Introducing the next era of yAxis
DeFi and yield farming came to the forefront last Summer before the bull market kicked into high gear. And today, even with 41 billion dollars locked in DeFi, it still only represents 2.5% of all digital assets. Or to turn that around — 97.5% of assets are not fully leveraging their value.
Headline numbers of 3 and 4-figure % APY have become the industry standard. A new farm launches every week with the same plan: hand out as many tokens as possible whilst struggling to justify their value — a plan that inevitably fails, as emissions dwindle and farmers leave. Sound familiar?
So what should happen when emissions stop? What real product or service has been created to underpin a project’s valuation? It’s a question many platforms haven’t had to face yet.
Enter the yAxis Project and its Canonical Vaults.
yAxis Project
DAOs are the future. There’s no other way we could have bootstrapped a project so quickly from nothing. Or sourced a team of 8, all from the community.
yAxis Project launched its DAO in September 2020. Our first product, the USD MetaVault has secured funds since November and returned significant growth to users.
Since then, we’ve been quietly building and contemplating what a sustainable future would look like in a post-emissions ecosystem. Along this journey, we’ve accrued 1,800 early holders. 2,200 community members. 4,500 twitter followers and the public support of 0x_b1.
It’s fair to say yAxis is still under the radar. That’s about to change.
The Canonical Vaults by yAxis
This Summer, yAxis is expanding its existing USD MetaVault by introducing a DAO-directed Canonical Vault that manages a yield farming portfolio on behalf of users to secure attractive long-term growth of their USD, ETH, BTC, LINK and others.
The benefits of a DAO-directed portfolio being:
- No prior knowledge of DeFi required.
- Lower risk through diversification and 24/7 oversight.
- Avoid gas fees cutting into profits as our vault funds are pooled together.
- No ‘Impermanent Loss’ through single-asset vaults.
The goal is to make DeFi easy and more accessible to a wider audience, whilst providing a valuable service that underpins the token. These are single-asset vaults, with no IL or requirement to buy another token.
Our core innovation is an abstract layer that sits on top of the DeFi stack. With that, we can plug in strategies from other yield aggregators, then seamlessly switch and manage capital allocations amongst them — all on behalf of the user.
Effectively this allows the DAO to play the role of a portfolio manager.
Gauges by yAxis
The upcoming Canonical Vaults will introduce a new feature to our token: vault power. Locking your tokens will allow you to apply a weighted vote for increased rewards (emissions) going to a specific vault, i.e. USD, BTC, ETH, or LINK.
The longer you lock your tokens, the higher your voting power. The weighted aspect means an under-represented vault will be able to catch up quicker. This component is inspired by the highly successful Curve gauges.
The addition of voting power to our tokenomics model offers a clear reason for vault users to hold on to their farmed YAXIS.
Token Swap
The yAxis Project has a once-in-a-platform opportunity to upgrade its governance token ahead of this launch.
Phase 1: Bootstrap the community. Phase 2: Bootstrap the product. With that, the $YAX token is evolving into… $YAXIS after an overwhelming 97.18% vote of approval from the community.
The aim of the swap is to:
- Upgrade to an ERC-677 token
- Drive awareness and visibility
- Attract TVL into the vaults
It’s a 1:1 swap. 1 $YAX token = 1 $YAXIS token. Similar to the AAVE token swap last year, there will be a transaction required to upgrade your token.
The pie is about to get much bigger as we drive growth into the DAO.
Disclaimer: The token is not intended to carry fiat value. There are no consumer protections. This is not a financial investment.
Yield Farming
For those new to yAxis: stakers of the YAXIS token also play the role of a decentralised portfolio manager. Voting power will enable approving and removing strategies deployed by the vaults and switching/applying caps.
Stakers receive 20% of the yield farming profits for their efforts. Delegated voting will allow holders to put their trust in strategists if they prefer. Holders aren’t required to vote, and there’s no drawback to not actively participating.
The end-game motivator to acquire a stack of tokens is to earn a % of the profit share of the vaults. The more tokens you can farm throughout this distribution phase, the bigger your resulting % will be — securing higher passive returns for yourself.
These returns will be distributed to stakers in real-time.
How will it launch?
Looking back, the $YAX token was introduced via a fair-start launch: no founders, no investors, no pre-sale — a purely community-owned project.
Going forward, the DAO will introduce $YAXIS under another fair distribution. We launch with a circulating supply of 1 million coming from existing holders, rising over a year of emissions to a total supply of 11 million.
We can confidently enter this exciting growth phase with:
- A working product underpinning the token and scaling with price.
- Time-lock and 7 seat multi-sig.
- Multiple audits.
- Immunefi bug bounty.
An ERC-677 token gives us a key advantage: it enables users to approve and stake in the same transaction. Newcomers are often confused around the need for a second action, as well as put off by the cost of two transactions.
This upgraded token gives us the chance to streamline onboarding for the wider audience that DeFi aspires to.
The Four Eras
Distribution will take place across four Eras in time, the first of which is medieval themed.
Our vision and roadmap are also divided into these Eras, with specific upgrades and incentives built around them as we progress through the ages.
Notable features we will be adding:
- An automated monitoring and response system (AMAR)
- Account tracking and historic vault performance charts
- A vast menu of strategies
- An in-house insurance fund
- Fiat-on ramps
- Bridges to other chains
- On-chain governance for the DAO-directed vaults
The vault token (representing a user’s share of the funds) received can already be traded on a secondary market and is L2 agnostic.
Champions Programme
A key part of our growth initiative is the yAxis Champions Programme, affectionately named ‘The Herd’, which will reward early advocates and contributors. This programme will be heavily incentivised with up to $10M in available rewards.
RFPs (requests for proposals) will be posted publicly allowing anyone to submit their offer. Requests will cover everything from technical work and marketing initiatives, to content creation and grassroots activism.
Individuals, teams, protocols, DAOs, agencies… Whoever you are, we’re happy to work with you. Leadership positions within the programme will also be available.
We’ll be following up this article with a timeline of the four eras, the kickoff to our Champions Programme, further charts and models about token distribution and emissions, team member introductions, and much more.
For now, come get involved and help us forge this journey together through the Eras.
The yAxis Project
