Summary
Proposal to add the Polygon aCRV/CRV factory pool to the Gauge Controller to enable users to assign gauge weight and mint CRV. Concentrator is a farm-and-hold yield optimizer that helps users automatically harvest yields and swap (concentrate) them into the best blue-chip DeFi tokens, and aCRV is its flagship compounder vault. aCRV is an auto-compounding wrapper on cvxCRV with yields provided by cvxCRV single staking. One aCRV represents a deterministic and increasing number of cvxCRV in the vault, irrespective of whether that aCRV is held on mainnet or bridged to another chain. Holding aCRV on other chains (like Polygon) allows users to earn Convex mainnet yields without farming on mainnet, simply by buying and holding aCRV. aCRV is instantly redeemable for cvxCRV with no slippage in the mainnet aCRV contract.
Concentrator is highly symbiotic with Curve and ecosystem protocols, especially, in the case of aCRV, with Convex. aCRV’s auto-compounding provides constant buy pressure on cvxCRV, helping to reinforce its peg, and in the case where the peg is already very close to 1:1 aCRV will even directly lock CRV for cvxCRV. The aCRV liquidity pool on Polygon also provides a major benefit to Curve since it offers users a reason to hold their CRV natively on Polygon rather than sell it.
References
Concentrator website: concentrator.aladdin.club
aCRV Polygon token address: 0x89c90e480a39fbe3886bb5bd53ba5b1acc69d4fb
Documentation: docs.aladdin.club/concentrator
Medium: medium.com/@0xconcentrator_29486
GitHub: github.com/AladdinDAO/aladdin-v3-contracts/tree/main/contracts/concentrator
Twitter: 0xconcentrator
Discord: discord.gg/mBXqtCdS
CRV/aCRV pool: polygon.curve.fi/factory-crypto/9
aCRV Bridge: app.multichain.org/
Protocol Description:
Concentrator is a yield optimizer built around the idea of positive sum farm-and-hold yield farming. There are two types of concentrator vaults: harvesters and compounders. At present there are three compounder vaults, and many harvester vaults. Each harvester vault is paired with one of the compounder vaults. Harvest vaults claim all claimable yield associated with the underlying harvester asset and swap them appropriately to deposit into the paired compounder vault. Users deposit assets in harvester vaults and use those yields to earn the most blue-chip compounder tokens. Alternatively or in addition, users may deposit directly into the compounder vaults.
The compounder vaults each provide an increasing share of a specific blue-chip DeFi token, with growth coming from autocompounding its yields. Currently Concentrator offers three such compounder vaults: aCRV, aFXS and afrxETH. aCRV is backed by cvxCRV, with autocompounding yields derived from Convex cvxCRV staking. aFXS is backed by fxs-cvxFXS LPs, with autocompounding yields derived from Convex vault/Curve gauge rewards. Finally afrxETH is backed by frxETH-ETH LP shares, with yields coming from a Convex Frax private vault that is automatically managed by Concentrator.
Although there is a lot of room for expansion in the future, currently all harvester vaults are based on Convex vaults. A wide variety of Convex vaults are offered as harvesters including various stable LP vaults, tricrypto, and many others. New vaults are regularly deployed based on user requests or new opportunities. Most recently this includes the launch of asdCRV, compounding Stake DAO’s sdCRV token.
Concentrator harvesters allow users to hold one asset, but use its yield to earn a completely different one. For example, the most popular vault on Concentrator allows users to hold a stablecoin (FRAX-USDC LPs) but earn yields in aCRV. In the future, Concentrator vaults may execute more sophisticated strategies with the afrxETH compounder (which manages a rolling lockup to optimize yields) providing an example of the types of things that are possible.
Motivation:
For aCRV to be useful on Polygon it must be available to swap natively there, and so Concentrator set up a Curve liquidity pool in aCRV/CRV and seeded it with capital. Enabling gauge rewards would increase the visibility and depth of that pool and would be very beneficial to the ecosystem. Gauge rewards in that pool in particular will be very important since users who wish to provide liquidity there must of course hold a mixture of aCRV and CRV and so will earn yields only on their aCRV portion. CRV emissions can help make up this shortfall.
Once Polygon aCRV/CRV is added to the gauge controller, Concentrator/Aladdin will have an additional way to participate in bribe markets, which helps increase the economic value of CRV and CVX governance…
Specifications:
Governance: The aCRV token was deployed by the Aladdin core team as part of Concentrator’s initial launch. Aladdin continues to develop and administer Concentrator, progressively decentralizing governance power to veCTR holders. The Concentrator treasury is controlled by a 6/9 multisig wallet.
Oracles: Concentrator (including aCRV) does not rely on oracles.
Audits: All Concentrator products have been audited. Relevant reports are:
PeckShield Legacy aCRV & Vault
Market History:
aCRV was the very first compounding vault offered by Concentrator. aCRV represents a deterministic and increasing number of cvxCRV staked on Convex. At the time of writing this proposal, the index is ~1.26, meaning each aCRV is redeemable for 1.26 cvxCRV. aCRV does not trade in a secondary market on mainnet, but does have liquidity pools paired with CRV on Polygon, Arbitrum and Fantom (Arbitrum and Fantom with limited liquidity) where the price of aCRV may vary. In principle the price of aCRV off mainnet should be equal to the redeemable mainnet value of aCRV plus some premium for bridging, and should be held relatively stable and have a steady flow of new aCRV delivered by arbitrageurs.