SECTION 1: APPLICANT INFORMATION
Applicant Name: Koushik Maturi
Project Name: Garden Finance
Project Description:
Garden is the fastest bitcoin bridge right now, enabling native BTC swaps to any chain in under 10 minutes using trustless peer-to-peer atomic swaps. Garden supercharges your Bitcoin to capture any value with blazing speeds and deep liquidity.
Team Members and Roles:
Susruth Nadimpalli, Co-Founder
Jaz Gulati, Co-Founder
Rekha Sahu, Co-Founder
Savinay Patlolla, Co-Founder
Koushik Maturi, Marketing Lead
Keith Salins, Community Manager
Yunshi Sun, Senior Protocol Developer
Yashwanth Dumpala, Smart Contract Developer
Gowtham Chittemsetty, Front-end Developer
Manikantha Thotireddy, Front-end Developer
Reetik Rajan, Security Lead
Project Links:
Website | Twitter | Discord | Analytics | OtterSec Audit | Smart Contracts
Contact Information
Point of Contact: koushikm
Point of Contact’s TG handle: @koushikmaturi
Twitter: @sivakoushik
Discord: dude.cat
Email: koushik@garden.finance
Do you acknowledge that your team will be subject to a KYC requirement: Yes
SECTION 2a: Team and Product Information
Garden is led by a team of web3 veterans (since 2017) with previous experience building deep tech DeFi projects Ren (SMPC Bitcoin bridge) and Rook (MEV protocol), with Catalog and Garden being the latest.
Over the past couple of years, we built Catalog, a peer-to-peer protocol that allows you to bring Bitcoin to your dApp, instantly, trustlessly, and securely. Garden is the first user-facing product built on top of Catalog’s protocol.
What novelty or innovation does your product bring to Arbitrum?
There is currently no direct way for anyone to bridge/swap Bitcoin directly to Arbitrum. Users looking to bridge Bitcoin to Arbitrum right now are directed to use the Avalanche bridge to convert BTC to BTC.b on AVAX (trusted solution) and then bridge it to Arbitrum, which takes 60-90 minutes on average.
Garden is currently the only operating Bitcoin bridge to Arbitrum. Beyond that operational advantage, Garden can bridge Bitcoin to Arbitrum in just a couple of minutes. We have observed that a lot of users prefer to bridge Bitcoin to Arbitrum over Ethereum because of its faster throughput, seamlessness, and fees. We believe that this is a great opportunity to unlock a lot of Bitcoin liquidity and DeFi in Arbitrum.
Is your project composable with other projects on Arbitrum? If so, please explain:
Yes, Garden has a modular and composable SDK that works as a Bitcoin on/off-ramp and can be integrated directly into any dApps such as GMX and Radiant on Arbitrum.
Do you have any comparable protocols within the Arbitrum ecosystem or other blockchains?
We don’t have any comparable solution on Arbitrum. Outside of Arbitrum, our competitors are other Bitcoin bridges like THORSwap, Threshold, and Chainflip.
Garden stands out from the competition in speed, security, and UX (read more)
How do you measure and think about retention internally?
- Average weekly active users [1 tx per week is considered active]
- Weekly average of txs per user
- Average new users per week
Relevant usage metrics as per OBL relevant metrics chart 31:
- General Metrics: Daily Active Users, Daily User Growth, Daily Transaction Count, Daily Protocol Fee
- Bridge: Bridging Volume, Net Asset Flow
Do you agree to remove team-controlled wallets from all milestone metrics AND exclude team-controlled wallets from any incentives included in your plan: Yes
Did you utilize a grants consultant or other third party not named as a grantee to draft this proposal? If so, please disclose the details of that arrangement here, including conflicts of interest (Note: this does NOT disqualify an applicant): No
SECTION 2b: PROTOCOL DETAILS
Is the protocol native to Arbitrum?
Yes, the protocol is native to Arbitrum. We initially launched on Ethereum and on Arbitrum afterwards. Arbitrum now makes up 75.3% of our volume, so future components such as staking, revenue sharing, and governance will be deployed directly on Arbitrum.
On what other networks is the protocol deployed?
Garden is live on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Arbitrum.
What date did you deploy on Arbitrum mainnet?
We deployed on Sep 6th 2023. We are adding more contracts this week for revenue sharing. Will add them here when they are live.
Do you have a native token?
Our native token is SEED. Here is the tokenomics.
How are you currently incentivizing your protocol?
There are no active incentives at the moment.
What liquidity mining/incentive programs, if any, have you previously run?
We have an user acquisition incentive program called the seasons program. We have done two seasons until now, here are the review blogs alongside Dune dashboards for statistics.
Detail the past performance of the protocol and relevance, including any key metrics or achievements, dashboards, etc?
You can have a detailed look at our performance since launch in our Metrics Dashboard.
Here are some of the key metrics & achievements for the Arbitrum chain during this time:
- Garden’s total volume on Arbitrum:
- Garden became the largest Bitcoin bridge on Arbitrum
- Garden ranked top 3 in daily volume on DefiLlama for bridges on Arbitrum
Describe relevant roadmap details for your protocol or relevant products to your grant application?
- Staking [Revenue sharing program]
- DEX aggregator integration
- Garden MetaMask Snap
- Garden SDK
- Native dApp integrations
Provide historic audits and audit results. Do you have a bug bounty program?
