Summary:
Proposal to add CTR/ETH 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. Concentrator is highly symbiotic with Curve and ecosystem protocols like Convex and Frax because it provides users the benefit of auto-compounding to increase yields while also adding buy pressure on Curve ecosystem blue chip tokens like cvxCRV, FXS, and frxETH. Users earn the best tokens, at the highest rates, while simultaneously supporting the best protocols.
References/Useful links:
Concentrator website: https://concentrator.aladdin.club
CTR token address: 0xb3Ad645dB386D7F6D753B2b9C3F4B853DA6890B8
Documentation: CLever - AladdinDAO
Medium: Concentrator – Medium
GitHub: aladdin-v3-contracts/contracts/concentrator at main · AladdinDAO/aladdin-v3-contracts · GitHub
Twitter: https://twitter.com/0xconcentrator
Discord: AladdinDAO
CTR/ETH pool: https://curve.fi/#/ethereum/pools/factory-crypto-151
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.
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:
Increasing liquidity and visibility of the CTR-ETH pool via Curve gauges will benefit the CTR token and improve the visibility of Concentrator overall. Doing so is beneficial to the whole Curve ecosystem as Concentrator offers a way of farming yields which is far more positive to the ecosystem in general. Concentrator encourages users to farm and hold blue-chip tokens, helping to retain farmers as long-term stakeholders and supporting the price of the blue-chips.
Concentrator also benefits from a closer integration and deeper relationship with Curve. CTR tokens may be used to participate in bribe markets which will help increase the economic value of CRV and CVX governance.
Specifications:
Governance: The CTR token was deployed by the Aladdin core team. 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 does not rely on oracles.
Audits: All Concentrator products have been audited. Reports are:
PeckShield Legacy aCRV & Vault
Market History:
Concentrator was launched in early March of 2022 and at that time was fully supported by AladdinDAO and had no token of its own. In early June of 2022 the CTR token was launched and sold through a novel mechanism called the “initial farm offering”, during which time special IFO harvester vaults yielded CTR instead of aCRV at 1:1, with the actual aCRV generated held by the Concentrator treasury. The IFO ran until the end of October 2022. The IFO was designed to prevent large mercenary capital from farming CTR to dump and to keep price action during the IFO stable and constant, and it succeeded very well at this. Throughout most of the IFO, CTR kept a small premium over the aCRV that it was being sold for.
The CTR token supply is hard capped at 5m, all of which have been distributed as of the end of the IFO. No emissions are ongoing and there are no looming unlock cliffs for any allocation. CTR can be locked for veCTR to earn a share of Concentrator’s revenue, using Curve’s standard ve locking mechanism. Aladdin DAO owns 30% of all CTR tokens, and governance decisions for the Aladdin share are mirrored to ALD stakers.