Are you asking the same to be done for every other protocol or is this just ramses? I’m genuinely confused why everyone is ascting like ramses is the only token that’s not supposed to benefit from the grant?
The issue is that the ARB go directly to veRAM holders, increasing it’s value in a directly tangible and measurable way. It’s basically 1 step away from using the ARB grants to buyback tokens from the market directly, which is why it can be seen in a critical light to use the grants this way, especially since the founders will receive sizable shares of those ARB tokens. The argument could be made however that there’s a possible positive outcome in this, which is an increase in RAM price which in turn would attract more TVL to the flywheel but I don’t think the grants are here to pump token prices in such direct ways.
If the team proceeds with this plan, it’s also false to say that Ramses is matching the bribes, as it’s merely converted to RAM and then distributed, it’s not an additive process, it’s a convertible.
For it to be a matching process, direct LP bribing would have to be chosen, as then the LPs receive ARB tokens and RAM token => then you can call it bribe matching.
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Ramses team has been instrumental in providing the best in tech not just for their own dex, but for many others as well! (They have helped/shared stuff with many other projects too when/as needed!)
They have constantly helped fBOMB/MCLB in deploying on Arb and continue to onboard/introduce new players to this ecosystem!
They are highly worthy of this opportunity as they have the best alignment of interests with Arb ecosystem and I would feel they would make judicious use of any amount, if granted.
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ram has 33 partners
more than any solidly project,
Projects can pay RAM holders in exchange for RAM distributions, helping projects maintain liquidity without running into losses.
TVL and organic growth volume,
fully meets the grant. requirements
the ram subsidy is worth it because the success of the velo model on op has been proven,
don’t deny it
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So much FUD fueled by competitors its quite hilarious. The team is one of the most hard working in the space, I see big things in the horizon for $ram and Ramses exchange - LFG
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The main problem with this proposal is that it is incredibly one-sided with not much to back it up.
Ramses has not really made much of an impact on Arbitrum that I am aware of.
Another Soldily fork doing what they all do, the metrics and charts show it quite clearly, just an observation.
TVL is very low and went under $5M in TVL this month, which really illustrates what little impact on Arbitrum the DEX has made. Still only just over $8M, really low when compared with other DEXs.
The hardest part for me to understand is why a DEX with a market cap of under 700K is applying for a grant that is much bigger than its own market cap. The market cap actually went under $300K this month. Really hard to see what kind of impact a project like that is making in the ecosystem.
Can you imagine if GMX and other larger projects had asked for grants with a similar market cap to grant size ratio, there would be no ARB left for grants.
I do think we need to be mindful that these grants are not just for being on Arbitrum, they are for fostering growth, driving adoption, increasing users and to incentivize additional TVL.
Ramses offering higher incentives because of a grant much larger than their marketcap is no guarantee to help with increasing growth, adoption and usage of Arbitrum.
Clearly, Ramses metrics show this, there is not much interest currently for end users to park funds their there.
The stats do not lie and we can clearly see that with such a low TVL and market cap, Ramses has not really been adopted in the same way as other DEXs on Arbitrum have.
I am all for healthy competition and some kind of structure and systematic reasoning running through this grant process. I just feel that asking for much more than your market cap, with such low adoption and TVL that we see here, is far too much of a stretch. At least ask for an amount that is in line with your own metrics and contribution.
Some people complained about the size of some of the larger grant applications, but for me, considering the metrics, market cap and TVL in particular. I feel this is the most skewed application I have seen.
Suggestions to get it passed, lower the amount of ARB you are asking for in line with your own metrics. TVL and marketcap are some of the most potent indicators we have in crypto, we all know this. Keep it fair and reasonable, these forums are a learning curve for all of us. No shame in restructuring and coming up with something more feasible and reasonable.
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Problem is you are looking at the surface level metrics. TVL doesn’t mean anything if its laying out of range, essentially it is dead liquidity. While Ramses has a lower marketcap/tvl they are hyper efficient in terms of liquidity and as you might be aware, useful liquidity is far more important than just having dead liquidity lying around and farming. To illustrate, please see the below comparisons
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Can you share the metrics and charts backing this observation?
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Hi all, Smerdyakov from the Open X Project here, speaking only for myself. We’ve spent a lot of time considering the Solidly model and decentralized exchanges more generally, being involved in several (albeit not currently with Ramses; we had a liquid wrapper for SolidLizard), and I’d like to indirectly address some of the points that have been made.
-The original Solidly innovation was little more than making the ve-position transferable.
