SECTION 1: APPLICANT INFORMATION
Applicant Name: Rob Montgomery
Project Name: Revest Labs
Project Description: Revest develops and provides a suite of yield products built on existing systems & assets that are intended to bridge the gap between traditional finance and DeFi. The first system we brought to market was Resonate, our novel yield-swaps protocol that is focused around RWA yields. Currently, we are planning on rolling out new yield strategies on Arbitrum that we will describe within.
Team Members and Roles:
- Rob Montgomery: CEO & Lead Developer
- Matt Evans: COO & Co-Founder
- Jeannice Tse: Director of Business Development
- Kirk Mckenna: Head of Partnerships & Growth
- Arsalan Andany: Head of Data
- Thanh Trinh: Solidity Developer
Project Links:
Revest.Finance: https://revest.finance/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RevestFinance
Docs: https://docs.revest.finance
Resonate.Finance: https://www.resonate.finance/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ResonateFi
Docs: https://docs.resonate.finance
Medium: Revest Finance – Medium
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@revestfinance9343
Contact Information
Point of Contact: Kirk Mckenna
Point of Contact’s TG handle: @kmack24
Twitter: twitter.com/0xkmack
Email: kirk@revest.finance
Do you acknowledge that your team will be subject to a KYC requirement?: Yes
SECTION 2a: Team and Product Information
Provide details on your team’s past and current experience. Any details relating to past projects, recent achievements and any past experience utilizing incentives. Additionally, please provide further details on the state of your product, audience segments, and how you expect incentives to impact the product’s long-term growth and sustainability.
Team experience (Any relevant experience that may be useful in evaluating ability to ship, or execution with grant incentives. Please provide references knowledgeable about past work, where relevant. If you wish to do so privately, indicate that. [Optional, but recommended]):
Revest is led by a team with experience spanning Apple, Centrifuge, Mckinsey & Citi.
Revest is one of the first protocols to utilize NFTs as financial positions. Recognizing the oncoming explosion of the tokenization of everything, we deployed the Revest Protocol on ETH Mainnet in 2021 with a focus on turning vested tokens into tokenized FNFTs to allow for more secure locking / automated unlocks for vested positions.
We realized that there were even deeper use cases for the FNFT technology, and turned our attention to Interest Rate Swaps in March of 2022. We launched the Resonate protocol in October of 2022 on Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Fantom, and ETH Mainnet. From October 2022 - February 2023 we focused on high yielding, volatile yield farms such as GLP - allowing users a way to hedge against interest rate fluctuations & realize their yield today - we were able to achieve 5.66M in cumulative volume during that time. After months in the market, we made a decision to shift our focus to the US Treasury RWAs that were starting to flow on chain.
We spent the better part of 2023 performing market research, developing key relationships & partnerships with all of the major Tokenizers in the space (Open Eden, OpenTrade, Centrifuge for example) and with various participants in other industries to explore pilots & use cases involving players in industries like Trucking Logistics, and Insurance.
We are happy to have over $50 million in capital commitments from various partners to deploy into Resonate. The next phase is finding a long term home for scaling our products & of course our first thoughts were to continue to build on Arbitrum!
What novelty or innovation does your product bring to Arbitrum?
For users, we bring the novel concept of principle protection on their fixed income assets while they hold them on chain. For Abritrum, we bring sticky liquidity & utility for RWAs that find a home on Arbitrum.
Is your project composable with other projects on Arbitrum? If so, please explain:
Yes, in a few ways:
- Resonate will integrate with Open Eden’s TBILL product so that users can bring TBILL to Resonate pools for yield swap utility.
- The Resonate FNFTs that users receive are fully transferable ERC1155s that can be sold on secondary NFT marketplaces on Arbiturm. We are also seeking integrations with money markets & NFTFI lending platforms to provide additional utility to holders of Resonate FNFTs.
Do you have any comparable protocols within the Arbitrum ecosystem or other blockchains?
Pendle is another player within the sub sector of Interest Rate Swaps - however we provide very different products and are targeting very different asset classes currently. Pendle utilizes ERC20 tokens and a VAMM model to fuel the interest rate trading and LPing on chain.
We chose an orderbook model to facilitate the trades along with ERC1155 NFTs to represent the principle and interest positions within the trades, which allows for 0 slippage execution. On Resonate, users not only get a fixed rate, they also get their yield payment immediately vs having to wait until maturity in the Pendle model.
