Introducing the Canonical Vaults and yAxis v3 Launch

6 min readNov 22, 2021

The yAxis team is excited to announce the launch of our DAO-directed, multi asset, meta yield aggregator.

The v3 vaults are the core product and innovation that yAxis is bringing to DeFi. Our vaults offer secure, reliable and diverse yield generation for both retail and institutional capital.

With the v3 protocol upgrade we have fundamentally changed the way yAxis generates yield. A key component of this is the introduction of mechanisms that personalise APR and “Boost” rewards.

V3 Summary

Five asset based vaults supported on launch. Underlying assets are Chainlink (LINK), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), Curve 3pool (3CRV) yAxis (YAXIS).
Deposit digital assets into vaults to earn base yield and YAXIS rewards.
Locking YAXIS tokens returns Voting Power, allowing users to Boost APR, and influence YAXIS reward distribution.
Locked YAXIS gives a share of platform fees.

Overview

The v3 vaults represent a significant upgrade to the yAxis vault architecture.

Users are free to choose their level of engagement. They can simply deposit their assets into the vaults, sit back and let us do the rest.

Or they can take a more active role, using yAxis’ native governance token (YAXIS) to boost rewards and influence YAXIS distribution.

The Basics

Upon launch, we will support five strategy specific vaults, based around Chainlink (LINK), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), 3pool Curve (3CRV), and yAxis (YAXIS).

https://www.yaxis.io/user-guides

However, the underlying protocol architecture is designed to allow for rapid deployment of additional vaults and strategies.

NOTE: Pooling of user funds within vaults helps individuals save significantly on gas fees, where compounding returns can otherwise be prohibitively expensive.

Take Control

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the v3 protocol upgrade comes in the form of the DAO-directed mechanisms that personalise APR and “BOOST” YAXIS rewards.

This is also where the true value and utility of yAxis’ governance token (YAXIS) becomes evident and unlocks the full potential of the v3 Vaults.

Farm 2.5x smarter with Boosts.

Locked YAXIS

By locking YAXIS tokens, users gain a % of Voting Power or (veYAXIS — voting escrow YAXIS).

Voting Power is a key component in many of the vault yield generating functions. Chief amongst these is the “Personal Boost Multipliers (PBM)”. A PBM represents a Boost to your own vault Reward APR’s.

Please refer to the “Understanding Canonical Vaults & yAxis v3 Terminology” medium article for in depth descriptions of key vault components.

Users can receive up to MAX 2.5x Boost on their rewards. For example, a Minimum vault reward APR of 10% coupled with a MAX 2.5x Boost would result in a 25% Reward APR.

What is even more exciting, the longer you lock your YAXIS tokens, the more Voting Power you gain. Tokens can be locked from 1 week to a maximum of 1 year.

In addition, locking YAXIS also gives users a share of the Protocol Performance Fees, which are taken from a vault’s base strategy yield (Base APR).

Vote for Distribution

Users can put their locked YAXIS to work by participating in competitive DAO-directed rewards distribution.

The greater the collective Voting Power a vault receives, the more rewards are directed to that vault. The first vote is applied on Wednesday 24th, and continues recalculating on a weekly cadence.

These extra rewards coupled with Boosts, result in competitive APR’s.

Users are not limited to vote for just one vault. Users may wish to split their vote across vaults. This “gamification” of reward distribution will lead to ever increasing amounts of YAXIS being locked.

V3 Strategies

Strategy approvals and additions are community driven and are achieved through a series of DAO votes.

The number of vault strategies will grow over time, with strategies being easily added or swapped out according to market sentiment.

To start with, yAxis vaults are built leveraging Convex Finance pools with large liquidity to tap. yAxis offers added value through auto-compounding, and management of funds.

Over time we will plug in multiple strategies to each asset type, creating a fully DAO-managed yield portfolio.

YAXIS Rewards

In the nascent world of DeFi, all protocol tokenomics are essentially experimental.

With v3 we have taken a new approach to our emissions schedule. We will begin with lower levels of emissions that we can ramp up in line with organically growing TVL.

The vaults compete over these emissions through a tug-of-war between users. Initially starting with a rate of 250k YAXIS tokens per month.

Our approach with v3 emissions is one that we believe successfully balances the expectations of our users with those of the team and the ultimate goal of achieving protocol longevity and sustainable success.

Vault Security

yAxis’ goals are simple, we aim to make DeFi easy, while also making it secure.

During the design and development of the v3 vaults we have continued to prioritise protocol security. We took our solid v1 and v2 security foundations, built on them, and in doing so, we believe we have elevated our safety game to a much higher level.

Vault security highlights include:

C4 (Code 423n4) smart contract audit competition.
The $60k audit contest ran between the 9th and 15th of September. Thirteen security researchers submitted 88 unique findings to the audit.
Each of the C4 findings have been critically assessed by the yAxis development team, resulting in either patches, fixes or updates to the underlying protocol architecture. Details can be found at yAxis’ Github.
Tier 1 Smart Contract audit from Haechi. The Haechi Audit was carried out post C4 audit and discovered 2 minor issues.
Ongoing $85K ImmuneFi bug bounty.
Participation in ImmuneFi’s War room crisis response hotline.

v3 Vault UI

With the launch of v3, the team continues to provide the consistent yAxis experience users have come to expect. This, coupled with enhanced ease of use v3 features, will continue to foster trust and to promote security when interacting with our product.

Good to know:

Your Boost multiplier for each vault doesn’t update until you interact with it. I.e you either claim, deposit or withdraw from that vault.
The vote for rewards distribution happens every Wednesday.
Locking YAXIS, and voting on rewards all costs gas; think before you act!
A Boost calculator in the UI allows you to plan how much YAXIS to lock to save costly experimenting.
Your Voting Power drops over time.

Milestone

Make no mistake, the release of the v3 vaults marks a huge milestone for the yAxis team.

The vaults represent the culmination of months of hard work. The collective path towards v3 has been incredibly rewarding, yet it has also been fraught with difficulties.

Adversity, yes, we’ve had our fair share. However, these troubles have in no way dampened our enthusiasm for the project. In fact, they’ve helped us to grow stronger and wiser as both a team and a community.