Questionnaire - May 1st. Deadline.
Applicant information
Name - Revest Labs
Address (Headquarters) - 30 N Gould St STE R
City, State, Postal Code - Sheridan, WY 82801
Country - USA
Website - https://www.resonate.finance/
Primary contact Name - Kirk Mckenna
Title - Head of Partnerships & Ecosystem
Country- USA
Email, Telegram, Forum, & other methods of contact:
Email: Kirk@revest.finance
TG: kmack24
Forum: 0xkmack
Key Information
Expected Yield - Resonate provides upfront yield payments for a slight discounted premium on the rates provided by tokenizers. More information in Basics & Background.
Expected Maturity - Resonate is flexible enough to work with all maturities of Tokenized US Treasuries.
Underlying asset - Tokenized RWAs.
Minimum/Maximum transaction size - Not limited. We have built Resonate as an orderbook, and as such we can source 1:1 capital matching for well over the entire size of the STEP budget, if needed. This also means there is 0 slippage.
Current AUM for product: $5 Million
Current AUM for issuer: We are built to serve the entire on chain RWA AUM.
Volume of transactions LTM - 3.39 million USD.
Source of first-loss capital - Interest FNFT holders, followed by Principal FNFT holders. Otherwise, dependent on tokenizer.
Basics and Background
1. How will this investment improve Arbitrum’s RWA ecosystem?
- It will give Arbitrum something to do with the tokenized treasuries that it holds through tokenization providers that benefits users by allowing them access to Arbitrum’s rich DeFi ecosystem in a manner that doesn’t risk the loss of their principal. This opens Arbitrum’s DeFi infrastructure up to participants who otherwise would not be able to access it, including the Arbitrum DAO itself, for lack of principal protection on their assets.
2. Identify key management personnel and individual experience. Also include third parties utilized for managing assets and their qualifications.
Rob Montgomery: CEO.
Rob previously pursued a Doctorate in Nanothermal Engineering at Georgia Tech following acquisition of Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering at the same, dropped out with Master’s to develop Revest Finance full-time. Programming as a hobby since his first major CS project in 2011 earned 1,000,000+ downloads. Cryptocurrency has been a hobby since 2013, when he discovered Bitcoin. Started first crypto startup in 2021, founded and grew validator node “Profundity” on Unification blockchain from smallest to largest validator in network, bringing in $5000/week at peak revenue. Spun profits off into an interactive NFT project, Negative Entropy. Self taught Solidity, Javascript, and ThreeJS.
Matt Evans: COO & Co-Founder
Matt obtained a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Clemson University and has 10+ years of experience in Engineering and Program Management. Throughout his career he has worked with several different companies across the tech industry including Apple where he was a program manager. He is primarily focused on organizational change management, improvement of work flow from business strategy to team activity, and agile implementation. He started dabbling with crypto in 2017 and subsequently became extremely passionate about the DeFi space.
Jeannice Tse: Director of Business Development
Jeannice started her career working as a Product Manager for CitiGroup. From there, she spent time as a Fixed-Income Syndication at Banco Santander, then moved onto consulting for McKinsey, next serving as a Senior Manager at Capital One. Following that, she began her work in DeFi and was quickly brought on as the Partnership Lead for Centrifuge, striking their deal with MakerDAO during her time there. On the side, she teaches Finance at Columbia.
Nikola Malic: Engineering Lead.
Nikola began his career in crypto as a backend engineer at a blockchain-focused startup, where he contributed to the development of cryptocurrency ATMs, PoS terminals, and several ICO projects. After leading a successful recovery process to address a smart contract exploit, which effectively nullified the damage and enhanced security measures, Nikola took charge of the entire product development of the project. Two years later, the project achieved a cash flow of over $170 million and attracted more than 14,000 investors.
No 3rd parties are involved in the management of the assets, as this is already completed through the tokenization process before the assets come into Resonate.
3. Describe any previous work by the entity or its officers/key contributors similar to that requested. References are encouraged.
Launched Revest Finance in 2021- https://revest.finance/
Launched Resonate Finance in October 2022 - https://www.resonate.finance/.
Jeannice involved with Centrifuge/MakerDAO/BlockTower deal
Nikola involved in early bond tokenization work through BondEx.
