Hi everyone,
Please see Wallfacer Labs’s Q1 update (on behalf of our original independent contributors) and the proposed Q2 roadmap (as Wallfacer Labs).
Q1’2023:
In January, we said Q1 would see updates as follows:
Below is an update on roadmap items from the Q1 2023 update:
Below is an update on roadmap items from the Q1 2023 update:
- Web App Enhancements
In line with TrueFi’s transition towards providing credit infrastructure and a marketplace model, the TrueFi home page (TrueFi | Uncollateralized Borrowing & High Yield Lending) now features portfolios launched by 3rd-party portfolio managers. The updated homepage highlights RWA vaults managed by independent parties and deprioritizes “DAO pools” from TrueFi’s legacy roots.
There are likely still updates we will make in the future, but we will let future launches inform those updates rather than spending much more proactive time on this. There are many “behind the scenes” improvements we have made to the web app, as well, but are deprioritizing more of this for the time being.
- Extensions to Credit Vaults (though in a different form), introducing Asset Vaults
Asset Vaults are specialized vaults that make new types of “Real World Asset” (RWA) activity possible on TrueFi.
Asset Vaults have a lot of similar qualities as credit vaults, but instead of complex and strict loan parameters being enforced on-chain, asset vaults radically simplify many of the manager functions and introduce the concept of “attestations” of off-chain activities.
This opens up new possibilities for how RWA portfolio managers can deploy capital, such as:
- Deploying capital to more off-chain uses: portfolio managers (PMs) can use Asset Vaults to create representations of off-chain debt instruments, ETFs, etc.
- Support for 100+ loans/instruments in a single vault: Asset Vaults enable PMs to represent many loans or off-chain instruments with low gas costs.
- Floating rate loans: PMs can create loans that reference off-chain benchmark rates (e.g. SOFR + 200).
- Amortizing loans: PMs can create loans that support complex repayment schedules, following existing structures found in the traditional finance world.
- Carried interest, custom price feeds, and more…
Asset Vaults represent off-chain instruments by using on-chain attestations called Asset Reports, which are JSON files uploaded to IPFS that contain detailed descriptions of off-chain assets. Ultimately, parties involved in RWA activity need to hold actual legal ownership of the assets, and this infrastructure helps them represent such ownership on-chain.
Asset Vaults are focused on “Adapt3r”-like customers that are managing 1,000s 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 the TrueFi protocol to new groups of customers we previously have not been able to support. We think Asset Vaults will become a new standard for how RWAs are handled in crypto.
Asset Vaults are currently live in TrueFi Labs beta, which means these contracts are available for builders to use but are not yet audited.
→ To deploy your own Asset Vault on the Optimism Goerli testnet, visit this link and the step-by-step tutorial here.
- Index Vaults
Index Vaults are “fund of funds” infrastructure that enable vaults to allocate funds across underlying TrueFi vaults and other ERC-4626 vaults.
Index Vaults are currently live in TrueFi Labs beta, which means these contracts are available for builders to use but are not yet audited. As more underlying vaults are launched on TrueFi, we hope that Index Vaults could be used to create future iterations of “DAO Pools”.
→ To deploy your own Index Vault on Optimism Goerli testnet, visit this link and the step-by-step tutorial here.
- Other work
In addition to the large items above, we also:
- Introduced a new, more competitive fee model for TrueFi which we will seek to tentatively implement in Q3 or Q4 (the engineering work on this is a rather large undertaking, and does not directly lead to more users upfront)
- Contributed to an innovative on-chain approach to the delt.ai loan refactoring (which was eventually implemented).
Q2’23:
Unfortunately, the one thing that did not happen in Q1 was the launch of new portfolios on the protocol.
Since November 2022, both the Wallfacer and Archblock teams were engaged with a candidate we thought was promising to launch a T-Bill portfolio on TrueFi. That organization ran into a number of complications, and it seems they will not launch this portfolio any time soon.
We have identified a new candidate to launch a US treasuries portfolio, and we hope to have this announced in the month of May.
Here is what we are working on and expect for Q2’2023:
- Deploy Asset Vaults into production AND launch the first user of Asset Vaults:
We hope to have the first Asset Vault go live in early May (ideally with Adapt3r as the first PM). Pending success with this launch, we will seek to finalize an audit on Asset Vaults so that we can move the product from Labs beta to a wider public release.
- Deploy Index Vaults to production
As mentioned above, Index Vaults are in “Labs” mode where interested users can demo the product, but contracts are still pre-audit. We will continue to share Index Vault capabilities with users to see if we can find a launch customer. If we do not identify a suitable user, then we will delay an audit (and full production).
- Pursue product-market fit for Lines of Credit and Credit Vaults with a focus on novel uses
We believe we have built some of the best on-chain tranching tech in the market, but at the same time, we’ve seen a dramatic decline in lender interest in credit/RWA protocols.
We have begun and will continue exploring use cases we could “soft pivot” some of our technology into.
There are also some more “out there” ideas we are pursuing, such as using ALOCs for lending against high-end NFT collections, such as Nouns.
- Governance improvements
Mostly a list of “good housekeeping” to improve the security and decentralization of the protocol.
- Remove developer keys from protocols (just leaving “PAUSER”) - keys should belong to DAO
- Rescue TRU that is held hostage in an old farming contract
- Disable deposits to old contracts
- Add Veto / “Canceller” governance function (and organizing multisig as described here)
- Moving funds from “DAO Treasury” into Timelock
- Explore removing slashing/staking
- Improve TrueFi branding/marketing and communication (truefi.io, etc.)
On the whole, we think TrueFi has not done a good job of telling its story in the wider market.
While we can say “We have the best on-chain tranching tech”, other people should not have to take us at our word on that.
As such, this quarter we will be:
- Publishing a competitive analysis of on-chain tranching solutions for credit/RWA protocols
- Communicating how TrueFi’s tranching stacks up against other tranching solutions (not necessarily just those focused on credit/RWA)
- Sharing additional interactive demos for our products
- Refreshing TrueFi’s marketing website at https://truefi.io/
- Delivering a public overview of “What is TrueFi?”
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any feedback or think there are other things we should be working on. This Telegram group is a good place to find our team.