kindly ask that the dates be adjusted accordingly, with the goal of maximizing program success odds with appropriate time for users to setup their own pools.

  • Milestone #1 - 100 new smart pools created by 100 different pool operators on Optimism by Apr 30th 2023 (32% of total OP tokens). Smart pools created by core team controlled wallets or smart contracts will be excluded from the count.
  • Milestone #2 - 100K USD additional TVL on Optimism and public display of relevant information regarding smart pools, staking APYs, experiment APY by May 15th.
  • Milestone #3 - Retain at least 50% of end-of-program-TVL on Aug 30th (i.e. 1 month after the end of the experiment). This metric will exclude TVL acquired after the program and will be used as a benchmark to assess the viability of a similar program in the future.

Please define critical milestones for this project. Critical milestones are meant to show good-faith efforts to accomplish the project. Non-completion of these milestones could lead to revocation of remaining grant rewards. Do not use distribution of the grant itself as a milestone:

  • Critical milestone #1 - 1MM USD additional TVL on Optimism and independent TVL source (like DeFi Llama or viable alternative) by Jun 5th (48% of total OP tokens).
  • Critical milestone #2 - 1MM USD in AMM liquidity from Rigoblock smart pools on Optimism by Jun 30th (20% of total OP tokens).

If the OP tokens are for direct distribution to users, why will incentivized users and liquidity on Optimism remain after incentives dry up?: Users will move from Ethereum L1 and will find the ideal environment for trading and providing liquidity on Optimism. On top of being a cheaper alternative for swapping tokens, Optimism still has not experienced the vast liquidity of Ethereum L1, meaning that returns on liquidity on i.e. Uniswap on many major pairs are still high. Rigoblock pools will keep receiving GRG staking rewards after the OP enhanced rewards program ends.

Please provide any additional information that will facilitate accountability (smart contracts addresses relevant to the proposal, relevant organizational wallet addresses, etc.):
ProofOfPerformance: Contract Address 0x9e895962AaceE64e42b8fFFa1efF0AcD7F0B6794 | Optimism
StakingProxy: Contract Address 0xb844bdcc64a748fdc8c9ee74fa4812e4bc28fd70 | Optimism
RigoblockPoolProxyFactory: Contract Address 0x8DE8895ddD702d9a216E640966A98e08c9228f24 | Optimism
AUniswap: Contract Address 0xc1ad7e8ea82f2f5129428a46eb968d08cd40cb92 | Optimism

Optimism Relationship

Does your project solve a problem for the Optimism ecosystem? If so how?:

  1. DAO treasuries looking to run strategies (i.e. staking, liquidity mining, yield farming, treasury diversification) on the treasury tokens can delegate selected members from their community to perform such strategies and always 1) have real time accounting of token allocation 2) be guaranteed that the delegated “manager” does not have access to the tokens besides what the protocol allows (i.e. swaps, liquidity mining and staking but also participating in governance). This is particularly relevant for delegation mandates where the strategy is simple and stable but needs constant rebalancing, making an onchain governance vote unnecessary and redundant.
  2. Users looking for a solution to run strategies for themselves and their partners, with real time allocation of token participation in a pool
  3. Users looking to minimize Dapp smart contract risk
  4. Users looking to generate yield on their portfolio
  5. Users looking to bootstrap their own track record for launching a professional asset management service.
  6. Users looking to launch smart wallets without writing smart contracts
  7. Users looking to deploy highly efficient smart wallets, as Rigoblock launches an effective transparent upgradable proxy pattern. In this context, the protocol uses an abstract approach to storage, which prevents storage collision by design (this is a huge problem if an upgradable proxy is not developed with care for storage collision).
  8. As a consequence of point 6., a publicly available framework for abstract storage upgradable smart wallet proxies, which can be used for an Optimism dev under the Apache2.0 License terms.

Why will this solution be a source of growth for the Optimism ecosystem?: a Rigoblock smart pool has the perk of being upgradable upon request by its pool operator and allowing interaction with DeFi protocols. This means that once a connected DeFi protocol upgrades, the transition will be managed by the Rigoblock protocol with minimal or no effort for the pool operator. Also, should a connected DeFi protocol be subject to a critical vulnerability, the smart pool tokens are never at risk of such vulnerability. A DeFi aggregator, for example, could be subject to the vulnerability of one of its liquidity sources. While the EOA would be exposed to allowance risk, a Rigoblock smart pool is not exposed to that risk. Last but not least, it can prompt DAO treasuries to actively manage their portfolio tokens, thus expanding their capabilities and Optimism usage.

Is your project Optimism Native?: No. The project was initially deployed on Ethereum mainnet. The Optimism deployment does not rely on L1 for its operations/existence. So technically, the project on Optimism is independent, but was first deployed on Ethereum mainnet.

Confirmations

I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant: [Yes/No]: Yes

I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here: [Yes/No]: Yes

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You may need to provide a better description of the milestones with specific dates for this proposal.