-Almost all forks will go to zero. Only forks with further innovation survive at all.
-Coalition building is inherent to markets. Convex and Frax were not panic dumping CRV when it was hacked. They have a large interest in the continued existence of the protocol. Ecosystem native coalition-driven exchanges are not new, but there is room for new ideas within their framework.
-The ultimate value of tokenizing the ve-position is an open question, but then so is the necessity of a ve-position to create a functioning decentralized exchange - and so is (to the average Defi user) the value of LPing at all as opposed to simply holding their tokens in cold storage.
-The value of a blockchain, in their current state of development, depends on the demand for its block space. To that end, decentralized exchanges with deep liquidity are a necessity.
-I doubt anyone here is convinced any decentralized exchange has found the winning formula of balancing incentives relative to the revenue the exchange generates and distributes from fees. The locking of emissions to own a share of fees is at least one conceptual framework worth exploring.
-It is perfectly reasonable to argue that all decentralized exchange, outside of Uni and maybe some perp exchanges, would have farmed to zero without incentives. Much has been said about Velodrome’s incentives from Optimism because it seems the Solidly model in general is being discussed here, but I seem to remember Curve and Sushi launching on many chains after receiving liquidity mining incentives from those chains. The issue is the prospect of farming to zero without subsidies, and every exchange faces this fate if it cannot generate sufficient revenue from fees or somehow offset the emissions needed to competitively attract sticky LPs (e.g., by locking emissions).
-Making the position into an NFT opens up a wide range of financial applications. That is why I believe the Solidly model is worth exploring. The question then becomes: Who is doing the work of refining what works (viz. concentrated liquidity) and experimenting with the Solidly model?
-This is a very competitive space, and many projects have large backing. When we talk of Mcap and TVL, the question to me should always be: with what budget? The best idea does not always get traction. The wiser play IMO is to invest in the teams that are capable of adapting to new ideas. I count the development of CL and the xoToken system as evidence of the Ramses team’s capacities.
So I think the questions here should be:
-Does Arbitrum want to explore the Solidly concept?
-Which team has shown the most skill to explore it?
-Does this grant proposal in particular aid Arbitrum in exploring this model as an ecosystem?
If the answer to (1) is Yes, the Ramses team appears to me to be the answer to (2) and deserving of a grant provided their proposal falls within the submission guidelines.
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The amount of hatred and bias against Ramses team from the competitors on this thread is palpable. As a normal user with no association with any participating protocols or forks, I can confidently say that Ramses has some of the hardest-working and most trustworthy folks in the space. And the numbers speak for themselves. Despite raising pennies (compared to other similar protocols) they have consistently over-delivered and onboarded some of the biggest protocols in the Arbitrum ecosystem. The grant would definitely help the team in its mission.
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“The stats do not lie” → procceeds to share 0 statistics whatsoever.
Anyone who does some basic research about Ramses metrics would quickly realize its competing among top arbitrum dexes on the daily. And Ramses is asking for much less grant than those said DEXes.
For example Camelot does around 35% more volume/fees and is asking for X3 the grant. Balancer does 10x less volume and similar or less revenue despite its big TVL and is asking for bigger grant aswell.
Also, gentle reminder, most DEXes Ramses compete with, had previous grants or VC funding and Ramses has managed to compete with them just with their core mechanics. I believe a little support could go a long way. Maybe there is a conflict of interest of not allowing that?
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Thanks for this post. Finally some factual and thorough exploration of the DEX landscape and its incentive models. Indeed moving incentives to a voter system (inherited from Curve), doesn’t magically change the reality of any DEX, its just aligning the incentives differently.
Judging a DEX only by its token incentive is not very fruitful. The sole purpose of a DEX is to build liquidity and volume, and allow people to trade. The token itself, in broader terms, is irrelevant. A perfect illustration is how the biggest volume DEX in the planet UniV3, doesn’t even have any incentive reward.
Most DEX incentive token is grossly overvalued over its revenue generation, and this is just speculation, not factual intrinsic value. One of the most interesting metrics is that lately, it has been generating as much revenue as it emits, some epochs even above, which is very rare for most DEX, and indicates a very good trend in capital efficency versus UniV3 model.
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I think it is naïve to believe that Arbitrum and Optimism are completely different, and thus I pose a similar question to @smerdyakov, the Optimism FDN’s biggest investment in terms of grants has been in a similar-style project – Velodrome – and it has payed off massively for them.
Is the ARB DAO willing to take the same chance the OP DAO did, knowing the result it had for Optimism?