How do you measure and think about retention internally? (metrics, target KPIs):
One of the novel parts about Resonate that is perfect for Grants is that users MUST make a tradeoff in order to realize any rewards. When a user get’s their up front yield payment, the assets are locked via smart contract into the Blockchain - this allows us to much better ensure an ROI to the Arbitrum DAO as a result of any dollars of ARB spent on Resonate.
The primary KPIs that we target that indicate success for our products are Notional Volume, TVL.
For additional stickiness, we will be implementing a lock bonus.
Bonus APR on higher locking time → Users set a lock for a higher time → increase of user and TVL retention + alignment with long-term holders.
Relevant usage metrics - Please refer to the OBL relevant metrics chart 22. For your category (DEX, lending, gaming, etc) please provide a list of all respective metrics as well as all metrics in the general section:
General Metrics: Daily Active Users, Daily User Growth, Daily Transaction Count, Daily Transaction Fee, Daily ARB Expenditure and User Claims, Incentivized User List & Gin
Relevant Metrics: TVL, Borrowed Amount, Daily Borrowing Volume, Daily Deposits Volume, List of Depositors, List of Borrowers, Loan Origination Volume,
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/No]: 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
Provide details about the Arbitrum protocol requirements relevant to the grant. This information ensures that the applicant is aligned with the technical specifications and commitments of the grant.
Is the protocol native to Arbitrum?: [Yes/No, and provide explanation] Resonate, our yield futures protocol, is cross chain. We are looking for the best home for our efforts surrounding the expansion of RWAs on chain, and we view Arbiturm as the ideal candidate with tokenized RWAs currently present, like Open Eden, and upcoming launches for projects like Ondo, and Centrifuge.
On what other networks is the protocol deployed?: Ethereum mainnet, Optimism, Polygon, Fantom.
What date did you deploy on Arbitrum mainnet?: [Date + transaction ID. If not yet live on mainnet, explain why.] 0x2782ef34c5d9d276f070b910172ed7217ede6873ee5fcc6679d63cfd6ea3c449 Sep-30-2022 01:49:15 AM +UTC
Do you have a native token?: Yes. https://docs.revest.finance/rvst-token/tokenomics-and-distribution.
Past Incentivization: What liquidity mining/incentive programs, if any, have you previously run? Please share results and dashboards, as applicable? None. This will be our first program.
Current Incentivization: How are you currently incentivizing your protocol? We are currently not incentivizing the protocol with token emissions, we have been focused on organic growth through the utility that we provide to RWA tokenizers & relevant clients.
Have you received a grant from the DAO, Foundation, or any Arbitrum ecosystem related program? - No.
Protocol Performance: [Detail the past performance of the protocol and relevance, including any key metrics or achievements, dashboards, etc.]
Since launch in October 2022 we have been proud to collaborate with several Arbitrum protocols as we scaled our MVP- including GMX, Umami, and Gains Network.
Resonate has achieved ~5.66 million USD in volume. Since Resonate’s mechanism is modeled after traditional order books, we believe volume is the most indicative metric for our project as TVL fluctuates based on the targeted maturities of the trades in question. Current TVL sits at over $1.02 million USD per DefiLlama.
Protocol Roadmap: [Describe relevant roadmap details for your protocol or relevant products to your grant application. Include tangible milestones over the next 12 months.]
Roadmap Milestones:
- Q2 2024: Deployment of Resonate Contracts to Kinto / Scaled launch of Redux AI trading vault on Arbiturm. ARB token deployments to depositors on Resonate (on Kinto and Arbitrum) & Redux (on Arbitrum).
- Q2 - Q3 2024 - Achieve an accumulative 20M TVL through Revest products on Arbitrum & Kinto.
- Q4 2024 - Q1 2025 - Scale the onboarding of Revest clients from Tradfi into Arbitrum.
Audit History & Security Vendors:
Audits: Security and Audits | Resonate
Bug Bounty: Bug Bounty | Resonate
Security Incidents:
Prior to launching Resonate in October of 2022, the Revest Protocol was exploited in March 2022 in a relatively sophisticated exploit of a bug in the solidity code that went unfound by our team, auditors, and peer reviews. Full details can be found here: Revest Protocol Exploit Recovery Plan.
