TL/DR:
Announcing Wallfacer Labs, a crypto research and development company that will support and provide development services to the TrueFi protocol.
State of TrueFi:
The past 6 months have been a roller coaster for TrueFi, the crypto lending markets, and the broader crypto market. Our team has remained heads down, continuing to build out and improve the protocol.
You can find our contributions from Q4’2022 here and our Q1 recap will be coming out next month.
Summary:
Wallfacer Labs seeks to scale up its contributions to TrueFi, with an aim to grow the protocol through product, engineering, and business development tasks defined here.
Introduction:
In September of 2022, we took a small step in the process of decentralizing development activities of the TrueFi protocol when 5 key contributors exited TrustToken (now Archblock) to begin working directly for the TrueFi DAO.
After learning some (mostly operational and logistical) lessons, we have incorporated Wallfacer Labs to more directly contribute to TrueFi protocol growth and core development.
Proposal:
We request a total of 1.5mm USDC and 32mm TRU to fund the development and maintenance of the TrueFi protocol for the next 9 months. (Prior to this request, we also returned funds to the treasury that were not spent during our previous 6-month budget, as detailed below.)
If approved, our engagement will formally begin on April 1, 2023, and last until December 31, 2023.
We propose a payment schedule of 50% at the start of the engagement with the remainder streamed over the engagement period. If this vote is approved, we will queue the 50% transfer immediately and begin the stream on June 1, 2023.
More details:
Of our previously approved 6-month budget of 900,000 USDC and 6,671,875 TRU, we spent roughly half (440,491 USDC and 3,669,491 TRU) of the budget and have foregone the remainder.
We returned excess funds to the DAO treasury via two transactions (USDC, TRU) and we chose not to withdraw a large portion of allocated funds from the treasury, meaning that we have foregone 459,509 USDC and 3,002,384 TRU from our originally approved budget.
(For further clarification: we returned a total of 159,000 USDC and 1,000,822 TRU that was sent to us, plus we chose not to draw down the additionally allocated 300,509 USDC and 2,001,563 TRU from the treasury.)
Rationale:
2023 is focused on growth.
This means growing business relations and importantly, responding to the product needs of users.
One could argue that in the current market conditions, we might want to ‘take our foot off the gas’ and wait for better times to return.
While we do believe there is truth to the notion that “we are waiting for the next wave to come” we need to “be active in the water” and we need to be creating waves ourselves.
We can position TrueFi as the leader in this market once again by continuing to build best-in-class products. A good example of this is our recent development on Asset Vaults (details to come soon), an emergent opportunity to build a new standard for RWA vaults on-chain. This need was only discovered based on the close relationship with users and our constant iterations and improvements on our existing products.
For our existing products (like Structured Credit Vaults) we are confident we have “tranching” correct, and we believe it is the best implementation of Structured Products in the industry. It opens an opportunity to offer sustainable high yields to risk-seeking capital, while simultaneously providing sufficient guarantees for senior lenders (e.g. all our structured products enforce senior-to-subordinate rations on the smart contract level, not overridable by the Manager).
We understand the problems that lenders are facing right now and we would like to continue to solve these problems for them.
What We Intend to Accomplish:
While (if approved) we will immediately bring additional engineering headcount directly into Wallfacer, the focus of this proposal is really around what Wallfacer intends to accomplish.
I have pasted our proposed task list below, but it’s easier to view by going directly to the spreadsheet Wallfacer has prepared. (Wallfacer Labs Tasks - Google Sheets)
Task | Type | Description | Category | Critical / Necessary / Not Critical | Growth / Maintenance |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Solicit forum proposals to bring on a new market maker for TrueFi DAO | SURE | TRU has been without a market maker since around the time of the FTX collapse. We are currently gathering proposals and moving them to the forums | Business | Necessary | Maintenance |
Diversify Treasury (ideally via a strategic investor, but also potentially through other means) | BEST EFFORT | We have several options for diversifying our treasury and will be working to increase our stablecoin balance by year end | Business | Critical | Maintenance |
Respond to issues, patch discovered vulnerabilities and take any other necessary actions to keep the protocol and the funds locked safe. | BEST EFFORT | The current bug reporting is sent to Archblock and we are okay with that. We will take responsibility to make patches that are reported. | Product / Engineering | Critical | Maintenance |
Technical and business support for teams developing on on or integrating TrueFi | SURE | Wallfacer will be the POC for teams looking to integrate with TrueFi | Product / Engineering | Critical | Growth |
Explore and propose TrueFi integrations with other protocols and ecoystem participants | BEST EFFORT | In addition to handling inbound, we will also seek out integrations for TrueFi. RWA/credit protocols (generally) are not very plugged into the wider crypto ecosystem and we would like this to change | Business | Not Critical | Growth |
Coordination with other parties contributing to TrueFi | SURE | Wallfacer will coordinate with auditors on behalf of TrueFi DAO along with the Archblock security team. Wallfacer team will remain the main point of contact for the majority of parties looking to interact with TrueFi. | Business | Necessary | Growth |
Maintain and support legacy products such as Managed Portfolios and Flexible Portfolios | SURE | Ongoing fixes and adjustments to legacy products | Product / Engineering | Not Critical | Maintenance |
