SECTION 1: APPLICANT INFORMATION
Applicant Name: GiMa
Project Name: Maya Protocol
Project Description:
Maya Protocol is a decentralised and permissionless cross-chain liquidity protocol and friendly fork of THORChain. Maya allows users to swap between native assets, such as native Bitcoin, Ethereum, Arbitrum and more.
Team Members and Roles:
- GiMa (Business Development Lead)
- Aaluxx (Co-Founder & Strategic Lead)
- Itzamna (Co-Founder & Tech Lead)
- Kukulkan (Developer)
- Bitol (Developer)
- Chaac (Developer)
- Hunahpu (Developer)
- Maximon (Developer)
- Akna (Head of Marketing)
- Citbil (Marketing)
- Ixchel (Marketing)
- Naab (Design)
- Hadwin (Business Development)
Project Links:
Website
Docs
Interfaces
Twitter
Discord
GitLab
Contact Information
Point of Contact :
@GiMa-Maya
Point of Contact’s TG handle:
@GiMa9550
Twitter:
@GiMa9550
Email:
gima9550.maya@gmail.com
Do you acknowledge that your team will be subject to a KYC requirement?: Yes
SECTION 2a: Team and Product Information
Team experience:
The Maya Protocol team is decentralised and based all around the globe. The team members are not doxxed.
At the core of Maya Protocol’s team lies an intimate understanding of blockchains, reward mechanisms, and user retention strategies. This profound comprehension stems from the team’s relentless dedication to integrating several chains into Maya Protocol, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, THORChain, Dash, Kujira, and Arbitrum. By bridging these diverse ecosystems, Maya Protocol not only expands its reach but also fortifies its foundation on the principles of interoperability and inclusivity.
Key to Maya Protocol’s technical prowess is the expertise of its developers. Among them, Maya has developers with over a decade of enterprise development experience, boasting a rich portfolio ranging from trading engines to VOIP and telephony solutions, DevOps in Banking, Tinder and more. Maya’s seasoned developers bring invaluable insights and a proven track record of crafting robust, scalable solutions in complex environments.
In the realm of marketing, Maya Protocol draws upon the expertise of seasoned professionals with years of experience garnered from prestigious companies such as Tangem, Stakefish, and THORWallet. Armed with a deep understanding of market dynamics and consumer behavior, these marketers craft strategies that resonate with audiences, driving user engagement and adoption.
The Maya Protocol team has been in grant programs before, such as Cardano’s Project Catalyst.
What novelty or innovation does your product bring to Arbitrum?
Maya Protocol unlocks the ability for users to swap between UTXO’s, Cosmos Zones, and EVM’s. The novelty and USP of Maya is that unlike bridges that rely on smart contracts, Maya connects chains that don’t support smart contracts. This unlocks billions of dollars to flow into Arbitrum from chains/ecosystems such as Bitcoin, Dash, THORChain, and soon Zcash. Maya makes Arbitrum a liquidity hub for L1’s and L2’s through expanding Arbitrum’s thesis around multichain interoperability and permissionless building. Builders can permissionlessly integrate Maya while monetizing their swap volume, further allowing them to focus what is important–building the best UX for users and innovating blockchain tech for the next generation of Dapps on Arbitrum.
Is your project composable with other projects on Arbitrum? If so, please explain:
Maya Protocol is fully open-source and can be integrated easily into any Dapp or Wallet in Arbitrum or other supported chains ecosystems. This unlocks existing and future frontend integrations (like THORWallet, CacaoSwap or El Dorado and many more) to support every chain supported by Maya. There are two libraries available to easily integrate Maya. Builders can directly query Maya using our public and free API.
The other composable feature of Maya is DEX aggregation. DEX aggregation allows all Arbitrum DEX’s, AMM’s, and aggregators to tap into Maya’s liquidity. This unlocks the ability for users to easily swap between any asset on Arbitrum and any chain by Maya with the best rates and liquidity.
Do you have any comparable protocols within the Arbitrum ecosystem or other blockchains?
There are bridges live on Arbitrum (Hop, Layer0, etc) that offer cross-chain bridging. As stated earlier, Maya differentiates itself by not being smart contract based, but TSS-based.
What is TSS:
Maya Protocol controls its vaults using TSS (Threshold Signature Schemes) and is secured by MAYANodes (Maya’s validators) via GG20 TSS for all integrated chains, ensuring a higher level of security and decentralization compared to other existing solutions.