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After thoughtful discussions with delegates and the voices in the community, we are adjusting our STIP to adopt a model similar to that of other AMMs. This decision ensures there is continuity and clarity, and eliminates any potential confusion for the short-term nature of this program. We are grateful for the insights and guidance that have led us to this conclusion.
To be clear - LP’s will now be the only recipients of ARB incentives.
Amounts and distribution methodology:
Requested Grant Size: 1,248,000 ARB – any unused will be returned to the DAO.
[104,000 ARB/Epoch]
50% of ARB allocated as direct LP incentives for concentrated liquidity pairs, with a focus on ARB pairings, key ecosystem participants, and blue-chips [52,000/Epoch]
50% of ARB allocated as direct LP incentives matched to fees generated on the pair by the end of the prior epoch.
- Epoch N-1 fees will be matched with ARB distributed to Epoch N liquidity providers. This has a global cap of up to 52,000 ARB/Epoch, and RAM will be used to match these (up to 1,000,000/epoch).
Execution Strategy:
Method of Distribution
The ARB will stream over each epoch (7 days) via RAMSES’ Concentrated Liquidity Rewarder (Gauges). This implementation has the following advantages to regular, and off-chain solutions:
- No staking involved, no custody or approval given to any contracts to participate in earning ARB
- Permissionless, any user can deposit LP Incentives via the Incentivize page on the dAPP.
- Fully on-chain and verifiable. There is no trust or off-chain computation required, it is all calculated within the contracts themselves.
The ARB will be distributed at the beginning of each epoch, thus streaming out over the next 7 days linearly to all active market makers proportional to their efficiency.
A non-exhaustive list of pools which already exist and could fall in-line with eligibility can be found on the liquidity dashboard at: R A M S E S as well as on the analytics dashboard(s): RAMSES CL Analytics
An existing implementation example of our
RamsesV2Gaugecontracts can be reviewed at: GaugeV2 | Address 0x80c4f687b81d77b33c6e3e572e2e80dccc996733 | ArbiscanFee matching will be done by taking the fees generated by a pool in the prior epoch (N-1) and distributing the equivalent (up to the global cap) in ARB via RAMSES gauges in the current epoch (N). The statistics will be sourced from many places, such as our in-house analytics page(s), dune dashboards, as well as any other scripts/on-chain verification methods to provide accurate information.
We would like to thank everyone for their input, and we are looking forward to your revised feedback!
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I think this is a sensible approach as it eliminates any mistrust, bribe matching will be true to its word and it’ll demonstrate if Ramses is truly more efficient than other solutions in terms of swap efficiency. Which will ultimately also translate to veRAM value (instead of straight giving ARB straight to veRAM and hoping it gets translated efficiently).
Sad to see delegates and DAO feel like not dumping ARB at the maximum speed possible and dinosaur pool2 emission is the best way to spend their funds, going as far as being against exploring alternative routes. But hey, free mercenary money better than nothing still.
Hopefully this STIP is a nice “experiment” where the obvious happens – everyone realizes what has been done last 20 times in a row in every chain isn’t a good way to spend your funds.
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Apologies, was simply referring to mainly market cap and also TVL, which had been highlighted in the post.
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This change makes it easier to track I suppose by reducing the complexity, and it’s great the team is being so adaptable.
Not to muddy the discussion as this is no longer the method being used, but should the grant be approved, perhaps Ramses can provide clear differential data over the STIP period between the two methods for future grants, as the synergy of the ve3,3 model and grants has already been proven and elucidated by Velodrome earlier, the results are rather staggering IMO and it’s worth exploring: Velodrome Grant Performance Update - 🔍Monitoring - Optimism Collective
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I’m very happy to see that the points I raised were actually making sense, as it seems delegates were sharing my concerns, and even happier that the team has updated the proposal accordingly. This version is indeed not risky and avoids the “recycling” problem.
However, I have to note that for days my arguments were brushed aside as irrelevant, never addressed, and instead continuously swept under the rug. I find it disturbing given the gravity of the issue and the tug-of-war it took to finally get the problem tackled (but still not openly admitted).
Reminder that we were talking about the possibility for large amounts of ARB to be discreetly hijacked.
Is there a specific reason to not simply distribute the incentives proportionally to ve votes on every epoch? It would allow all your partners to bribe and vote for their own pools more efficiently, and would greatly benefit the wider ecosystem.
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So after a week your new complaint is that Ramses isn’t strongarming partners to bribe to compete for the Arb LP incentives, essentially funneling money to veRAM holders?
- What
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