Following the exploit, Revest protocol developers implemented a fix for the vulnerability in the code and underwent (2) additional security audits with Zellic and Blocksec to ensure security was restored. Full details can be found here: Revest Finance Announces Blocksec & Zellic Audits. We would later use these same (2) firms to audit the Resonate Platform as well, due to our overwhelmingly positive experience with these firms.
As a result of the exploit, we created a first of its kind security architecture that would ensure any further issues were isolated to the fullest extent of technology. We termed the methodology “Sand Boxed Counterfactual Storage” which essentially means that all deposits into Revest technology are completely siloed from one another - so if a hacker does somehow get access to an FNFT, there is no way to take control of other FNFTs and subsequent deposits in those contracts. More details can be found here: Revest implements Sandbox Counterfactual Storage
SECTION 3: GRANT INFORMATION
Detail the requested grant size, provide an overview of the budget breakdown, specify the funding and contract addresses, and describe any matching funds if relevant.
Requested Grant Size: 75,000 ARB.
Justification for the size of the grant 23: [Enter explanation. More details are better, including how you arrived at the required funding for individual categories of expenses covered by your grant plan]
RWA tvl has grown to over $1 billion in recent months on chain, with no clear winner amongst the competing Ethereum L2s or ALT L1s - which presents a unique opportunity for chains to exert their influence on where permissioned RWA’s find their ultimate home on chain.
Resonate is in a unique position to spur this growth. We believe the on chain economy is the best place for RWA’s to live due to the greatest benefit Defi can offer: composability. Through Resonate’s compsable nature, we can provide utility to RWAs (starting with US Treasuries) that will serve as a catalyst for growth on Arbitrum.
Resonate is also uniquely positioned to be able to incentivize an outsized amount of TVL with the ARB provided due our orderbook model and the fact that the lenders only pay the borrower based on the earning power of the assets in question. For example, to incentivize a 1 month T Bill position of $1,0000 USD - you only need $4 of capital on Resonate to incentivize a deposit (4.75% pay out on 5% earning power, annualized), and so its extremely capital efficient.
We have reviewed current STIP recipients, and have determined the amount of ARB requested in our grant based on those results, but also based on the calculations you will see herein (section 4 specifically).
We have crafted our proposal with the current budget, and oversubscription in mind.
Grant Matching: NA.
Grant Breakdown:
Any granted ARB will be used to incentivize deposits for the following product lines on Arbitrum during the 12-week incentive period.
- Resonate Finance - TBILL (OPEN EDEN) Pools. 75,000 ARB.
| Products | Weekly Distribution | Total Distribution |
|---|---|---|
| Resonate Finance | ||
| TBILL (OPEN EDEN) Pools | 6,250 ARB per week for the duration of the 12 weeks | 75,000 ARB |
**Funding Address:**0x397002E9E957990fe39E84FD55095f998a953e81
Funding Address Characteristics: ⅗ Gnosis Multisig
Treasury Address:
0xaF84f7D4061df1AaFbbec39DE7726D4F80beb652
0x397002E9E957990fe39E84FD55095f998a953e81
0x0c6c8f014d1B3E37F470d39356379E220e4Beb67
Contract Address: Not applicable, currently in-dev
SECTION 4: GRANT OBJECTIVES, EXECUTION AND MILESTONES
Clearly outline the primary objectives of the program and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), execution strategy, and milestones used to measure success. This helps reviewers understand what the program aims to achieve and how progress will be assessed.
Utilizing the distribution schedule above, and the execution strategy below, we seek to provide a meaningful reason for the TBILL token to continue to grow on Arbitrum while providing a signal to traditional market participants that their assets should live on chain (on Arbitrum).
Objectives:
The primary objectives with the use of any granted tokens would be to proliferate sticky liquidity within the product lines that Revest Labs has deployed to Arbitrum.
- Signaling to the market that Arbitrum is the home of RWA innovation.
Revest Labs has been working closely with the team from Open Eden, with the synergistic goal of driving treasury yields to Arbitrum. OpenEden Labs’ mission is to bring real-world assets to DeFi to unlock trillions of dollars in value. Resonate can provide innovative utility to holders of Open Eden’s TBILL token, which is now live on Arbitrum.
Through the use of the granted ARB, TBILL holders will be able to deposit their tokens into Resonates smart contracts, and receive an up front, fixed rate yield payment on their assets from one of our lenders + ARB incentives that outperforms the risk free rate. The TBILL liquidity is then locked for a set duration (offerings will be 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days). Now, the TBILL user can go deploy that yield into higher risk strategies on Arbitrum.