Read more about TSS and its user benefits here: What is Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS)? | Maya Protocol One-Stop-Shop
Additionally, Maya Protocol focusses on non-EVM and non-Cosmos chains, such as Bitcoin, Dash, Zcash, Cardano and Kaspa.
Maya Protocol is a friendly fork of THORChain and is thus most comparable to it. Read more about THORChain here: https://thorchain.org
How do you measure and think about retention internally? (metrics, target KPIs)
Maya Protocol has a Rest API that allows the Maya team and other frontends to track important metrics and KPI’s such as volume, APR, and daily active users. Projects, such as Mayascan visualise that data in user-friendly graphs.
Maya cares about swap volume and liquidity as the two KPIs to quantify growth metrics. With a goal of achieving a 10% MoM growth in liquidity provided to the protocol, Maya has surpassed that goal by achieving a 12% MoM growth over the last six months. Regarding swap volume, our goal has been to grow swap volume by 5% MoM over the last year. In the last month, we have grown to more than $110m monthly swap volume (a growth rate of 9% MoM). Our goal is to maintain a UTA (unique transacting address) growth of 7% per month and retain 45% of all UTA’s created.
We support interfaces with marketing and community activations to help create a community of power users. When a user swaps with Maya, we care about how efficient the swap rates are and how impactful the slippage is (both reflective of our goals of growing liquidity and swap volume). To create the most delightful experience, users should experience no down time with our product (swaps always go through) as well as a fair rate (low slip for large swaps). The metrics listed above combined with world class UX ideally leads to a wonderful user experiece that keeps users coming back again and again.
Relevant usage metrics - Please refer to the OBL relevant metrics chart 42. For your category (DEX, lending, gaming, etc) please provide a list of all respective metrics as well as all metrics in the general section:
Please see all metrics here:
https://www.mayascan.org/
TVL:
(Source: https://www.mayascan.org/pools, 60d)
Trading Volume:
(Source: https://www.mayascan.org/stats, 60d)
Liquidity Providers:
(Source: https://www.mayascan.org/stats, 60d)
Top Swap Paths:
(Source: Maya Protocol Block Explorer)
Node Bond
(Source: https://mayanode.network/)
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?:
No. Maya Protocol has its own blockchain, called MAYAChain. In Maya Protocol, validators called MAYANodes run full nodes of all chains that Maya has integrated. So they run a full node for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Arbitrum, etc. This allows them to observe transactions on the Arbitrum blockchain (or any blockchain that is supported), that are sent to Maya’s GG20 TSS-controlled vaults.
Maya does have a smart contract deployed on Arbitrum: Maya’s Arbitrum router.
The router controls ERC-20’s that are pooled in Maya Protocol. It also handles Dex Aggregation.
Dex aggregation allows Maya Protocol to leverage liquidity of other DEX’s, AMM’s and Aggregators. This allows the protocol to swap from e.g. native Bitcoin, to all tokens on Camelot.
On what other networks is the protocol deployed?:
Besides Arbitrum, Maya Protocol has integrated the Bitcoin, Ethereum, THORChain, Dash and Kujira blockchain and we will support the Zcash, Cardano and Kaspa blockchain in the future.
What date did you deploy on Arbitrum mainnet?:
Arbitrum was deployed to internal testing on 02/15/24. On 03/12/24, Arbitrum was moved to user facing deployment.
Do you have a native token?:
Yes, CACAO & MAYA.
Maya Protocol had a fair launch in which it distributed all CACAO tokens to participants of the fair launch. The Maya team did not get a CACAO allocation.
CACAO is MAYAChain’s gas token and is used as pairing token in Maya’s liquidity pools. So every asset that is pooled in Maya is paired with CACAO. There is a BTC-CACAO pool, ETH-CACAO pool etc.
When you swap from e.g. AETH to Bitcoin, you send AETH to Maya’s Arbitrum vault along with a certain memo in which you specify to which asset you want to swap and to what address. When 2/3 of the nodes have observed the transaction (all MAYANodes run full nodes of all chains that Maya has integrated) is it ‘witnessed’. Bitcoin will be send from Maya’s Bitcoin vault to the user’s Bitcoin address. The AETH will thus always stay in the Arbitrum ecosystem. It won’t be burned.
MAYA can be seen as a revenue share token. MAYA takes 10% of the protocol’s fees and gives it to MAYA holders in the form of daily CACAO rewards. The team, RUNE holders, LP’s and nodes got MAYA. The Maya team solely relies on CACAO rewards to fund development work which incentives them to drive more volume and integrations to the ecosystem.