Support current TrueFi Protocols (Structured Credit Vaults, Index Vaults, Asset Vaults, Lines of Credit) | SURE | Ongoing fixes, adjustments, and improvements to live products | Product / Engineering | Critical | Maintenance |
Development and implementation of Index Vaults (Fund of Funds) | SURE | New product to enable fund of funds to live on TrueFi | Product / Engineering | Not Critical | Growth |
Development and implementation of of Asset Vaults | SURE | We’re in the process of finalizing the specs of a product that changes the whole game on the “debt” side of vaults. We’re calling this product an “asset vault”, and its manager, the“asset manager”. This product is focused on “Adapt3r”-like customers that are managing 1000s of debt instruments off-chain. We’ve spoken with multiple asset managers who want to represent more dynamic assets (floating rate products, ETFs) that do not fit cleanly into our existing loan structures. This approach directly opens our protocol for new groups of customers, as with these assumptions we’re able to support many, very different features that are being needed by Managers. |
Product / Engineering | Critical | Growth |
DAO to DAO integrations | BEST EFFORT | Get TrueFi’s lending infrastructure more deeply integrated with at least two other DAOs (similar to what we attempted with dYdX in the past) | Business | Not Critical | Growth |
Improvements and interations on Asset Vaults based on customer feedback | SURE | Many of our products go through multiple improvements after release based on potential customers exploring or using the product | Product / Engineering | Critical | Maintenance |
Improve the manager onboarding processes | BEST EFFORT | Given some of the limitations of the Wallfacer team (limited BD, legal, and compliance resources), we have generally handed over the process for PM onboarding to Archblock. That said, to be a truly open protocol, an interested PM needs to be able to onboard with no human support. We aim to make the onboarding flow more seamless for any interested manager . | Product / Engineering | Necessary | Growth |
Maintain documentation and demos of new and existing TrueFi products | SURE | Related to the goal of making TrueFi more self-service for managers and integrations, we will continue to maintain and improve existing documentation and product demos | Product / Engineering | Necessary | Growth |
Re-launch a crypto/market maker lending strategy with a new portfolio manager on TrueFi | BEST EFFORT | While lending to trading firms has generally fallen out of favor, it has also historically proven itself to be the most popular vertical for on-chain lending activity | Business | Not Critical | Growth |
Revamp of the TrueFi Application | SURE | Further front-end improvements to make 3rd-party managed portfolios more obvious and improve the user experience | Product / Engineering | Necessary | Growth |
Development of governance contracts: govTRU | BEST EFFORT | Improvements to how governance works in TrueFi to further foster decentralizations. Details shared at a later time | Product / Engineering | Critical | Maintenance |
Steward Institutional Advisorship | SURE | We have more deeply integrated our institutional partners earlier in our development process. We work with them iteratively to design product and incorporate features they require | Product / Engineering | Necessary | Growth |
Facilitate Discord townhalls and community engagement. Manage forums and support governance by being active participants and assisting third parties with proposals | SURE | Governance can be difficult to navigate and we are ready and wiling to assist anyone who wants to participate in TrueFi governance | Business | Necessary | Maintenance |
Explore cross-chain expansion | BEST EFFORT | In no particular order, we think there could be novel uses cases with Arbitrum, Base, and Avalanche subnets. In addition to these we are also investigating solutions like Wormhole to expand TrueFi’s reach | Product / Engineering | Not Critical | Growth |
Implemented the updated fee model for TrueFi portfolios | BEST EFFORT | Wallfacer recently proposed a new fee model for TrueFi that makes it the most competitive option in the market. This needs to be built and implemented | Product / Engineering | Not Critical | Growth |
Maintain Dune Analytics dashboards | SURE | Continute to maintain and build upon TrueFi’s presence on Dune Analytics. (example: TrueFi overview) | Product / Engineering | Not Critical | Maintenance |
[blank] | BEST EFFORT | Left open for new ideas | Product / Engineering | Not Critical | Growth |
Who We Are:
Wallfacer Labs is a new and independent company, incorporated in the Cayman Islands, that develops and governs crypto protocols.
Under the Wallfacer Labs brand, you can see that we have begun to get involved with other protocols, such as AAVE.
The Wallfacer team has been active contributors and participants in TrueFi governance, as detailed in our recent delegate platform here.
Wallfacer Labs is independent of Archblock (formerly TrustToken) and the two organizations have no direct financial ties. Wallfacer and Archblock will continue collaborating on developing the protocol to fulfill customer needs.
Team:
Wallfacer Labs is a full-stack team of 12+ experienced individuals with business, engineering, and product experience, capable of building and bringing products to market. In addition to this, the budget will cover other overhead expenses such as office space for our in-person team, conference attendance to represent TrueFi, legal costs, and gas fees associated with smart contract development.
Out of Scope:
- Smart contract audits
- TrueFi DAO/Foundation legal, compliance, and accounting expenses
- Large marketing (e.g., conference sponsorships) or PR expenses
- Core services used by TrueFi DAO like hosting services, Github, Infura, etc
Reporting Expectations:
Wallfacer will post quarterly updates to the TrueFi forum, as done for Q4 2022. Additionally, we have created a Telegram group, “Wallfacer Labs / TrueFi” that anyone can join and gives direct access to members of the Wallfacer Labs team. We will also remain active in Discord.
We have created a page here that community members can use to view information on our work and to communicate with us.
Next steps:
We plan to move to a Tally vote on Tuesday, March 21, 2023.