4. Has your entity or its officers/key contributors been subject to an enforcement action, criminal action, or defaulted on legal or financial obligations? Please describe the circumstances if so.
No we have not.
5. Describe any conflicts of interest for your entity and key personnel.
None to report.
6. Insurance coverages, guarantees, and backstops Name of insurer or guarantor Per incident coverage Aggregate coverage
None to report. Deployments into our system utilizing tokenized RWAs inherit the same Bankruptcy remote protections from the tokenizer. This means that even if Resonate were to be hacked, Arbitrum DAO would just report this to the asset tokenizer and redeem their off chain Treasury Bills.
7. Historical tracking error in your proposed product, or similar to that being proposed Product 2024 YTD 2023 2022 2021.
Not applicable.
8. Brief reason for above tracking error
Not applicable.
9. Please describe any experience your firm has in working with decentralized organizational structures
In addition to Arbitrum, Revest has successfully worked with a few smaller DAOs to pass and execute governance proposals (MAIA DAO & Alchemix).
10. What is your entity’s current assets under management, assets held in trust, total value locked, or equivalent metric for your legal structuring?
$3.5M TVL in the system.
11. How many of these assets held are present on Arbitrum One, if any?
$25,860
Plan design
Resonate’s yield market place will facilitate the payment of discounted upfront yield to Arbitrum DAO on its tokenized US treasury assets. Below is an example flow of funds similar to Resonate’s proof of concept with Hashnotes USYC token (Resonate Announces Success of RWA Pilot | by Revest Finance | Medium).
Let’s use a product like Hashnotes USYC for example, please note Resonate can work with any tokenization partner and the below discounted rate is for example purposes only.
- Arbitrum DAO (“DAO”) KYC/KYBs with Hashnote.
- The DAO now has x amount of USYC tokens that yield 4.696% (as per Hashnotes DAPP at the time of writing).
- USYC tokens are brought to Resonate.
- Resonate lenders provide a discounted yield payment of 4.47% (5% spread is captured by the lender). Payment is paid in a stable coin of choice (this is up to the DAO).
- The DAO may deploy this stablecoin however they like, including into risk-on DeFi positions within the Arbitrum ecosystem
- The USYC tokens are locked into Resonate’s SMART Contracts.
- An NFT is minted to the DAO’s wallet that represents the rights to reclaim the principal USYC assets after the maturity of the assets (1 month). An NFT is minted to the lender’s wallet that represents their rights to claim all of the yield that the USYC accrues during the 1 month maturity period.
- After maturity, the DAO returns to Resonate and has the option to rollover and repeat the process or burn their NFT and reclaim their principle USYC tokens.
Do investors have any shareholder, investor, creditor or similar rights?
1. Describe the legal and contractual structuring for your product including regulatory bodies overseeing your business and the product and identifying all legal jurisdictions interacting with your product. Attach supplementary documents as appropriate.
We’re a lending and borrowing platform, and while our Labs organization falls under American jurisdiction, our nature as a P2P lending and borrowing system means that we aren’t subject to special rules or regulations.
2. Would Arbitrum’s assets be bankruptcy remote from your own entity and its officers/key contributors? If so, please explain the legal and contractual basis. On a confidential, non-reliance basis, provide any third party legal opinions to support the conclusions.
Arbitrums assets inherit the bankruptcy remote protections from the provider that they tokenized the treasuries with. The Revest team does not at any point take over custody of the assets, nor do we have access to them. They remain within the escrow contract the entire duration of deposit.
How are Arbitrum’s assets protected vis-a-vis the bankruptcy of the brokerage or applicable financial institution (e.g., bank deposit insurance, securities insurance, etc.)?
This is something that is contingent upon whoever the DAO has tokenized their assets with. Resonate does not require the same safety mechanisms due to the above descriptions of bankruptcy remote protections.
Does the Issuer issue more than one asset? If so, what is the priority relationship between different asset classes? - Not applicable.
1. Provide a detailed cash flow diagram that shows the flow of funds from ARB/Fiat conversion, investment in underlying asset, payment of expenses, sale of underlying asset, and repayment (Fiat/ARB conversion), including the counterparties and legal jurisdictions involved.