Past Incentivization: What liquidity mining/incentive programs, if any, have you previously run? Please share results and dashboards, as applicable?:
N/A
Current Incentivization: How are you currently incentivizing your protocol?:
Liquidity Providers and Node Operators are incentivized with real yield. Real yield comes from swapping fees and network fees. None of this is artificially incentivized. Maya Protocol does not have emissions or inflation.
Have you received a grant from the DAO, Foundation, or any Arbitrum ecosystem related program?:
No
Protocol Performance:
Maya Protocol had a fair launch in February of last year, we did a liquidity auction. During 21 days, users were able to deposit native BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC & RUNE and we matched that with CACAO. This is how liquidity was bootstrapped. We started with around 20M in TVL, and have now grown to almost $90M of total liquidity.
We started in February of last year and at the time of writing, the total wallets utilizing Maya has grown to over 10k UTA’s.
Maya Protocol has processed over $350,000,000 in swapping volume to date.
See Mayascan for more statistics.
Protocol Roadmap:
We have determined our roadmap for 2024 with the items below. This is the order in which work will be completed. Due to the unpredicatable nature of crosschain swapping development work, no hard deadlines can be promised or projected.
- Streaming Swaps: Comparable to TWAPS, Streaming Swaps break up big swaps into many smaller swaps. This allows arbitrageurs to arb to the market price, reducing slippage fees and increasing the output of the swaps.
- THORChain Aggregation: Will make it possible to swap from assets supported by Maya Protocol to and from assets supported by THORChain in a single swap. This makes it possible to swap from e.g. Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Atom, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain and soon Solana to Arbitrum in a single transaction. Expanding Arbitrum’s interopability with billions of dollars.
- Zcash: Integration of the Zcash blockhain.
- Memoless Transactions: Right now, in order to swap using Maya Protocol users send a transaction along with a memo to Maya’s vaults. This feature will make it possible to swap without the need to attach a memo to a transaction.
- Cardano: Integration of the Cardano blockchain.
- Aztec: Aztec can be seen as a sidechain for MAYAChain. MAYAChain does not have smart contracts. Aztec will have Cosmwasm support and the ability to port synthetic synths over from MAYAChain. This makes it possible to create dapps such as lending and perpetual protocols with your native Bitcoin, Dash and more.
After all these items have been integrated, we’ll keep on adding support for new blockchains while continuing to optimize swap rates, user experience, and integrated interfaces while continuing to foster a delightful experience for crosschain trading.
Audit History & Security Vendors:
Maya Protocol is a friendly fork of THORChain. THORChain has been audited many times–view their audits here. Maya applied protocol changes such as how we handle securing the network with liquity nodes, our dual token model, and other small optimizations. All these changes were audited by Halborn.
See a list of all our audits here: Audits | Maya Protocol One-Stop-Shop
Maya Protocol also has a program running at Immunefi: https://immunefi.com/bounty/mayaprotocol/
Security Incidents:
N/A
SECTION 3: GRANT INFORMATION
Requested Grant Size: 300,000 ARB
Justification for the size of the grant:
Maya Protocol uses Continiuous Liquidity Pools (CLP). This entails that slippage fees are charged based on the swap amount relative to the pool depth. A big swap in a shallow pool will end up paying a lot of slippage. Thus, the deeper the liquidity, the better rates for the everyday user.
In order to make swapping from and to Arbitrum attractive and useful for the masses, we need a deep Arbitrum liquidity pool on Maya to empower users to take advantage of trading from all assets such as Bitcoin, Kujira, Dash, and more. As mentioned before, this impacts the user retention, ease of use, and stickiness. Arbitrum is well positioned to take advantage of tapping into the native Bitcoin markets to power-up volume and routes onto the chain.
Based on historical inflows of LP for both the Dash and Kujira integrations, we expect to see $1.5m of liquidity naturally flow into this pool. We believe that through incitivizing this pool with the grant, we can grow the AETH/CACAO pool TVL to a minimum of $3.5m (an increase of $2m (150%) drawn to the pool via incentives). The idea is that for every $1 of liquidity that is added to the pool, we will incentivize with no more than $0.25.
We are aiming for $3.5m TVL because that amount will allow users to swap $105,000 easily between any chain on Maya with less than 3% slippage. The reason we chose those two numbers is that through interviewing users of Maya and our integrated frontends, we have noticed the most compelling and sticky use case for Maya is to offer the lowest slippage to be competative. In order to bring this tech and interoperability to other frontends and users, this is very important.
