Summary:
This proposal is to whitelist the Concentrator multisig treasury contract 0xA0FB1b11ccA5871fb0225B64308e249B97804E99 (Gnosis Safe) to allow Concentrator to lock protocol-owned CRV to participate in gauge and governance votes and allow boosting of protocol-owned farming positions. The proposed whitelist would not include tokenization or wrapping of CRV for the purpose of creating a liquid CRV derivative.
If added to the whitelist, Concentrator will lock CRV and use gauge emission governance power to incentivise pools relevant to protocol operations, such as CTR/ETH and aCRV/CRV on layer 2 chains. Concentrator builds constructively within the Curve ecosystem and this proposal strengthens the integration of Concentrator with Curve, to the benefit of both.
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 five compounder vaults, and many harvester vaults. Each harvester vault is paired with one of the compounder vaults (however, not all Compounders have Harvesters at this time). 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. Each compounder vaut’s yield source and principal is different, for example, aCRV is backed by cvxCRV and its yield source is cvxCRV single staking while aFXS is backed by Curve cvxFXS/FXS LPs, and its yield source is Curve gauge rewards. Compounder strategies can have varying complexity and token backing, but they each represent productive exposure to a blue chip DeFi token or derivatives thereof.
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 allows users to hold one asset (in a harvester vault), but concentrate into (i.e. use its yield to earn) a completely different one, providing a powerful risk management tool to farmers. For example, the most popular vault on Concentrator allows users to hold a stablecoin (FRAX-USDC LPs) but earn yields in aCRV. Concentrator has a track record of developing powerful new vaults with increasingly sophisticated and powerful strategies, with prime recent examples being asdCRV and abcCVX.
Motivation:
In 2022 Concentrator raised ~1.5M aCRV (compounding cvxCRV) tokens during its Initial Farm Offering (IFO) period. Approximately 1M of those tokens remain in the treasury as aCRV. Additionally, Concentrator charges harvest fees on its vaults, denominated in compounder vault tokens including aCRV. Those revenues are divided between the treasury and veCTR lockers and so represent an ongoing inflow of aCRV tokens to the treasury.
If this whitelist proposal is approved the protocol will initially convert some of its aCRV reserve to veCRV and use regular gauge voting to incentivize liquidity in Concentrator-relevant pools, focused on the CTR/ETH pool to start. The protocol intends to continue locking tokens as needed to support the protocol’s needs.
Aladdin protocols Concentrator and CLever both build constructively on the Curve ecosystem and continue to pursue deeper integrations with it. Concentrator meaningfully expands the farming opportunities within the ecosystem, and the team believes this proposal will benefit the ecosystem both by supporting Concentrator’s beneficial ongoing operation as well as reducing the unlocked supply of CRV and supporting its governance value.
Proposal
Add Concentrator’s multisig treasury to the whitelist to allow it to lock CRV for governance power and boosted LP rewards.