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Thank you for the note. I have given a more specific time frame for the milestones and broken down the TVL target to an additional interim milestone which should be easier to achieve in a shorter period. I also amended the milestone based on volume to a milestone based on AMM TVL, as volume can be easily inflated and AMM TVL will create value for the Optimism community in terms of additional token liquidity.

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Hello and thank you for your proposal! Throughout the application process, this forum thread will be one of the official means of communication. Please be sure to monitor it for updates over the course of the review period.

At this stage, applications are mainly being reviewed for completeness, and nothing at this stage should be construed as support or opposition by any members of the Grants Council.

Hey Gab! Just to be 100% clear here - I really don’t know what Rigoblock is based on this info, and going to the dapp shows me a Uniswap V2 fork-esque protocol without any usable pools to play around with.

Could you summarize some of the improvements of Rigoblock compared to similar protocols and also how you’d come to the conclusion that safe.global / enzyme finance are competitors? Just having a bit of a hard time understanding what Rigo does here.

Please provide more information on the distribution and how much is allocated to each. 100% is fine if that’s the proposal. Though it’s important to provide more details on the exact calculation of OP rewards and how liquidity will be sourced to support these Rigoblock pools.

The provided metrics lack specificity and are not tied to clear timeframes. Without specific target dates, it is difficult to assess progress and hold the project accountable. Additionally, the critical milestones mentioned seem to be unrelated (and less critical) milestones. Please revise the milestones to provide clearer and more measurable targets. Review the milestone assessment doc for more information.

Yet again, it’s very unclear to me on what RigoBlock does (based on the available UI, and other information) and how it would solve a core problem on Optimism.

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Hi Matt, thank you for your observations. I have amended the proposal with some additions and will check if removing parts of the descriptions makes sense as you highlighted the description of the project is not clear to you.

I will give some brief answers here relating to the parts that have been modified after your comments.

Hey Gab! Just to be 100% clear here - I really don’t know what Rigoblock is based on this info, and going to the dapp shows me a Uniswap V2 fork-esque protocol without any usable pools to play around with.

I modified the project description. Rigoblock is a protocol for on-chain asset management, replicating the operations of an asset management company in a transparent and publicly verifiable way.
Reg. the dapp, it is aimed at facilitating interaction with the smart pools for pool operators. Hence, only the operated pools are displayed. I added a link in the project links to the url that redirects to information about a pool given its address (i.e. name, symbol, total supply, unitary value, pool operator, portfolio evaluation through Zapper, and other information like spread, fee, …). The link is aimed at being shared by the pool operator with his relevant peers. With that said, a better displaying of existing pools is work-in-progress.
Please note that while the interface is derived from the Uniswap interface, i.e. a fork of the Uniswap interface with new sections for operating a pool, the protocol is an original product. The reason behind choosing the Uniswap interface as base is that Rigoblock pools are connected to Uniswap and the format of the transactions is the same, therefore making deployment of the interface faster. Rigoblock pools can swap tokens on Uniswap (leveraging both V3 and V2 smart routing) and provide liquidity on Uniswap V3. Rigoblock pools’ activity is not just limited to operating on Uniswap, as already staking on the GRG staking system and creating a proposal, voting in the Rigoblock governance is possible. In the future, more external applications will be integrated based on demand.

Could you summarize some of the improvements of Rigoblock compared to similar protocols and also how you’d come to the conclusion that safe.global / enzyme finance are competitors? Just having a bit of a hard time understanding what Rigo does here.

I have added a comparison in the competitors section.

Please provide more information on the distribution and how much is allocated to each. 100% is fine if that’s the proposal. Though it’s important to provide more details on the exact calculation of OP rewards and how liquidity will be sourced to support these Rigoblock pools.

I provided details on calculation in the distribution section. This piece of code here (github) is relevant for the rewards calculations. The linked smart contract is deployed on Optimism at address 0xB844bDCC64a748fDC8c9Ee74FA4812E4BC28FD70.

The provided metrics lack specificity and are not tied to clear timeframes. Without specific target dates, it is difficult to assess progress and hold the project accountable. Additionally, the critical milestones mentioned seem to be unrelated (and less critical) milestones. Please revise the milestones to provide clearer and more measurable targets. Review the milestone assessment doc for more information.

I have amended the milestones with exact dates and program of grant receival. I have included what I initially defined as critical milestones in the milestones they are relevant to. I have also set two objective critical milestones.

Yet again, it’s very unclear to me on what RigoBlock does (based on the available UI, and other information) and how it would solve a core problem on Optimism.

I have added a point as DAO treasuries can use Rigoblock to implement active treasury management strategies, keep track of their actively managed tokens, delegate management to community members/groups. Imo this is relevant as community treasuries will evolve over time and will want to generate yield on their otherwise idle tokens. Also DAO treasuries will have stricter requirements than normal users, which is something that Rigobock does accomodate. If the other points are confusing, I will remove them from the proposal.

Please further comment should the answer still not be clear. Thank you again for reviewing the proposal in depth.

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Got it, thanks for the updates and such!

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