It is critical to note that through looking at the historical liquidity provided to Maya, pools have very sticky liquidity providers. Without incentives, the Kujira pool has largely maintained its TVL from its initial launch. We project Arbitrum to behave similarly and even out perform with added incentives.
(Source: https://www.mayascan.org/pools/KUJI.KUJI)
We want to attract more LP’ers, as well as attract more swappers and integration partners through providing compelling rates. The better the slippage rates, the more likely someone will move BTC or any supported asset to assets on Arbitrum. More liquidity in the pools makes it cheaper for swappers to swap into the Arbitrum ecosystem.
More liquidity in the pool will also come in useful for our existing and future partners that will utilize Maya on Arbitrum, such as THORWallet, who built a Visa card powered by Arbitrum. As mentioned earlier, Maya Protocol encourages any builder to integrate these routes into their app to connect their users to and from the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Grant Breakdown:
The 300,000 ARB tokens will be used for incentivising users to provide liquidity in the AETH/CACAO pool on Maya Protocol. After receiving the ARB, it will be converted over 12 weeks into AETH/CACAO LP positions (which will be used exclusively for user incentives). ARB is not directly used for user incentives and rather LP units in this program for three reasons:
- With an emphasis on longterm user retention and stickyness, we have observed with empirical data combined with user interviews that user who provide liquidity engage for 6-10 months consistantly within the ecosystem before withdrawing or rebalancing their positions. We postulate based on this collected data over the last year that this is due to two factors: the friction of withdrawing from the LP is much more than simply selling tokens, and users enjoy earning yield on their tokens passively and prefer holding those to tokens.
The idea of distributing rewards as LP units not only keeps the value of the ARB tokens inside the Arbitrum ecosystem, but continues to power the infrastructure and provide value back to Arbitrum.
-
LP units cannot be transferred or locked due to the nature of Maya Protocol. The best way to distribute “locked” rewards is to make the barrier for liquidation much higher or the reward for holding much greater than withdrawing (rewarding in LP units that require another action before liquidating AND that pay real yield that compounds).
-
We acknowledge that we are incentivising liquidity providers by taking capital from Arbitrum. However the net benefit of deeper liquidity in the AETH-CACAO pool can enable a new wave of new assets on Arbitrum, as well as the higher likelyhood of swappers bringing billions of dollars from unconnected ecosystems of chains that are supported by Maya Protocol and THORChain to Arbitrum.
NOTE: In pools in Maya, the ASSET side always is natively to the chain. Bitcoin stays on the Bitcoin blockchain, AETH stays on the Arbitrum blockchain, etc. CACAO is Maya’s native asset as mentioned before and will stay on the MAYAChain blockchain. So a pool on Maya consists of assets on two different blockchains (CACAO on MAYAChain and the ASSET on its native chain). When swapping from AETH to e.g. Bitcoin, the AETH is sent to Maya’s Arbitrum vault. It will always stay there (it won’t be burned) and Bitcoin will be sent from Maya’s Bitcoin vault to the user. Simply only native, unwrapped assets.
We are rewarding people that LP AETH/CACAO (the pair that connects the entire Arbitrum ecosystem to Bitcoin, Kujira, and more). The rewards will be distributed retroactively at the end of the 12 week experiment. The amount of AETH/CACAO Lp units a user recieves correlates to the number of points they earn during the 12 week experiment.
TLDR: The longer you maintain your liquidity position and the more liquidity you provide, the more points you earn proportionally.
There are bonuses for users that maintain their liquidity positions during the 12 week incentive program to incentivize a sticky user case as well as encourage people to engage more.
- If you maintained your position for 3 weeks, you get a 1.1x bonus points distribution.
- If you maintained your position 9 weeks, you get a 1.3x bonus points distribution.
- If you maintain your position for all 12 weeks when program ends, you get a 1.5x bonus points distribution.
Upon completion of the 12 week program, users will be airdropped their rewards proportionally to their activity and involvement which directly correlate ato the amount of points earned.
As mentioned above, the rewards are additional LP units that are added to user’s existing LP position. The user benefits by seeing their position increasing and Arbitrum benefits because we have observed that liquidity often remains in pools much longer than rewards continue (see Kujira pool). Based on prior activations and customer interviews, this reward mechanism will make the liquidity sticky–further powering up the aETH/CACAO pool and allowing more capital to flow through Arbitrum from Bitcoin, Kujira, and more.