2. Describe anticipated tax consequences (if any) in transacting on the underlying and/or receipt of yield. The upfront yield payments attained on Resonate are effectively just loans. Yield at maturity may be taxed as ordinary income depending on the jurisdiction in question.
3. Describe the process and expected timeline for liquidation of assets, if given instructions to do so by Arbitrum governance. - Not applicable.
4. What amount of first-loss equity will Sponsor provide to ensure over-collateralization, how is the first-loss equity denominated, and what is the source of capital? - Not applicable.
5. Describe the liquidity and stability of the proposed underlying assets, including anticipated settlement times from the sale of the underlying to the repayment of ARB. - Inherited from Arbitrum’s chosen tokenizer.
6. If relying on the blockchain for any of the transactional flows, please describe any blockchain derived risks and mitigations. - Smart contract risk is eliminated in this setup because these are permissioned RWA tokens. If a hacker tried to take control of the assets, they would not be able to off-ramp them because in order to do so they would have to KYB/KYC with the tokenizer.
7. Does the product rely on any derivative product (swaps,OTC agreements?) - The product relies on Resonate’s ability to attract lenders to facilitate the yield swaps, but this generally is not hard to find because the lenders make ~20%+ annualized for providing up front yield payments.
8. List all the third party counterparties linked to your assets including and not restricted to prime broker if any, custodian, reporting agent, banks for derivatives or loans and provide primary contact details for the third party counterparties - N/A.
9. Can you explain how risk management (inv and operational) is being done? Can you provide a copy of your risk management policy?
Risk management for us involves a combination of security audits, which are detailed in the attached links, and diligence on tokenization partners, which is informally handled by referring their prospectus to our counsel. No formal policy has been implemented as we are not asset managers.
Performance reporting
1. What are your proposed performance benchmarks? If this is substantially different from the underlying assets, please explain why.
How well deployment of stablecoins outperforms treasury bills and if Abritrum’s DAO is able to consistently outperform the discount they accept when using Resonate.
2. Describe the content, format, preparation process, and cadence of performance reports. This should include proof of reserves, if appropriate. Please include a sample report. - N/A
3. Who provides the performance reports in respect of the underlying assets? - Whichever tokenizer issued the underlying asset(s) being deposited to Resonate.
4. Describe any formal audit process and timing of such audits.
Software audits are available here: Security Audits | Resonate Developer Docs
Pricing
1. Provide a copy of your standard contract, or one similar to what is being proposed here. - N/A
2. Fee summary: Inclusive of the full scope of services requested. Product Fee schedule If asset based Fee calculation for our plan if asset based Annual fee if flat fee Any other fees (including redemption or minting fees). - Not including any fees that may be applied by the issuer of the underlying asset Resonate receives 5% of the upfront yield payment provided to the borrower. Once the borrower has attained their payment and paid this once per lock fee no further fees will be required.
3. Describe frequency of fee payment and its position vis-a-vis payment priority compared with other expenses (i.e., cash waterfall) - The Resonate borrower fee of 5% is applied once per lock, whether the lock duration is 1 day or 1 year.
Smart Contract/Architecture
1. How many audits have you had and name of auditors? Please provide a copy of reports. - Resonate along with the Revest fNFT tech it builds on has been audited by two firms, Zellic and Blocksec. Relevant documentation can be found using the following links:
https://docs.revest.finance/resources/audits
Security and Audits | Resonate
2. Is the project permissioned? If so, how are you managing user identities? Any blacklisting/whitelisting features? - N/A
3. Is the product present on several chains? Are there any cross chain interactions? - Resonate is live on several chains. No cross chain interactions are necessary.
4. Are the RWA tokens being used in any other protocols? - Resonate will hold principal tokens in escrow. No one will have access to them as they accrue yield until the end of the lock on Resonate. How are trusted roles/admins managed in the system? -N/A. Which aspects of the solution require trust from users? - No additional layers of trust are introduced by using Resonate. Resonante simply inherits the trust aspects of the underlying token, should there be any.
5. Is there any custom logic required for your RWA token? If so please give any details. - N/A
Supplementary
1. Please attach any further information or documents you feel would help the screening committee or ARB tokenholders make an informed decision.
Below is just one example of a strategy that incorporates Resonate’s upfront yield mechanism to boost the earning potential of treasury securities while maintaining full principal protection.
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