Garden has been audited previously by OtterSec. It is currently undergoing an audit from Trail of Bits. Garden doesn’t have an active bug bounty program.
Has your protocol ever been exploited?
Garden has faced zero security incidents since going live.
SECTION 3: GRANT INFORMATION
Requested Grant Size: 334K ARB
Justification for the size of the grant
- Grant objective: Acquire new users for Arbitrum and give them an opportunity to experience the most seamless BTC bridging solution in the market and the only direct bitcoin bridge to Arbitrum.
- Incentive mechanism: Provide users with a fee rebate for bridging Bitcoin with Arbitrum on Garden. The requested grant size would cover a 50% fee rebate for up to $4.5 million of daily volume for at least 12 weeks. If the daily volume goes below $4.5 million, the balance funds will be forwarded back to the DAO. And, if the volume crosses $4.5 million, fee rebate will be applicable only until 4.5 million. For perspective, Garden did an average daily volume of $7 million on Arbitrum during its incentive season in February.
- Grant Matching: Yes, with our protocol token SEED.
- Grant Breakdown: 100% of the funds requested will be used for fee rebate.
Grant housekeeping
- Funding Address: arb1:0x7B41D567CF1daE5F88a31985c6B6fd2984C16D83
- Funding Address Characteristics: Simple for now, will update as required by the process.
- Treasury Address(es):
ETH: eth:0x8686368A0DBdCB036c6Bd41381Beb96Da5bbA743
ARB: arb1:0x7B41D567CF1daE5F88a31985c6B6fd2984C16D83 - Contract Address: NA
SECTION 4: GRANT OBJECTIVES, EXECUTION AND MILESTONES
Objective:
Acquire new users for Arbitrum and give them an opportunity to experience the most seamless BTC bridging solution in the market and the only direct bitcoin bridge to Arbitrum.
Execution Strategy:
For every trade performed by a user, they receive an ARB cashback on the fee paid using payment channels deployed on Arbitrum.
KPIs tracked:
- Daily volume
- 7DA daily users
- 7DA daily new users
- 7DA daily volume increase
Grant Timeline:
The fee rebate program will commence in the week 1 of the program. It will run for the full duration that is indicated in the scope of the grant program (12 weeks).
How will receiving a grant enable you to foster growth or innovation within the Arbitrum ecosystem and what mechanisms within the incentive design to make that happen?
As mentioned previously and visible in our analytics dashboard, once we supported Arbitrum, we saw a great increase in volume with 75% of our bridging volume moving to Arbitrum over Ethereum. That is the growth we want to foster.
The aim of the program is to establish pathways between projects on Arbitrum and Bitcoin, allowing for seamless flow in the future. The goal is to clearly demonstrate the infrastructure and steps for using Bitcoin on Arbitrum with low cost and slight incentives. This way, users will be familiar with how to engage with Bitcoin on Arbitrum for DeFi, promoting the cost-effectiveness of such transactions through firsthand experience.
The incentive program’s purpose is to guide users on bringing Bitcoin liquidity and value to Arbitrum. By doing so, we can initiate a ripple effect. These pipelines not only educate Bitcoin users on using DeFi on Arbitrum but also contribute to the maturation of DeFi applications on Arbitrum, making them more comprehensive and capable of trustlessly supporting various cross-chain assets, including those from chains like Bitcoin. This approach targets a market value larger than the sum of all existing DeFi ecosystems. We are working on a 4 week SEED incentive program during the LTIPP period where we are working on partnering with Arbitrum DeFi projects to incentivise bridging and using Bitcoin on DeFi projects in Arbitrum like Radiant and GMX.
The incentives program is designed to kickstart usage by introducing new ways of interacting with DeFi and establishing them as common practices. By bridging the vertical systems of Bitcoin and DeFi, we aim to facilitate the convergence of these ecosystems. If we successfully boost usage, acquiring liquidity becomes more feasible, as users have direct incentives to provide this service, particularly when the current yield for Bitcoin and wrapped Bitcoin assets is relatively low.
Do you accept the funding of your grant streamed linearly for the duration of your grant proposal, and that the multisig holds the power to halt your stream: Yes
SECTION 5: Data and Reporting
OpenBlock Labs has developed a comprehensive data and reporting checklist for tracking essential metrics across participating protocols. Teams must adhere to the specifications outlined in the provided link here: Onboarding Checklist from OBL 30. Along with this list, please answer the following:
Is your team prepared to comply with OBL’s data requirements for the entire life of the program and three months following and then handoff to the Arbitrum DAO? Are there any special requests/considerations that should be considered: Yes
Does your team agree to provide bi-weekly program updates on the Arbitrum Forum thread that reference your OBL dashboard: Yes
We have the required analytics tools and data to provide the bi-weekly updates. We will create a public Dune dashboard to make this process smoother.
Does your team agree to provide a final closeout report not later than two weeks from the ending date of your program? This report should include summaries of work completed, final cost structure, whether any funds were returned, and any lessons the grantee feels came out of this grant. Where applicable, be sure to include final estimates of acquisition costs of any users, developers, or assets onboarded to Arbitrum chains. (NOTE: No future grants from this program can be given until a closeout report is provided.): Yes
Does your team acknowledge that failure to comply with any of the above requests can result in the halting of the program’s funding stream?: Yes