Funding Address:
0x07F3571a58c2ed17949321e1E85Dfb7ED000E97E
Funding Address Characteristics:
The Maya Protocol multisig is a 2/3 multisig with the following signers:
- GiMa (acting as the coordinator) : Business Development Lead
- Hadwin : Business Development
- Akna: Head of Marketing
Treasury Address: maya18z343fsdlav47chtkyp0aawqt6sgxsh3vjy2vz
Contract Address: N/A.
SECTION 4: GRANT OBJECTIVES, EXECUTION AND MILESTONES
Objectives:
Milestone 1
Maya coordinates with Arbitrum and integrated partners to launch LP incentives. The points system will be displayed on Mayascan. We will prepare co-marketing resources, tracking dashboards, and a launch date for program.
Milestone 2
The incentive program is launched, $1m of liquidity is acquired in the aETH/CACO pool.
Milestone 3
$1.5 of liquidity is acquired in the aETH/CACO pool. $1m monthly volume through the pool.
Milestone 4
$3.5m of liquidity is acquired in the aETH/CACO pool. $1.5m monthly volume moving through the pool.
Execution Strategy:
In collaboration with Mayascan, a page will be launched with the LP leaderboard. Marketing campaigns will be launched and frontends will be highlighting the AETH-CACAO pool. Now it’s time for users to provide liquidity and swap using Maya!
After completing the milestones, the grant will be converted for 50% to AETH and for 50% to CACAO.
The idea of having the milestones is to encourage users to contribute liquidity and stay within the Maya ecosystem for as long as possible. This reward will also be paid out in LP tokens which will encourage the user to stay as the fricition of withdrawing LP tokens might discourage users from leaving pools after rewards are finished. Based on the final ranking of the points system, the assets will be donated as LP through ‘donate’ transactions. With this, the AETH and the CACAO will be donated symmetrically to the LP positions of the users. By doing this symmetrically, there is no impermanent loss.
What mechanisms within the incentive design will you implement to incentivize “stickiness” whether it be users, liquidity or some other targeted metric?
The idea of having the checkpoints is to encourage users to contribute liquidity and stay within the Maya ecosystem for as long as possible. Users who are in for longer periods of time will get a bonus on their LP. According to our dashboards, users are less likely to remove liquidity after adding it than they are to simply swap and add into their position and collect rewards.
Specify the KPIs that will be used to measure success in achieving the grant objectives and designate a source of truth for governance to use to verify accuracy. [Please also justify why these specific KPIs will indicate that the grant has met its objective. Distribution of the grant itself should not be one of the KPIs.]
We will be looking at TVL in the AETH-CACAO pool as well as swap volume. We are looking to achieve $3,500,000 of liquidity which should be a large enough pool for larger Bitcoin to ARB swaps. Additionally, our goal of $4,500,000 of swap volume moved through the pool by the end of the 12 week period is extremely beneficial to the Arbitrum ecosystem. The purpose of acquiring additional community owned liquidity is to help provide a seamless way for Bitcoin and other supported chains to permissionlessly onboard to the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Grant Timeline and Milestones:
Milestone 1
Maya coordinates with Arbitrum and integrated partners to launch LP incentives. The points system will be solidified on Mayascan. We will prepare co-marketing resources, tracking dashboards, and a launch date for program.
Milestone 2
The incentive program is launched, $1m of liquidity is acquired in the aETH/CACO pool.
Milestone 3
$1.5 of liquidity is acquired in the aETH/CACO pool. $1m monthly volume through the pool.
Milestone 4
$3.5m of liquidity is acquired in the aETH/CACO pool. $1.5m monthly volume moving through the pool.
Final Milestone
After 12 weeks, the leaderboard will be finalised and rewards will be distributed to liquidity providers.
How will receiving a grant enable you to foster growth or innovation within the Arbitrum ecosystem?
Unlocking native Bitcoin flows to arbitrum that are decentralized and permissionless will not only solidify the defi narrative Arbitrum holds, but also allow additional capital inflows to the ecosystem. We will be able to tangibly back these up via showcasing volume and liquidity on MayaScan.
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
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 will assign an owner to this program from Maya to update the forum thread regularly. We have direct dashboards and onchain metrics to backup updates provided to the forum.
Does your team agree to provide a final closeout report not later than two weeks from the ending date of your program?:
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
