Vesper Features

Features reflecting the cryptocurrency category's accepted standard and that enable proper interoperability between our platform and others.

• Non-Custodial: Assets are deposited to and deployed automatically via smart contracts. Users always maintain 100% ownership of their funds and can retrieve them at any time.

• Trustless: Assets are algorithmically deployed through the specifications laid out by Vesper pool strategy smart contracts.

• Permissionless: No signup, whitelisting, account verification, or otherwise is required to participate in the Vesper ecosystem.

• Censorship Resistant: Users can always interact with the smart contracts directly, which fundamentally cannot be taken down or tampered with.

• Open Source: Any developer is welcome to build with Vesper. In fact, it's highly encouraged and heavily incentivized.

• Fraud Resistant: The qualities listed above position Vesper's ecosystem to minimize the risk of fraudulent activity typically associated with bordered, custodial, trusted, permissioned, closed source, and censored platforms.

• Simple, Easy-to-use: Vesper's user interface was designed to be as seamless as possible. One-click deposit and withdrawals plus mechanisms for portfolio tracking and miscellaneous Vesper metrics.

• On Ethereum, 'Layer 2 Positive': The Vesper ecosystem is deployed on the base ('Layer 1') Ethereum blockchain, where it can interact with existing DeFi protocols for yield farming. Layer 2 solutions are under active consideration as potential ways to improve the efficiency of the platform.

DeFi Primitives

Features representing the mechanics of the DeFi products offered as part of Vesper.

• Grow Pools: Grow Pools collect a particular asset (ETH, WBTC, USDC, others) via user deposits and deploy the capital to other DeFi platforms as outlined by the Grow pool's active strategies. Yield accrued by these strategies are used to buy back more of the deposit asset, which is delivered to pool participants.

• Staking Pool (planned): Token holders can deposit VSP to the vVSP Staking Pool. Revenue generated across all Vesper products is used to buyback VSP from the open market. These tokens are delivered to the staking pool, where depositors earn VSP interest proportionate to the size of their deposit.

• Earn Pools (planned): Mechanically, Directed Pools operate the same as Grow Pools: deploy deposited assets to defined strategy. However, the yield accrued by Directed Pools is allocated to some other purpose. Some examples include:

  • Charity Pools: Yield is delivered to a charitable cause.

  • VC Pools: Yield is delivered as venture capital to a startup (likely in exchange for the project's token).

  • Growth Pools: Yield from deposit token x is used to purchase token y.

  • Income Pools: Similar to Investment Pools, but yield is converted to stablecoin and delivered as a passive income.

All Tokens

Features reflecting all tokens in the Vesper ecosystem, including the VSP governance token and the various tokenized pool shares.

• ERC20 Standard: Industry standard for tokens on Ethereum, this enables tokens in the ecosystem to interact with the existing global DeFi ecosystem (Ex: tradeable on Uniswap).

• EIP-712: All tokens support EIP-712 for sharing data via message signing. This is an important component of gas-less approvals.

• EIP-2612 (Gas-less Approvals): All tokens leverage EIP-2612, which enables gas-less approvals, with the help of EIP-712. Users can send tokens to any contracts after signing an approval message, rather than having to broadcast a transaction.

• Multi-Transfer: Inspired by Metronome, all tokens feature a mass pay functionality that enables batched payments in a single transaction.

VSP Token

Features of the VSP token that make it the best token to govern the Vesper ecosystem:

• Voting Rights: VSP tokens correspond to the voting weight in the Vesper ecosystem, which includes deployment of reserves and approval of new strategies.

• Delegation: Forked from Compound, holders can delegate their VSP voting weight to other accounts.

• Holistic View: Vesper is a single-token ecosystem, with every product (new and future) interfacing with VSP. VSP grants voting rights that span the entire Vesper umbrella and revenue generated by all products are used to buy back VSP off the open market.

• Time-Locked Mintage: The Administrative "mint" function is locked for the first twelve months. This prohibits a supply expansion beyond 10 million until a point in the future where ownership has fully transitioned to the community of VSP holders, where they can decide for themselves whether or not to extend emissions.

Pool Share Token

Features specific to the various tokenized pool shares that add value + functionality beyond the immediate purpose of tokenized stake.

• "Lego Brick" Modularity: Vesper pool shares are designed as a modular asset that can be plugged into other DeFi platforms. Vesper participants maintain liquid ownership of pool shares and can use them for other functionalities while retaining said ownership. For example:

  • Collateral: Vesper pool shares can be applied as collateral to create synthetic assets or to be posted as collateral to take out a loan. This is similar to how yCRV is backed by Grow pool shares (yUSDC + yDAI + yTUSD + yUSDT).

Backend Maintenance

Features representing the underlying mechanics that ensure Vesper operates as smoothly and securely as possible.

• Sweeping: This is a contract function that swaps non-native ERC20 tokens and deposits them back into the Grow Pool. For example, if the strategy interfaces with Compound, and receives Compound's COMP token, sweeping will liquidate the COMP and reap the profits from it. This also handles any tokens mistakenly sent to the contract.

• Rebalancing: Pool assets are redistributed (or rebalanced) on activity. This includes, for example, realizing yield and swapping to deposit asset or adjusting strategy positions on entry to or exit from the pool.

Pool Strategies

Features that guide Vesper Grow Pools to be profitable, secure, and sustainable.

• Risk Scoring: Every Vesper Grow Pool has a conservative/aggressive score that reflects the overall risk of the strategies employed by the pool including the security of third-party protocols interacted with, number of contract interactions, and collateralization ratios on loans (if applicable).

• Modular: Grow Pool strategies can be modified to integrate additional or alternative actions as well as swapped altogether for better strategies. No action is required on the user's end and funds transition to updated strategies automatically.

• Upgradeable: As new and better strategies are proposed within the confines of a pool's defined risk framework, those strategies can be employed without moving funds.

• Multi-Pool: Pool assets can be deployed across n strategies, with any chose percentage allocated to a strategy (e.g. Allocating 90% of your pool to a Conservative strategy, and 10% to an Aggressive strategy.)

  • Upgrades: Upgrades utilize the multi-pool feature to execute a rolling transition from an old strategy to a new one. (Ex: Start with 1%/99% new/old, then 5%/95%, etc. up the staircase until 100%/0%.)

  • Developer Strategies: A pool can support an unlimited number of strategies. Therefore, developers may spread funds across n pools as a way of testing their strategy.

Web3 UI

Features pertaining to the Vesper frontend to enable a more seamless experience for users.

• Multi-lingual Support: Like our pool strategies, website content is modular, and users can interact with Vesper in their native language. As more translations are compiled, they can similarly be added alongside available translations.

Participation Rewards

Features that guide how VSP token rewards are allocated to participants.

• Merkle Tree Reward: ZK-Rollups and Merkle trees are employed for distributing VSP to recipients. This enables more sophisticated approaches to VSP distribution (weighted averages, for example) and also eliminates much of the gas burden typically associated with claiming rewards.