The benefits to Arbitrum are three fold.
- Total Value Locked is actually locked. Any deposits of TBILL into Resonate are locked for the duration, and cannot be pulled from the smart contracts. This provides a sticky mechanism for liquidity on Arbitrum.
- Capital remains incredibly efficient - the same amount of capital that is already sitting in TBILL on Arbitrum could flow into Resonate, which will increase the amount of TVL on arbitrum with the same liquidity based on the way TVL is calculated today.
- Arbitrum signals to other market participants that are building in the RWA space, or traditional institutions that are seeking to experiment within on chain finance, that Arbiturm is the home for RWA innovation within the industry.
Execution Strategy: [Describe the plan for executing including token distribution method (e.g. farming, staking, bonds, referral program, etc), what you are incentivizing, resources, products, use of funds, and risk management. This includes allocations for specific pools, eligible assets, products, etc.]
- 100% of the granted ARB tokens towards Resonate RWA contracts - incentivizing users to lock their liquidity into the fixed rate borrowing side of Resonate - they will receive any deposited loans from the Lending side of the Resonate system + ARB incentives. Boosted APR will be provided in ARB tokens for longer duration locks within Resonate pools.
Assuming a 5% yield on US Treasury, the borrower would receive 4.75% upfront from the lender. Revest Labs would, then, increase the upfront yield by providing a time weighted boost to the percentage, depending on the tranche selected.
This table below depicts how we will utilize 75,000 arb at the avg price of ARB over the previous rolling 30 day period ($1.98) to incentivize $15,000,000 in volume on 1 month and 30,000,00 on 3 month deposit.
We view the $45M goal as achievable due to interest expressed by Revest’s current pipeline, in addition to exploratory BD efforts with Revest’s tokenization partners.
What mechanisms within the incentive design will you implement to incentivize “stickiness” whether it be users, liquidity or some other targeted metric? [Provide relevant design and implementation details]
Resonate contracts inherently require users to lock their liquidity for a set duration in order to be able to attain an up front payment of the yield from their RWA assets.
The two offered durations to coincide with this program are 1 month, and 3 month locked maturities.
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.]
Borrowing Volume: This will showcase the total upfront yield distributed to borrowers through Resonate; one of the core value propositions of Resonate.
Deposit Volume: This will represent the amount of capital on Resonate willing to be matched. It will show the interest in tranche usage, and can be used to see demand for each side of the pool
Trading Volume: On Resonate, this will represent the total USD actually matched through our temporal order book mechanism. This would be the most indicative metric for achieving our grant objectives.
TVL: Value (in USD) locked through Resonate into FNFTs
All of these values can be sourced and verified through data available on-chain and on block explorers.
Grant Timeline and Milestones: [Describe the timeline for the grant, including ideal milestones with respective KPIs. Include at least one milestone that shows progress en route to a final outcome. Please justify the feasibility of these milestones.]
- Grant approval & distribution (Approval)
- Incentives go live on Resonate (Approval + 2 weeks).
- Achieve $20 million in volume (Approval + 6 weeks) to indicate that the goal of $20 million is achievable.
- Achieve $45 million in volume (approval + 12 weeks).
How will receiving a grant enable you to foster growth or innovation within the Arbitrum ecosystem? [Clearly explain how the inputs of your program justify the expected benefits to the DAO. Be very clear and tangible, and you must back up your claims with data]
This grant will allow us to help further establish Arbitrum as the home for RWA tokenization innovation within the industry. Furthermore, any ARB granted to Resonate will create network effects for the tokenization partners deployed to Arbiturm that integrate with Resonate, through the utility that we provide their tokens in the marketplace.
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/No] 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 19. 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? [Please describe your strategy and capabilities for data/reporting]
Yes. We have a team member who is proficient in Data Analytics and Data Engineering who will create the required dashboards.
*First Offense: In the event that a project does not provide a bi-weekly update, they will be reminded by an involved party (council, advisor, or program manager). Upon this reminder, the project is given 72 hours to complete the requirement or their funding will be halted.
Second Offense: Discussion with an involved party (advisor, pm, council member) that will lead to understanding if funds should keep flowing or not.
Third Offense: Funding is halted permanently
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?: [Y/N] Y.
